Advantages of Outsourcing
One of the biggest advantages can be lower personnel costs. By outsourcing job duties to non-employees, a business does not have to pay consistent wages or offer additional employee benefits. The company may pay lower taxes because independent contractors, the people who complete the outsourced projects, pay their own withholding, social security, and other taxes. This can add up to substantial savings.

Some businesses choose to take their outsourcing one step further by choosing a vendor, located in another part of the world. Doing so typically saves them more money because they end up paying a much lower wage than would be necessary in their home country. The disadvantage is that these vendors may not understand English and communication is more difficult.

Many times, outsourcing speeds up production time. Since the third-party vendor will only be concentrating on one specific task, instead of numerous office duties, actual production time can be greatly increased.

Outsourcing gives a business the flexibility to change third-party vendors whenever necessary. This process is not as time-consuming as the normal employee hiring process, because they are not screening individuals, they are considering established companies with proven track records.

An excellent example of this is customer service. When a business outsources its customer service department, it does not have to hire and oversee thirty individual operators. Instead, it can hire one call center, which will perform all needed tasks.

Recent studies show that information technology-related tasks are outsourced more than anything else. Other common department functions that are outsourced include: human relations, training, accounting and supply management.

Whether a business chooses to outsource on a temporary basis or permanently, the advantages are well worth the decision to do so. Most businesses, which set out to outsource temporarily end up making an ongoing commitment.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing

One of the biggest disadvantages of outsourcing is undesirable results. This is especially true when a company hires a third-party vendor to mass produce a product. In the event that the finished products do not meet quality standards, the manufacturing process must be repeated by a different vendor.

Not only is this a waste of time and materials, it can also be very costly for the company who outsourced the project. They are essentially paying twice for the same job. In addition there is always the possibility that the company may lose sales, during this same period because of the lack of available product.

Another disadvantage of outsourcing is a loss of jobs. Many times work is outsourced simply as a means to save money. Outsourcing to a foreign country typically saves a company a great deal in wages. So, the choice is made to reduce their local workforce, at the expense of the laid-off employees.

In turn, it can cause community uproar and even a decrease in business and profits. This happens when local consumers make the decision to shop elsewhere, as a way to voice their disdain.

Outsourcing customer service jobs, to foreign countries, is on the rise. Many large corporations including credit card companies, shopping networks and computer manufacturers are making this change.

The problem with this is a lack of communication. It can be very frustrating for a consumer who is calling in with a customer service issue. When this individual cannot understand the customer service representative they are speaking with, it just causes more frustration and does little to solve the problem.

Awards Criteria: Best use of outsourcing to achieve the buyer’s objectives for ITO while also achieving mutually beneficial outcomes.

Lessons from the Outsourcing Journal:

* Buyers have to work closely with service providers when designing new systems. If they don’t get involved, the systems may not work.
* A good service provider will go the extra mile to fix a problem, even if it means buying another company!
* Buyers appreciate open, honest communication, especially when a service provider cannot do what the buyer asks.

Even the most talented and experienced Internet marketer or businessman needs help every once in a while. Graphic or web design that meets your business goals takes commitment and the right amount of skills. Not everyone has what it takes to create banners, promo ads, and websites, which is why graphic design outsourcing has become a popular option for many. There are several factors to be considered in outsourcing graphic design work to ensure that you gain the best quality, competitive pricing, total confidentiality, and unparalleled customer service.

Graphic Design Experience

In the outsourcing business, it would of course be in your best interest to look for an individual or a service that has significant experience in the line of work or aspect of your business you are outsourcing. You will be surprised at the number of companies offering graphic website outsourcing at competitive prices. In choosing a firm, have a look at how many websites the outsourcing company has worked on and whether they fit your standards. See also if the websites they made are search engine-friendly. If outsourcing to an individual, ask for a work portfolio.

Web Design Infrastructure

When we talk about web design infrastructure, we are referring to the tools a graphic design outsourcing company uses. A web design company must have experience working with the latest software and network infrastructure. Its team members must be knowledgeable in different platforms such as Windows, Linux, PHP, ASP, .NET, MySQL, MSSQL, C++, VB, and so on. Choose a service that distinguishes between its art department and customer assistance to allow for better communication.

Graphic Design Team

It is an excellent idea to hire the services of an entire company when graphic design outsourcing because they usually employ a number of skilled professionals to work on your projects. Graphic design is an art but more than that, it is also a form of science. The team you are outsourcing to needs to harbor unique and innovative ideas in software programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, animation programs, CSS, and HTML. They must also be able to execute these ideas well and foster a deep understanding in the importance of striking a balance between aesthetics and functionality.

Professionalism

In graphic design outsourcing, the two transacting parties must establish good communication lines from the very start. If a company does not seem to foster a harmonious relationship with its clients through proper coordination, language proficiency, and constant communication, your projects are bound to fail. Professionalism should be exercised in all aspects such as pricing, communication, and timing. You must be able to express your ideas without having to worry about time constraints, connection problems, and hidden costs.

Maintenance

Maintenance is an essential aspect in graphic design outsourcing, especially in web design. You must choose an outsourcing service that allows you to incorporate changes, make additions, apply corrections, and do other modifications any time it is needed. Come up with a set budget and style sheet once you have chosen a graphic design outsourcing provider. This avoids unnecessary mistakes and some basic problems as you go along.

Personal Outsourcing To An Assistant

In this list we are going to look at 100 different ways you can use an assistant to save you time. Some will work with a virtual as well as an on site assistant, some will only work with on site help. Obviously you need to match the job with the skills of your assistant, but this can provide a valuable starting point of ideas if you are interested in outsourcing some tasks and saving time.
One word of warning. Don’t expect an assistant to save you time on every task at first. Unless your needs are very mundane, you will probably want to invest some time in letting them learn your preferences and the style in which you like things done. As they learn what you need, they can start to make decisions based on how you are likely to make them and this can be one of the greatest time savings of all.

1. Grocery store trip – It may or may not be efficient to send someone to do your detailed shopping, trips to pickup milk, bread and other staples can be handled by someone else.

2. Meal planning – This can be nicely coupled with grocery shopping. You could even set certain targets you want to hit regarding nutrition.

3. Meal preparation – If your assistant can cook, this might be a good time saver for you. Obviously this doesn’t work very well with a virtual assistant.

4. Deposits – With a rubber stamp, you can give someone else the ability to make bank deposits for you. Obviously it needs to be someone you trust.

5. Scanning – If you are trying to implement a paperless office, having someone else do your scanning can save you a lot of time.

6. Filing – If you haven’t gone paperless.

7. Proof reading – A second pair of eyes can often spot issues much faster than you can yourself.

8. Contacts cleanup – If you have a setup that syncs contacts from your computer, phone and other devices, it is likely that you have a bunch of duplicates or incomplete contacts. Let someone else clean them up and make sure your information is up to date and accurate.

9. Send handwritten letters – Using a font like vLetter, you can give someone else the ability to print and send handwritten letters for you.

10. Pay bills – You may or may not want to give someone else access to your online bill payment service. If you still use checks, someone can save you time by getting everything ready so you just have to sign the checks.

11. Get your oil changed – The 30 to 60 minutes it takes to get your oil changed can easily be handed off to someone else.

12. Transcribe voicemail – Depending on your workflow, it might be much more efficient to have your voicemails transcribed and sent as email.
13. Shred sensitive documents – This can be particularly important if you are scanning in a lot of documents that can’t be thrown away due to the information they contain.
14. Buy airline tickets – This can be tricky because there is a lot that usually goes into picking out tickets that requires your personal attention. However, if your needs are simple, this can be a small task that you can delegate.
15. Wait on hold – It is easy to waste a lot of time just waiting for someone else to answer the phone. While you can’t hand off every phone call to an assistant, the ones that you can will save you time.
16. Tech support – If you deal with a lot of electronics you probably spend at least some time fixing problems, working with tech support and getting parts replaced. In some cases these are activities that could be delegated.
17. Mailing letters and packages – It isn’t hard to mail a package, but it can be time consuming and that makes it a great canidate to delegate.
18. Send birthday cards – Sending birthday cards is a great networking tool. An assistant can help by getting the cards ready, addressed, stamped and even signing them using a signature font.
19. Birthday shopping – With a little organization an assistant can help you keep up with your birthday gift giving. If you give them a list of people, birthdays and a list of possible gifts they can make sure you never miss a gift giving opportunity.
20. Finding deals – An assistant can help find the best deal (including shipping and tax charges) on a particular item you need to purchase. American Express’ concierge generally does a good job of this.
21. Answer phone calls – Using something like Google Voice or Ring Central you can forward your phone calls to an assistant so callers get a real person during the times you would normally send them to voice mail.
22. Library run – It is easy to order books off Amazon simply to avoid the inconvenience of going to the library. Sending an assistant to the library is particularly useful if you have a small library where a lot of specific books will need to come through library loan.
23. Proof reading – A second set of eyes to look over things before you send them out can drastically reduce little errors. This can be a bit challenging if you are trying to use someone in India where they speak a slightly different version of English.
24. Phone calls – Sometimes you need to get a message to someone and simply leaving a message won’t do. An assistant can keep calling until the person answers and give the message.
25. Bill collection – If someone owes you money, having an assistant call and inquire about when to expect payment can help keep you out of the bill collector role but still get the payment in the mail.
26. Researching lists – For example, if I want a list of the top 100 peer blogs to Productivity501 along with various stats about them, an assistant can gather that information easily into an document where it can be sorted and analyzed.
27. Interviews – Virtual assistants are great for querying a large number of people and compiling their answers.
28. Organizing personal library – Have you ever wanted to have your home library organized according to the Dewey Decimal system?
29. Book index – If the Dewey Decimal system is to much, you still might like a master index of your library.
30. Listing books on Amazon – If you have a bunch of books you want to get rid of, an assistant can get them listed for you on Amazon.
31. Update phone – If you can’t sync your phone with your computer, consider having an assistant update the contacts.
32. Locate photos and illustrations – A virtual assistant can save you a lot of time by locating pictures to illustrate blog posts and presentations.
33. Transcription – Sometimes you want to have a text copy of an audio file. It could be the recording of a conference call, meeting or even radio broadcast. This time consuming process is a great candidate for outsourcing to an assistant. If you have a tremendous amount of audio to transcribe, you may want to look into using services that specialize in audio transcription.
34. Categorize pictures – An assistant can help you categorize, rate and organize your pictures by adding tags or putting them in different folders.
35. Mail merge – A good assistant should be able to take a spreadsheet and a letter and do a mailing with minimal intervention on your part. This could be anything from sending out your Christmas letter to 50 family members or a huge newsletter mailing for your company.
36. Watering plants – This may seem trivial, but it is one other place that an assistant can save you a few minutes.
37. Setting up appointments – If you need to meet with a large number of people an assistant can setup your meetings and update your schedule.
38. Watching for news – An assistant can monitor various news sources and notify you when something comes up that you need to know about.
39. Garage sale shopping – Garage sales are one of those things that you don’t know what you are looking for until you find it. However if you do know what you are looking for, an assistant can scour the garage sales looking for used books or whatever it is you need.
40. Fill the car with gas – It isn’t a hard task, but it takes up your time. If you can send someone to fill the car up for you it will probably save you 15 to 30 minutes of time.
41. Driving – Letting someone else drive you can free up your time to work on the computer, read, make phone calls safely, etc.
42. Qualify leads – If your business generates leads that then need to be qualified, a virtual assistant can follow up by phone, ask a few questions and schedule a meeting with you. This helps you keep your time focused on the qualified customers.
43. Twitter – Most of our famous quotes on Twitter were researched and scheduled by my assistant.
44. Printing – It doesn’t always make sense, but sometimes it makes more sense to send your assistant a file and let them handle the printing, getting the right paper, printer options, etc.
45. Summarizing data – This can be a great way to use a virtual assistant. Let them send you summaries of news or financial information that you would wade through otherwise.
46. Article clipping – Instead of going through magazines and newspapers yourself, an assistant can clip the parts that are relevant to you.
47. Setting up appointments – If you need to meet with a large number of people an assistant can setup your meetings and update your schedule.
48. Watching for news – An assistant can monitor various news sources and notify you when something comes up that you need to know about.
49. Office supply stocking – An assistant can help make sure that you don’t run out of paper, pens or toner.
50. Reconcile accounts – Trying to find the missing transaction that is keeping your accounts from balancing is a great thing to delegate.
51. Preparing expense reports – You give them your receipts with a note on the back and they handle filling out whatever forms you need.
52. Sending out “good to meet you letters” – A great networking tool is to follow up with a physical letter. An assistant can handle doing this for you.
53. Letter sequence – Similar to the above, but you may want to send people out a sequence of letters. Once again, a great thing to delegate.
54. Wait for cable repair – Most cable companies give you a window of when they will come that is huge and keeps you sitting at home all day wondering when they will show up. Let someone else do the waiting.
55. Wait for important packages – If you have a package coming that needs a signature, you don’t have to be stuck waiting for it.
56. Locate and schedule carpet cleaners – You an give criteria such as: locate 3 carpet cleaners, get and follow up with references, choose the one that sounds like they will do the best job at a reasonable price.
57. Answer emails – I’m not crazy about giving someone else direct access to my email, but there are some situations where it may make sense. In particular it may be good if you are away from email for an extended period of time.
58. Transcribe written notes – Turn your written notes into searchable text.
59. Negotiate – Sometimes having a third party negotiate for you can give you an upper hand. Give them the parameters you are willing to accept and let them try to negotiate for you.
60. Accountability – Asking a virtual assistant to make sure you exercise, or make sure you leave work on time can help give you some accountability to do the things you know are important.
61. Worry – I’ve heard of people delegating their worrying to someone else. The virtual assistant promised to worry about a big contract so he wouldn’t have to. Sounds silly but this person said it was very effective.
62. Walk the dog – Of course this doesn’t help you get any exercise.
63. Pickup medicine from the vet – Simple time saving errand.
64. Mow the yard – Another timesaver.
65. Write letters to politicians – If you want to let your voice be heard on a topic, let your assistant track down everyone who has any political pull in that area and mail them your opinion.
66. Send out resumes – They can handle the printing and mailing part of things.
67. Writing cover letters – Let them help customize your cover letters for each specific company.
68. Customize resume – They can research each company where you want to apply and help tweak and reorder your resume to best appeal to that company.
69. Mail newspaper clippings – A great way to network with people in your town is to clip out anything about them from the local paper and send it to them with a handwritten note of congratulations. An assistant can help identify and clip these for you. (It is best to only do this with positive news. You don’t need to send someone a note saying that you read about their DUI.)
70. Confirm reservations – Let your assistant confirm you car rental, hotel reservation, etc.
71. Send holiday cards – You can get cards for pretty much any time of year. Let your assistant help keep your name in front of clients by sending St. Patrick’s day, Easter, and Groundhogs day cards for you.
72. Sell stuff on eBay – You will probably make a lot more selling old items on eBay than with a garage sale. Your assistant can handle the listing and shipping for you so it doesn’t eat up all of your time.
73. Search craigslist.org – If you need something, have your assistant look for any new listings for that item on craigslist each day.
74. Gather menus – Want to have better information in choosing a restaurant. Ask your assistant to get a copy of the menu from several different places ahead of time for you.
75. Parking and getting the car – This is particularly useful if you live in a place where you can’t park near your house or office.
76. Wait in line for tickets – If you want to get tickets to an event that will require a wait, send your assistant.
77. Wait in other lines – Your assistant probably can’t get a drivers license for you or register your car, but they can wait in line and call you to come when your turn is approaching.
78. Get quotes – Lets say you need to put a new roof on your house. Your assistant can locate a number of roofer and get quotes for you to look over.
79. Transfer your phone – If you need to switch cell phones it can be a time consuming process. Pass it off your your assistant, they can deal with the cellular company and make the changes.
80. Meeting minutes – This may be useful for things other than formal meetings. It might be beneficial to have written minutes of a conference call or other informal meeting.
81. Wakeup call – I’ve heard of some people having a virtual assistant give them a wake up call along with the weather report and reminders of any important things coming up for that day.
82. Keeping home items in stock – This could be your batteries, printer supplies, envelopes, trash bags, flour, light bulbs etc. Delegating responsibility to make sure you don’t run out of these things means you don’t have to think about it anymore.
83. Place Ads to Sell Stuff on Craigslist – They can also filter through the large amount of spam you are likely to get and help qualify people whoa re likely to actually buy.
84. Look for stuff to buy on Craigslist – Lets say you need a lawn mower. Once you determine the model, age and price you are looking for, an assistant can check for one that meets your criteria daily and do the initial contact to make sure that the ad isn’t a scam. (Hint: If they are trying to ship you a riding lawn mower from another country, it is a scam.)
85. Play devils advocate – An assistant can offer valuable feedback by letting you test ideas and taking a contrary point of view. This will help prepare you for likely objections to your ideas and proposals.
86. Get you off of mailing lists – Giving your assistant a stack of mail that you don’t want to get anymore, can save you a lot of time and reduce the amount of paper being used in the world.
87. Creating a Powerpoint presentation – If you can provide the general outline, an assistant can look up relevant statistics and add graphics.
88. Track loyalty program points – They can help you keep track of where you have existing points and how to make best use of them.
89. Identify potential jobs – People without a job probably aren’t the most likely to hire an assistant, but if you are looking for a job and wanting to play the numbers in your favor, getting some help might be useful.
90. Sending out resumes – An assistant can help you tweak your cover letter, mail out resumes and help you track where you’ve sent your information.
91. House sitting – If you are going to be gone for a few days, it may make sense to have someone stay in your house just to keep it occupied.
92. Online presence – Some people have an assistant do their updates to Facebook and Twitter. This might be useful for someone wanting to maintain a particular online image.
93. Personal metrics – An assistant can help you compile and graph personal metrics. This could be anything to how many miles you’ve walked each week, to your weight over time or the number of calories you’ve consumed.
94. Business metrics – Similar to above, they can keep track of how many sales calls you’ve made, how many deals you’ve closed, how many contacts you’ve followed up with, etc.
95. Plan your vacation – It might seem silly to have an assistant plan your vacation, but if they know you and your family well, they may be able to come up with a better schedule and locate more interesting things to do than you could for yourself.
96. Blog posts – If you need to maintain a certain style of online presence, an assistant can help you do that by writing about what you are doing in your voice. Not for everyone, but there are some people who might use this.
97. Conversions – I had an assistant move a bunch of my sites from Drupal to Wordpress. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was very time consuming and I had been putting it off.
98. Suggest cultural events – An assistant can keep track of the events in your city and suggest things you might want to attend. If you say, yes, he/she can make the necessary arrangements for you.
99. Comment filtering – An assistant can help you manage comments on your blog and make sure you keep spam out while letting legitimate comments through quickly.
100. Fact checking – If you plan to use a piece of data for a publication or in a presentation and need to verify it, an assistant can do this for you.

Source: Productivity 501

“Outsourcing was in danger of becoming over hyped, with an exaggeration of its benefits and neglect of its problems and shortcomings. Michael Mol has served the literature and business practice well by developing a more balanced view that takes into account both opportunities and benefits, as well as limitations and adverse effects. For example, he includes the social cost of outsourcing that has previously been ignored. His main contribution is the following. Reasonably, and convincingly, using both theoretical and empirical argument, he shows that firm performance is an inverse U-shaped function of the extent of outsourcing. There can both too little and too much outsourcing. The book is very helpful in showing how the trade-off between advantages and disadvantages works. – Bart Nooteboom, Professor of Innovation Policy, Tilburg University and member of the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy

Product Description
Outsourcing has become one of the key restructuring tools for companies seeking to boost their growth and business performance. As the outsourcing phenomenon has mushroomed, so a range of academic studies have sought to define and describe a unifying theoretical model. Outsourcing: Design, Process and Performance draws upon managerial, economic, sociological, historical and psychological perspectives to bring about a new understanding of how outsourcing design and the outsourcing process feed into the performance of firms. Blending empirical insights from a range of international cases and large-scale statistical tests with existing theoretical perspectives, the author argues that a negative curvilinear relationship exists between outsourcing and firm performance. A critical analysis of current outsourcing strategies, together with a discussion of future trends, offers a new agenda for academic researchers and business managers alike.

Available at Amazon

Although outsourcing has been around as long as work specialization has existed, in recent history, companies began employing the outsourcing model to carry out narrow functions, such as payroll, billing and data entry. Those processes could be done more efficiently, and therefore more cost-effectively, by other companies with specialized tools and facilities and specially trained personnel.

Currently, outsourcing takes many forms. Organizations still hire service providers to handle distinct business processes, such as benefits management. But some organizations outsource whole operations. The most common forms are information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO).

Business process outsourcing encompasses call center outsourcing, human resources outsourcing (HRO), finance and accounting outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing. These outsourcing deals involve multi-year contracts that can run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Frequently, the people performing the work internally for the client firm are transferred and become employees for the service provider. Dominant outsourcing service providers in the information technology outsourcing and business process outsourcing fields include IBM, EDS, CSC, HP, ACS, Accenture and Capgemini.

Some nimble companies that are short on time and money, such as start-up software publishers, apply multisourcing — using both internal and service provider staff — in order to speed up the time to launch. They hire a multitude of outsourcing service providers to handle almost all aspects of a new project, from product design, to software coding, to testing, to localization, and even to marketing and sales.

The process of outsourcing generally encompasses four stages: 1) strategic thinking, to develop the organization’s philosophy about the role of outsourcing in its activities; 2) evaluation and selection, to decide on the appropriate outsourcing projects and potential locations for the work to be done and service providers to do it; 3) contract development, to work out the legal, pricing and service level agreement (SLA) terms; and 4) outsourcing management or governance, to refine the ongoing working relationship between the client and outsourcing service providers.

In all cases, outsourcing success depends on three factors: executive-level support in the client organization for the outsourcing mission; ample communication to affected employees; and the client’s ability to manage its service providers. The outsourcing professionals in charge of the work on both the client and provider sides need a combination of skills in such areas as negotiation, communication, project management, the ability to understand the terms and conditions of the contracts and service level agreements (SLAs), and, above all, the willingness to be flexible as business needs change.

The challenges of outsourcing become especially acute when the work is being done in a different country (offshored), since that involves language, cultural and time zone differences.