subject: Is Outsourcing A Good Idea For Small Businesses? [print this page] Hiring an outsider firm or an individual, to carry out some of your business work is known as outsourcing. Outsource happens to be a debatable practice because of the advantages and disadvantages it holds. Outsourcing industry (especially offshore outsourcing) gained momentum with the amazing growth in communication technologies and internet. Today, a number of businesses in US, Canada or UK employ offshore outsourcing, much to the dismay of local workforce (thats the reason why in near future we might see some jurisdictions being imposed on businesses looking to outsource their work to some offshore company).
There are many reasons for companies who decide to hire outsourcing companies instead of hiring and training their own staff.
Outsourcing for Small Businesses:
Outsourcing has particularly helped entrepreneurs and small businesses, allowing them to outsource some of their business work while they can focus on their strengths. For example, a company which is good at web marketing might outsource the web development work to another company because customers are looking for a complete package instead of dealing with different vendors themselves. Similarly, a small business can simply outsource the tasks like recruiting, book keeping or PR management because the cost of hiring and training full time professionals can sometime exceed the cost incurred for outsourcing.
Cost saving is unarguably the biggest advantage associated with outsourcing but it is not the only one. Outsourcing can help in speeding up the process of establishing a new business or launching a new product. At times it helps in improving quality. In our example above, you can see how the outsourcing of web design or development work to a third party can provide better results to the customers as compared to trying and coming up with a mediocre website (because you are not an expert at web designing). It also allows you to excel in your respective field instead of spending time in learning all of the required skills yourself.
Disadvantages:
Outsourcing doesnt always result in superior quality products or services. In fact its quite the opposite when you are outsourcing to an offshore company in a low cost zone, in that case quality becomes the biggest concern. These companies, in their bid to save cost, compromise on the quality. Therefore, you must choose the outsourcing company carefully instead of going for the one with lowest quotes. Once you start outsourcing your work, you must put in place some proper quality check measures to ensure the quality.
by: William
welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net)
