Scoping The Outsourcing Process

This page answers the question, “What to outsource?”

Let’s look at some of the stuff you can outsource online. Really quick, you can outsource anything that can be transmitted over the internet. That includes:

• original artwork
• animation and video
• photography
• pictures for books, magazines and other publications
• textiles, wrapping paper, stationery, greeting cards and calendars
• storyboards for television commercials, movies and animated features
• sketches
• PowerPoint presentations
• magazine, newspaper, journal and corporate report layouts
• marketing brochures
• company logos
• specifications for interior construction and furnishings
• boring business stuff, like cleaning spam from your inbox

An Example Job

Here’s an example process you can easily outsource. Let’s say you want to outsource a process you just don’t have time for anymore (lots of people do that). And let’s say that process is splicing up a bunch of images for a hundred different websites. To get started, you’ll need to itemize each individual task of that project so that the end result produces a project scope.

While the job may be easy, your service provider will need to know what you want spliced, how you want it spliced, where it should be spliced and other details that make splicing the splitting work that it is.

The More Details You Provide, The Better

Part of the outsourcing process details required services, limitations, locations, provisions and exclusions — and the more details you provide, the better. One of the biggest problems people have in outsourcing online is failing to provide enough specifics, ultimately leaving service providers to play guessing games about what’s needed.

But then there’s this, which is one of the coolest tools I’ve ever run across: “The Project Wizard.” vWorker, the only online outsourcing service that offers something like this, essentially walks you through the outsourcing process with a wizard designed to minimize ambiguity.

If you haven’t already, register a username for yourself so you can discuss this topic in our outsourcing forums.

With this wizard, you simply answer some questions about your project, push a few buttons, and then generate a neatly formatted document that specifies all the stipulations required in any legitimate outsourcing contract.

Easy!