Virtual Team

Outsourcing business process to an expert vendor offshore proves to have significant benefits in terms of reducing overhead cost and getting unlimited access to top talent. However, outsourcing to a third party service provider also comes with related risks that if managed poorly can cause major damage to your business.

Outsourcing risks can be divided into three main categories. These are

·         Financial risks, where the project cost gets higher than the cost you have estimated

·         Time to market risks, where there’s a delay in production and turnaround

·         Delivery risks, where the project objectives are not met

Risks are critical to any business and like rest it is also important to reduce risks associated with outsourcing. However, reducing outsourcing risks is a continuous practice and starts at the very beginning when you are making decision of choosing the right outsourcing partner, continuing through the course of the partnership.

Mitigating outsourcing risks for your business

Reducing the risks of outsourcing is a shared responsibility between you and your outsourcing partner. However, there are certain things that you can do on your end to ensure that the risks are mitigated successfully. This include –

Ask for trial/s

A trial of the service that you require can help you test the potential partners and their services without any commitment and thus reduces risks. It is advisable that of possible always ask for trial of the services that the shortlisted outsourcing partners are offering. This will save you from impulsively finalizing agreements and contracts and check if their services satisfy your specific requirements or not.

List your goals and set checkpoints

When you are outsourcing, it enables you to delegate tasks in volumes that are based on your budget and the confidence in getting your critical business process/s outsourced. When outsourcing business process, as a decision maker, you can break down the project in parts and outsource them by tasks. Or, set milestones and checkpoints when you are outsourcing a long term project. This helps in keeping a track of project progress and the deliverables. Identify what you want to achieve by outsourcing your project and share it with your outsourcing partner.

Set KPIs

KPIs are extremely important as they help in having a measurable gauge to determine how well the outsourced partner’s resources are doing. It is therefore advisable to define quality standards and KPIs whilst outsourcing.

Seek Transparency

Changes and demands are inevitable when you are into a business and it is critical that you are partner with a provider that is agile to these changes and your own set of standards. It is therefore important that your outsourcing partner is explicit with their methodology. Look for the answers to how they manage and execute projects and how do they adjust and scale as per the changes.

Don’t just focus on final deliverable, raw files are important too