Even though traditionalists loathe the idea of anything not being done in-house, it goes beyond saying that in 2017 outsourcing is more than a common business practice. Sometimes, it is both cheaper and more convenient to just get an expert outsider than to try to train, equip and fund your own department. Not to mention the fact that it would take months, perhaps even years, for your team to gain the same level of the expertise. Be as it may, while a lot of companies outsource their customer support, accounting, and web design, there are other fields you could outsource, as well. With this in mind and without further ado, here are a few business practices you probably didn’t know you could outsource.
1. Research and development
A thing that makes this particular outsourcing idea… let’s say controversial, is a fact that a lot of companies tend to be quite jealous of their prototypes. You see, some even decide to sit on their most valuable discoveries for years in hope that some of their competitors will stumble upon it by chance and therefore commit a copyright violation. Still, research and development take a lot of work, meaning that such a team would have to perform demographic and market research, financial analysis and many other complex tasks. This alone is the reason most companies decide that it is much more cost-effective to deal with this overseas.
2. Presentation design
Another thing that some companies decide to outsource is presentation design. No matter how brilliant your idea might be, there is always a risk that your investors won’t understand it the way you intended. Framing your thoughts in a format that is both engaging and enticing takes a lot of skill and experience, which is again why so many companies decide to entrust this function to someone more competent, like professional presentation design services providers. Features like structure, narrative and visual style play a key role in your persuasion attempts and you need someone who thoroughly understands them. Of course, training your own team-members in this field might seem like a smarter long-term choice but sometimes you simply may not have this luxury of time.
3. Manufacturing
If you decide to take a look at any guide on outsourcing, most of them will advise you to keep doing core tasks in-house. No matter how wise this may sound at first, upon a closer examination, you will realize that all major conglomerates outsource their production. Reasons behind this are usually more convenient labor laws abroad, cheaper workforce or more affordable raw materials abroad. Sure, some may still discuss just how ethical this course of action may be but no one can deny its cost-efficiency.
4. Telemarketing
One of the greatest misconceptions regarding telemarketing is that it has no place in the world of modern marketing. The truth is that it no longer gives the same stand-alone results but it still works quite well as the support of your digital marketing. In other words, these days you can effectively use telemarketing in order to boost your website traffic and in this way enhance your digital marketing campaign. Still, there is a thin line between making people interested and annoying them on the phone and crossing it can be quite costly. There are certain skills a good telemarketer needs to possess but at the end of the day, even good might not be good enough. When you need the services of the best, it might be time for you to outsource.
5. Transportation
Finally, while some companies prefer to get their own company vehicles when it comes to the transportation of employees, this seldom comes as worth the cost. The greatest benefits of such methods would be the chance to label your company as green by reducing its carbon footprint but this can be done through outsourcing, as well. As for the cost-effectiveness, like always, it is short-term cheaper to outsource and long-term cheaper to handle it in-house.
Conclusion
The funniest thing about this list is that it is only a tip of the iceberg. In fact, the list of tasks you can (and even should) outsource seems to be much longer than the one of the tasks that absolutely need to be done on-spot. Some honorable mentions are scheduling, voicemail support, employee retention, and healthcare. The world is your oyster, only now you might want to consider getting someone else to shuck it, coat it and fry it for you.