To outsource or not to outsource? That is the question!

According to Deloitte “enabling focus on core functions” is the most common perceived benefit among companies when it comes to considering outsourcing.

If you run a startup, scaleup, or lead an established global brand, it’s vital to assess your own capabilities - where you’re strangest, and where you may benefit from 3rd party support - before taking the plunge with outsourcing any of your activities.

There are advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing, and the back-and-forth confusion between “I should do it myself” and “I should trust someone else to handle it” is a struggle many teams face when determining which path to take.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits to outsourcing to help you decide whether it’s a good option for your business; and examine whether you can accomplish your growth-oriented goals in-house.

1. When to outsource and when to keep in-house.?

A key consideration when deciding whether to outsource is staffing.?

Do your team members have the skills and capacity required to take on the action??

If they don’t, should you skill them up or outsource the responsibility??

Here are some tips…

Consider insourcing - keeping in-house - when:

• You can dedicate an experienced, full-time team to the task. In order to make the business activity work effectively, you’ll ultimately need to dedicate team members to focus solely on that function.
• There is a need for quality control that might be lost in translation when outsourcing

Outsourcing may make sense when:

• You don’t have the resources to staff a full internal department
• You require focus on specific parts of the business
• You need to accelerate efforts
• However, it doesn’t have to be a binary choice.

Many businesses outsource parts of their business functions – for example, 37% of businesses outsource both accounting and IT services – whilst keeping other elements in-house, such as content creation and lead generation.?

This can free-up your team to concentrate on the areas that need the most attention, and hands on action.

2. It’s all in the briefing.

Ok, you’ve decided to outsource part of your business activities.?

Now what?

The first thing to do is to ensure your chosen partner is thoroughly briefed on your? business.?

The information you’ll need to brief them on depends on the business function you choose to outsource.?

However, one common theme is, the more they know, the better equipped they’ll be.?

The second key element is to ensure you have a clear set of targets in place with defined criteria.?

Without these targets you won’t be able to track the effectiveness of your outsourcing and ultimately you won’t know if it’s been beneficial, and most importantly you won’t know how to adjust for future outsourcing.

Many companies provide clients with a dedicated account manager that undertakes outreach through calls, emails and LinkedIn, with a project manager serving as a single point of contact.

Investing time in briefing your outsourced team up-front will help accelerate the delivery of a successful project.

3. Working as one team.

Now that your outsourced team has been briefed, you need to agree how to work together. Here are some considerations:

• Determine the structure, method and frequency of updates. For example, how will you receive them? Daily, weekly, monthly? Via email, phone or face to face?
• Once the project starts, schedule a call with the team after the first couple of days to assess feedback – for example, what are the main objections and questions?
• Schedule regular calls with the team to tweak the approach if any issues may arise in the early stages of the project.
• Set up a dedicated email address and instant message tools (e.g. Slack) for the campaign team to engage with the rest of the business.
• Agree how the campaign will be reported. One way to do this is to set up a shared online portal through which all activities and progress are documented. This will enable stakeholders to keep up to date with the progress and see what deadlines will affect them

Following these steps will help you get the most of your relationship with your outsourced partner.

Bringing it all together.

All businesses regardless of size can benefit frompartnerships to help them grow and scale.

Outsourcing some functions, responsibilities or projects to a trusted partner can help accelerate your efforts.

Whether it's to focus your staff on key functions, or to outsource those key functions, there’s many ways to use outsourcing to achieve better outcomes – in a faster and more affordable way.

However, before embarking on a course - ensure you’ve spent sufficient time assessing your areas of strength and expertise, and can clearly pinpoint where you may benefit from support.?