4 Ways to Fund Outsourcing
There are several rules of outsourcing, and one of the most important rules is to always fund outsourcing with readily available resources. You never want to go into debt as a result of outsourcing unless you can guarantee a speedy return on investment because, believe it or not, outsourcing is not a necessity. It’s a luxury.
Going in debt is, unfortunately, a likely probability when people fail to identify the value of outsourcing for themselves. No thanks to outsourcing hype, people can feel compelled to outsource even though it may not be an affordable strategy for them.
Here’s how to fund your outsourcing project(s) without going broke.
Outsource to 3rd World Countries
Outsourcing to service providers located in “underdeveloped” countries can significantly reduce outsourcing costs when compared to hiring a service provider located in the U.S. or U.K. Per hour, a programmer in India may cost you $5 or $10 bucks, for instance, whereas the same type of programmer in the U.S. or U.K. may cost you anywhere up to $50 – $100.
Just be sure you understand the risks of offshoring in favor of lowering costs before trying this strategy. And be sure you’re willing to address those issues on your own as well. You might need to do a little in-house grammar or spelling correction as a result.
Outsource Only What’s Needed
Take a careful look at some of the things you want to outsource, and then ask yourself whether they’re really necessary. Again, going back to outsourcing hype, it’s somewhat tempting to outsource everything but the office sink when we’re constantly oversold on the savings and profits that outsourcing can yield.
 |
If you’ve got a flair for managing and planning finances, there’s a job for you here. |
Key outsourcing candidates are those that correspond with your business goals(article about identifying these) (increased profits, exposure, etc.). Anything else could be wasteful. Nice and convenient, like premium cable TV, but wasteful when you’re trying to stay on budget.
Outsource Through Microsourcing sites
Sites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk(write up review) offer a cheap outsourcing platform, limiting costs to $5 – $10 per service. But you have to exercise a bit of caution using these types of sites since they’re not wholly appropriate for every outsourcing situation.
You can’t, for example, outsource a networked security program through sites like these because they’re not equipped for that sort of thing. Microsourcing sites are more appropriate for tiny outsourcing projects, like simple link-building or issuing one-time advice about something.
Outsource from Outsourced Savings
Once you start seeing some significant savings from your current outsourcing efforts, you can reinvest a portion of those savings into other outsourcing projects. The exact size of that portion is up to you, and it could really depend what those savings were supposed to compensate prior to outsourcing.
As long as you have a sizeable chunk of savings to work with, funding additional key business processes is certainly a smart and affordable thing to do.
