Boost your capabilities, get more customers, scale up, expand into new markets and cut down on wasteful expenses. Outsource!
Companies pass through a number of phases during their lifetime. First is the testing of waters, where the market validates the basic idea behind the service or the product. You build a core team and move fast to acquire new users or customers and start adding up features.
After you are established on your feet and have gained market share you will move to the next stage of scaling up and consolidation.
“As you grow you will face a number of challenges like fund and resource crunch. Outsourcing can help you deal with them”
This is when you would face issues like
- Lack of access to the right technical resources
- Cash crunch preventing you from expanding your team
- Core members wasting their time doing mundane and repetitive tasks
- Deadlines for deliverable being pushed back due to resource crunch
- Ideal markets situated too far away from home base.
- Rapidly eroding capital base because of ballooning expenditure
Problems with outsourcing
Outsourcing is not a fire and forget solution. It has its own set of challenges like
- Dealing with unreliable technical partners who does not understand your business and customers
- Navigating around cultural differences between you and your vendor which can throw a project completely out of gear.
- Miscommunication at different phases of the project leading to different expectations.
- Ensuring that your intellectual property and competitive advantage is safeguarded
- Allotting budget and resources for maintaining the deliverable so that it does not become obsolete.
- Keeping quality levels consistent while keeping a tight lid on expenditure
All these issues have multiple angles-some technical, some managerial and some cultural. They will crop up multiple times during the entire process and unless you are prepared to tackle them they will drag you down. And while there are other reasons these issues can crop up the biggest cause is an incompatible outsourcing partner.
Some of the characteristics of an ideal outsourcing partner are
- Long term experience in the field.
- Successfully executed both simple and complex projects.
- Has been validated by third parties in form of awards or quality certifications.
- Has a collaborative culture with a focus on communication and transparency.
Criteria for the ideal outsourcing partner
If you are a skydiver jumping out of a plane your outsourcing partner is your parachute. Therefore it’s very critical that you do due diligence while choosing your partner.
There are a number of ways to find out whether your proposed vendor meets these criteria. Simple questions like range of services, types of clients and experience can be easily determined from their online presence.
However, questions around company culture and soft skills will only be answered by a personal interaction, either on phone or face to face or from word to mouth.
All these issues have multiple angles-some technical, some managerial and some cultural. They will crop up multiple times during the entire process and unless you are prepared to tackle them they will drag you down.
And while there are other reasons these issues can crop up the biggest cause is an incompatible outsourcing partner.
- Has worked with clients similar to you.
- Is proficient with a wide range of technologies and services.
- Able to understand your business model and customer demands.
- Committed to customer support and high quality.
Doing outsourcing right
As with everything complex, outsourcing can be successfully pulled off if the work proceeds according to set systems and processes. Successful outsourcing also means that
- You are aware of the gaps in your capabilities which outsourcing can plug.
- Your vendor works with you to create a roadmap for success.
- You are completely engaged during the entire process, from project initiation to handover of deliverables.
- Your focus is on quality and reliability over short term cost savings.
- You communicate customer expectations promptly.
- Your outsourcing partner is flexible and reasonable.
At Sahir Web Solutions, our outsourcing practice has helped us deliver thousands of products and services to hundreds of clients all over the globe.
We have walked on this treacherous road to outsourcing success before and we know the blind spots and the slippery slopes.