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Last Updated: 16th September 2022
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All kinds of work can be outsourced these days, from house chores, delivery, to business related work. Our lives have been made so much easier as a result. Businesses can also be started with far less than they would have needed if outsourcing weren't available as an option.
Our focus in this article is not on the house chore side of things but on the business side especially on tech related work. We would be covering the benefits, challenges, how to, and tips of outsourcing work. Read along, and enjoy!
The major benefit in outsourcing work, no matter what kind of work it is, is the amount of time saved. If a task takes your 5 hours to do, and you outsource it, you have saved 5 hours of your time!
Sure, you would likely need to pay some one or some organization to do it but you could very well earn that money back. However, time is something you cannot earn back. Time just gets spent every second of our lives regardless of whether we have spent it wisely or not. Time stops for no one, cannot be reversed, and cannot be stored. The worse part is that we don’t even know how much time we have left to spend – a finite but unknown quantity of time. The only thing we can do with regards to time is how we choose to spend it.
Hence, outsourcing work to save time is a benefit that works for those who intend to spend that same time doing something more meaningful but may not work well for others who may not have the resources to do so or would like to hone their skills carrying out that type of work.
Like it or not, we are not all knowing, and we can’t do everything we want to to an expert level. There are a lot of people who like the idea of DIY (do it yourself) for everything in a project that they are about to start. Whilst it is good to keep motivated to learn one area of caution, I would have is to recognise what level of expertise one has and compare it with what is really needed. If you require experience and expertise from outside, don’t hesitate to ask.
The analogy I would give it this. We all can take care of our own dental hygiene by brushing our teeth with an electrical toothbrush, flossing it regularly, etc. However, most of us won’t be able to reach the level of expertise required to be a dentist or hygienist. Every so often, we still need to seek their expertise for our dental check ups.
Hence, it is important to recognize what we need, and whether our level of expertise is sufficient and if not, seek the experts.
Using the same dental analogy, if the purpose is to maintain dental hygiene then just having an electrical toothbrush, dental floss, and toothpaste as equipment would be sufficient. Outsource the dental checkups and the visit to the hygienist and your teeth would be in perfect shape.
If you wanted to get to the level of the dentist, you are going to need more than that; a venue to practice, the chair, equipment, staff, etc. There is a big difference in the amount of capital and training required to achieve that.
Likewise, you would need to consider the amount of capital required to DIY compared to outsourcing the work. You don’t want to be hoarding tools that you hardly need and start paying for storage afterwards.
Outsourcing allows you to really focus on your business. That is extremely important. If all you needed for dental hygiene was to keep a nice smile and go on with life and work, then starting a dentistry is an overkill. Likewise, if you wanted to build a website, e-commerce business, or blog, learning how to self host, manage domains, SSL certificates separately could lead to an increase in workload that is unnecessary for your business.
If that workload takes you away from steering your business to success, or potentially making you lose opportunities to make more money then perhaps you have started to major in the minor details and lost the forest for the trees.
Have you heard the idiom that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? I suppose it is true to some extent but what makes it worse is if we think we are right when we are wrong.
Imagine setting up your website and having it look great on desktop only to really that it would not resize for mobile and other devices because you didn’t know about responsive web design? There may be a lot of rework required to bring in responsive web design at a later stage, not to mention all the hours spent doing it wrongly.
Another great example is about logo design and creating images of logos that do not scale at different sizes. Have you ever come across logos that when they are enlarged, they look grainy? All photos, and image files are created equal, right? No, the lack of understanding of the differences between raster and vector graphics leads one to think that all image files are the same and should scale well, which isn’t the case. More about that in another topic.
When you outsource the work, you lose the opportunity to do the work yourself. If you had wanted to learn and practice this skill then that opportunity is not there. However, you may ask the person you are hiring to teach or guide you in how to do it and perhaps they might charge more. The plus point is that you get to learn from some one more experienced from you.
If you had wanted practice with the task, then it would be better to have done it yourself. It is important to prioritize the things you need to do yourself and what you can offload to others to be able to better manage your workload as we mentioned in the section of focus.
This is a fear that most people have and there are many stories that the person hired was inappropriate for the task. However, there are countless stories that the person hired to do the work was competent and good as well.
It boils down to having a risk mitigation strategy and a process to ensure that the person hired is properly guided on what it is you expect them to do. Abdication of the task doesn’t mean that you are no longer responsible for the outcome.
Here’s an example regarding home renovations. You hire someone to do some work on the place you had just purchased. You want a new coat of paint and the contractor rings you up to ask what colour of paint you want. You say off white. The contractor heads off to the store, buys the quantity of paint required and paints your place.
You go in to find that your place is too yellow. You are fuming and an argument ensues. Is the contractor really in the wrong? The contractor did get a color that is off white. The only problem is that almost anything that isn’t white is off white, and you could have anything from a yellow, pink, blue, green, or any colour tinge for that matter. As you can see, communication is key to ensuring that this problem does not occur to you whether in outsourcing of work, or any work for that matter.
The very first thing you need to do is to determine the scope of work, what is it that you need to get done, what level of work are you expecting as the end result, budget, and timeline. Without these, you and your potential hire would find it hard to get anything done and there is a high risk that the end product would not be what you wanted.
Having a clear picture of what you want would help you select the service provider that you need. For example, say you wanted to start a blog, you would need a domain name, SSL certification, web hosting, webpage, and if you do not know programming, you need a website builder. Just like building a house, you could go and find each of these individually or you could drop by a contractor to do it all for you. Alternatively, since so many people have done it before, there may even be prefabricated houses available for you.
Based on knowing what it is you want; you head off to the right service provider for the one stop solution or several service providers if there isn’t one or if that is better for you.
Depending on what kind of work you would like to outsource, there are different places where you can do so.
The first place that I would start for any outsourcing work is Fiverr, whether it is to look for freelancers, or to advertise your expertise as a freelancer. Fiverr has such an extensive range of services including but not limited to:
One of my favourites is the Fiverr Logo Maker. All you need to do is to fill in your company name and chose some preferences. There are some optional items like a slogan, and if you prefer certain items to base your logo on. Within a few minutes Fiverr’s Logo Maker produces several logo designs incorporating all the items selected earlier. You get to tweak any of those preferences and get a go at it again if you so decide. After which, you can choose from those choices, and still get to see a few more variations of the designs incorporated on cups, name cards, mobile devices and laptop screens. All you need to do next is buy and download it. You can get all of that done in just a few minutes, and the quality is fantastic.
Unfortunately, not everything is that automated and done within minutes, especially when a human is required. However, Fiverr and its army of freelancers do aim to get quality work done quickly. With a sea of freelancers available on Fiverr you would certainly be able to find one that suits your budget, where the charges are project based, and you would always know how much you would need to pay for the project upfront. No surprises, and to top that off, your payment is not released until you approve the work.
If ever you need support, Fiverr provides just that 24/7, anywhere. If things don’t go as expected, Fiverr has a resolution centre, which is helpful to resolve disputes. This would not be available if you had hired the freelancer directly. Resolution centres provided by Fiverr is a great way to reduce risk of non-completion and ensuring that each party lives up to their part of the bargain. It is especially useful when hiring a freelancer for the very first time.
No wonder Fiverr is trusted by Facebook, Google, Netflix, Procter & Gamble, Paypal.
Fiverr Business is Fiverr on steroids! The have vetted experts, which reduces the risks of non-completion, or getting a product that is not up to your standard. If you look at the companies under their trusted by section, you will see big names such as L’Oréal and Unilever.
You could get a team of Fiverr Business Success Managers to help match you with the best talent for your team and project. Essentially, you get a HR person to do your vetting, and interviews. Then you get the final say on who gets onboard your team.
Once you have formed your team, you don’t have to deal with them individually but instead, the whole team gets to collaborate. You can manage projects all in one workspace, which simplifies your project management.
It doesn’t stop there, you get to set budgets with ease, approve transactions, and monitor your team’s progress despite having multiple freelancers. Hence, your project benefits from the simplified budgeting, monitoring, and progress reporting, all in one place. It is as if you got yourself a project manager who collates all that information, provides reports, and allows you to take the necessary action on one platform! How cool is that?
As we mentioned earlier, just hiring is not the end of it. Abdication and assuming that the other person knows is a sure-fire way to prove that telepathy doesn’t work. You would painfully see the evidence of which in the final product.
Always monitor the progress of the work and set gates as to when they should provide you with a progress report. I personally prefer task-based reporting especially where a decision needs to be made rather than time-based reporting. Time-based reporting assumes that the number, and level of importance of each task remains constant throughout the lifecycle of the project and is rarely the case especially in the initial setup phase. Perhaps later when you have a fixed schedule and want to outsource work based on a schedule, a time-based reporting model would serve you better.
Whichever way you prefer may depend on the circumstances and the project. However, building and maintaining a good relationship would go a long way to the project’s success. At each step of the way, be sure to communicate with the other party and build a shared mental model of what you expect and what they are producing. This would very likely reduce the gap between what you want and what you are about to get.
When you find a good freelancer or platform to outsource work to, stay in touch with them. You would likely need to use their services again at some point, and since you have them tried and tested, you can go easy on the vetting process, which would save you a great deal of time and headache.
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