Identifying the right partner for your outsourcing business activities will getṀ you desired end-result

Outsourcing used to be an old school and considered as one of the cost-cutting moves. When the investments are at higher stakes, outsourcing jumped in the picture for many businesses. Many see this as one of the cheap move by the businesses. It did not die yet, because the more the business horizon expanded, the higher the investments stakes went up. So cheap move or not, when done right, you need not compromise on quality.

In choosing your outsourcing provider, mistakes by major companies are, they chose their provider with the following as the eligibility criteria

1. Speed of the process/tasks/activities
2. Cost-cutting
3. 24*7 hours availability

Why can’t you set the above as the criteria? Here is a real example faced by a renowned business and the price that led them to pay when they hired an outsourcing provider with the above three as standards.

The business was looking for a delivery partner and they outsourced since their focus needs to be more on production. It is enough reason to outsource. While having to pick up a good provider, the first thing that comes to their mind is how quick the provider will deliver their products without errors.

They chose the provider who showed highest delivery speed rate, ignoring to check on if they had a system that will track the address. The provider delivered all the products at the promised time and they always met the deadline. But the business was billed every time for the delivery charges. When digged deeper, the business founds that FedEx puts fine, if you have given a home address and at the time of delivery if they found the address to be in a business premises. The picture here is, the outsource provider did not have a proper address verification software and their database is not updated. It led the business to pay the price for not taking into account on quality of the service.

So, here is how you can avoid these painful problems and find your right outsource provider/partner with these simple tricks.

Ask Questions

It is the classic and effective. Asking questions is a good and easy way to find more about your outsource provider.

Take your discussion to the second level. Enquire about if they have any specific application to support your project/ business. If yes, set up a demo with them to see how it works on real-time scenario.

Get to know about their work ethics. Question them on how their company’s workforce functions. This might give you an insight on the understanding about the company culture, values and their business virtues. Now you can decide if you guys are sailing on the same boat.

Do a test run with them before you make the contract all signed up. When you work on real time you will see the benefits and also the flaws in working with them. This could help you to see if the balance is positively tilting or not. If you identify that your outsource provider outweighs their minor deformities with major of their beneficial business activities, you can come up with a solution by discussing in eradicating the small issues faced.

When you ask questions to your outsourcing partner, consider the following:

• Define the innovations you need from them in your service-level agreement (SLA).
• Engage a vendor management organization to develop and enforce your SLA.
• Make sure the vendor’s employee incentives align with your priorities.
• Look for vendors with efficient, smart technology that can keep up with the rapidly changing market.
• Hire vendors for “modules” of related business services that can be integrated, used, and then removed when no longer needed.
• Seek vendors that bundle process, technology, and cloud-based support.
• Outsource for expertise, like with a vendor who can facilitate M&A and other business changes.
• Ownership: Public? Private? If private, looking to flip and sell in the next three to five years? That could be a major concern if this is a critical partnership.

Outsourcing isn’t easy, but when done right, it is one of the excellent business tactics that many fail to use it correctly. Innovating the outsourcing is the new strategy that requires creativity and out-of-box thinking.

Being an outsource partner to many overseas business, we have experience and an expertise pool team who is professional, friendly and efficient is taking care of our overseas client’s business needs and providing reliable solution to them. We can help you find the right partner by asking the right questions.

Sign up for your next awesome project with us