4 Amazing benefits of project outsourcing
We all get 24 hours, but what really matters is how we put that time to use. As a business, you can find yourself in situations when you have a lot on your plate. At such times, outsourcing the extra work can be a lifesaver.
In the words of Peter Drucker:
Do what you do best and outsource the rest.
In general, outsourcing has many advantages, and we’ll explore them in this article.
What is outsourcing?
What if you could get your class topper to write the answers for you in the exam? Definitely an A+ for you, right?
The case might be unethical in an exam, but not in life. In business, it is wise to place your odds on the best person to do the job rather than doing it on your own.
The instance above is an example of outsourcing. Outsourcing is the act of allocating your work to someone else — usually a specialist — which else would have been done in-house. In common parlance, outsourcing means getting your work done by someone else. The work can be outsourced to a consultant, service provider, agency, or even a freelancer.
These are some of the business functions that are popularly outsourced:
- Customer support
- Accounting
- Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Human resource management (HRM)
- Information technology (IT) development
- Administrative tasks
- Shipping and logistics
Types of outsourcing
The outsourcing arrangement can be made in four ways:
1. On-site outsourcing
In an onsite outsourcing arrangement, the contractors work at your company's premises. For projects such as construction, on-site outsourcing is a sound choice.
As the contractors are physically present at your premise, communication and supervision, becomes easy as you can directly oversee them.
2. Onshore outsourcing
It is the process of hiring contractors located in the same country or region as yours. As the third-party workers are from the same region, there wouldn’t be any language or cultural differences, which results in smoother communication.
3. Nearshore outsourcing
In nearshore outsourcing, you take a step away from your own country and hire contractors from a nearby country. So if your organization is located in the United States, you could hire staff from Canada or Mexico.
As their proximity is near your region, it reduces the odds of time zone lag and you can communicate during your standard business hours. Nearshore outsourcing also provides you wider access to a talent pool than onshore outsourcing.
4. Offshore outsourcing
Offshoring is when you hire third-party contractors internationally. It offers the highest flexibility in terms of accessing the talent pool, as the sky’s the limit from where you can hire. Plus, offshoring can lead to potential cost savings if you hire from third-world countries.
However, coordination can be challenging in this scenario owing to language and time lag differences.
Benefits of outsourcing your projects
If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.
~ Lee Kuan Yew (former Prime Minister of Singapore)
Let’s dive deeper into the advantages of outsourcing
1. Saves you cost
It is obvious that full-time employees are expensive than contract workers. For instance, when you hire a full-time employee, you need to invest in their onboarding, training, healthcare insurance, and recurring compensation.
However, when you outsource your work on a contract basis, you only need to pay them for the project and no extra cost of insurance and training. Also, if you operate from a first-world country, you can save more by outsourcing your projects to third-world countries like India.
The talent is comparatively cheaper due to the lower cost of living, and you can leverage the exchange rate to your advantage.
2. Access to a global talent pool
By outsourcing, you get a wider range of talent that is not just limited to your geographical boundaries. This opens up the room for fresher perspectives and unlocks higher efficiency.
Moreover, if you end up using on-site outsourcing, then even your employees can collaborate with them and it creates an opportunity for improving their skill sets.
3. Saves you time
By outsourcing the tasks, you can save up the time of your internal staff and channel that time to focus on your core competencies.
Fun fact, even WhatsApp — a leading messaging platform — during its initial days, outsourced most of its app development to developers in Russia. This allowed their core team to work on customer support and daily operations.
4. Provides competitive advantage
Let’s say you wish to make a mobile application for your eCommerce business. Now you can either hire, developers on your own and then get the work done or outsource the work to a software development company that specializes in app development.
Which option do you think is more convenient? Obviously, the latter, as in the first one, you need to endure the painstaking process of finding and training them. Whereas in the second option, you don’t need to do any such hassles.
On top of that, project outsourcing can also lead to higher efficiency as the company is already experienced with mobile development. This way, you get faster delivery with lesser mistakes, leading to a competitive advantage.
Outsource your business projects to professionals with SkillDB
If what you read so far sold you the idea of outsourcing, then we have something exciting for you.
While outsourcing the work, there are some things that can of grave concern to you. For instance, what if the service provider doesn’t end up meeting their part of the bargain? What if they aren’t capable of delivering the project or ghost you after collecting the payment in advance?
All these factors boil down to one word — trust. Trust is the foundation of any relationship, and in this case as well. At SkillDB, we are committed to getting you the talents you can trust. What makes us so confident about it?
At SkillDB, you can find a wide range of talent available for hire. All the talents listed on our website are from reputable service-based businesses rather than random freelancers. Moreover, they are pre-vetted by their parent organization, so you never have to worry about the work’s quality and their caliber. With SkillDB, you only get the best.
Whether you have a highly technical requirement (like software development) or a creative one (say website copywriting) — you can bank on us.
Want to list your talent at SkillDB Talent Marketplace? Try SkillDB now.
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