Thursday, May 27, 2010

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing When Starting a Business




Some of the current popular advice for would be entrepreneurs says that outsourcing everything but your core operations is the best and easiest route to business ownership. Like most other advice, this idea comes with its own set of pros and cons. Before you take the leap into outsourcing, be sure to understand exactly what it really means to you and your business.

Outsourcing Pros

Outsourcing non-core competencies does have its advantages. If you do not have to spend your time handling the accounting or managing your website, your full time and attention can be on the actual operations of your startup. If you are lucky, the professionals you outsource to will work hard for your business and help you grow. Outsourcing can be a valuable money-saving alternative to hiring and dealing with staff, and can provide an alternative perspective on what and how your business is doing.

Outsourcing Cons

The downside of outsourcing revolves around one critical point - abdicating control of your business. One of the significant advantages of entrepreneurship is taking control and responsibility for your own work life. Often, business owners hand off a task to an outsource professional and trust them implicitly to do the right thing. But every business includes nuances and details that need to be addressed through every aspect, and it is unrealistic to expect every outsource professional to know and understand those specifics on their own. In addition, without taking a proactive position in monitoring outsourced tasks, you can easily become a target for unscrupulous practices - overcharges, underperformance, even theft.

What to Do?

Clearly, entrepreneurs need a way to enjoy the advantages of outsourcing non-core tasks while avoiding the potential problems. The first step is to check your attitude - be sure you are looking at outsourcing as a supporting role in your business. That is, you must maintain a sense of responsibility and the control of a manager over the work that you pass off to others. This means that you need to understand the fundamentals of every business task and how it relates to and affects your business before you outsource. You need to identify precisely what it is you want the outsource professional to handle and a method for evaluating their performance. You need to work closely with the outsourcer to develop useful reporting procedures so that you can keep up with what they are doing, and when and how it is getting done.

The fundamentals of entrepreneurship require more than a passing familiarity with business basics. Whatever your particular operations, you are ultimately in the business of business and, as the owner, you are ultimately responsible for everything that occurs in the name of your venture. Making a choice to hand off core business tasks without thoroughly understanding the purpose, procedures, and impact is a critical but common error among new business owners.

www.made-from-india.com which provide the outsourcing services.Thanks to the low costs incurred by hiring Indian professionals, more and more overseas companies are outsourcing their b2b solutions to Indian companies. Nobody pays money for nothing and there is no doubt about the educational qualities of the people employed by Indian outsourcing companies. The equation is very simple. Most of the foreign companies, with a few exceptions, do not charge their clients for online help. By outsourcing these technological calls to India, they save a good amount of money. The Indian Outsourcing Companies generally enter into a deal with these foreign companies for a pre-determined time period.

Going out on your own provides a freedom and autonomy that just isn't found by working for someone else. Your success rises and falls on your own actions -- a reality that is motivating for some and overwhelming for others. By taking the time to hone your fundamental business skills before you launch, you can make informed choices about what tasks you outsource and to whom. You will still be responsible for the outcome, but you will also have the knowledge and skills to maintain control over the work product of everyone involved in your venture...even outsourced professionals.

No comments: