Sometimes, one of the considerations the Board should keep in mind is whether or not there is a need to resort to outsourcing existing operations. Would the company incur significant savings in transferring the job to outside personnel? Would there be a dramatic increase in the quality of services if third-parties will shoulder that part of the business as compared to the quality of the service provided by the company’s workforce?

The risks of contracting outside personnel should also be considered, as well as the expertise and the manageability of these possible pitfalls. This is particularly important especially for the companies that already have existing processes but wish to transfer them to a third-party supplier for various reasons like better technical capability or cost-reduction. One most important question to address is – would workforce morale be negatively impacted by the decision to outsource? Facts point out that, in the past, employees react negatively to decisions to transfer their work to people from the outside, and not connected to the organization. Some employees feel unsecured with this kind of setting.

Supplier Proposals
After the company has decided that it needs to contract people from the outside to provide the services for them, the next step now is to choose the BPO firm to enter into an outsourcing contract with. The selection involves a set of steps that should be followed in strict order, and requires careful deliberation.

The first step in selection is to send out a request for proposals to potential partners. In this step, the company sends out invitations to all possible organizations that have the capacity to provide the services at the scale that the company needs. These providers are then asked to propose their services for a price that they would specify in bidding.

RFPs (Request for proposals) serve several purposes in the decision process. First, they help the company solicit correct and factual information regarding the providers and their actual capabilities in relation to the service and processes to be outsourced. It gives potential BPO firms the information they’d need against which they’d tailor their proposals. They also make sure that the providers do not engage in fraudulent misrepresentation of facts in order to close the deal for themselves.

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On the other hand, when you have too many things to accomplish at one time, you are motivated to always work hard and meet their expectations. But if you’re going to look at it closely, there’s a huge possibility that you’re going to have so much on your plate. You will end up feeling so stressed, and thus, you will be taken away from your main focus, which is to finish the most important tasks available. It’s okay to say no sometimes, especially if it means you don’t want to sacrifice the quality of your work. As they say, it’s always better to say less and do more.

Perfectionism
Everybody wants to put his/her best foot forward. After all, your name is on the line here. Yet, there’s a thin borderline between doing things effectively and doing things obsessively. There’s still such a thing as perfectionism, which, in turn, could damage your time management habits.

Time thoughts considers perfectionism as a very bad approach to work as it can steal whatever time and energy you could be saving to something else. You are investing on something whose results will still be the same if you just avoid yourself from trying to be perfect. Constantly changing the fonts of your presentation, arranging and re-arranging the meeting venue, or even adding graphics or animation to your report don’t really add substance to your job. Worse, you’re just wasting your time.

The first thing you need to do when you’re tempted to go beyond what is asked of you is to ask yourself this question: Will this idea add more value or significance to what I did? If your answer is no, then there’s no reason for you to waste your time and energy with doing something more. Proceed to the next task.

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But I understand your concern about delegation. When you start adding more people into your business or you start creating a team, this will mean one thing: you’re going to spend for salaries / expenses. You think that you don’t have that much money to actually pay these people. Well, have you taken the time to actually check out the online market? There are thousands of professionals virtual personal assistants, writers, web designers, HTML programmers, and the list goes on who are more than willing to do the job at a very affordable price. You simply have to check out their portfolios or their resumes for you to decide if these are the right people to hire.

You think wishfully. And usually, this is where everything goes wrong. You will be blinded by the reality that things are not actually working the way they should be. Common examples of wishful thinking can include getting things done without effective planning. You are also overly optimistic when you decide to give huge and difficult projects to a team that are composed of neophytes. It also means denying the obvious fact that there are some conflicts among your employees.

There are three reasons why you can become overoptimistic about a specific task:

You don’t have any experience.

It’s actually advisable to accept new projects once in a while but not when you don’t have the basic background to the tasks handed to you. Otherwise, you will never be able to anticipate the hidden challenges or problems in the project. False assumptions will eventually take you away from giving special attention to these future conflicts.

You tend to become overconfident.

You know your strengths and your weaknesses, so you definitely know when you are going to likely finish a project or not at the designated time. However, it seems to be the other way around for wishful thinkers. They usually underestimate the problems that they encounter as they go along the project.

The project appears to be so big for them.

A person would like to console himself/herself that everything is just going to be fine if that’s the only way he/she can ever accomplish a very difficult task. When they are uncertain about particular areas of the project, they would often feel uncomfortable about them and avoid them as much as possible. They rather continue on those that they are confident about.

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Communication and control are also essential in managing outsourced relationships. Constant and open lines of communication should be maintained, so that misunderstandings in business dealings between the client and the outsourcer can be avoided. A manager in charge of liaising with outsourced assets should be patient enough to understand that it takes time to build-up a stable and working relationship with a third-party provider. Some difficulties and some adjustments in the beginning stages of the contract are to be expected, especially when both sides are still in the process of understanding and integrating each other’s processes into one complete and effective system.

Because you are dealing with two different systems being placed into one, it is important for you as a manager to be able to come up with a structured approach in outsourcing. You should be able to define clear and informative goals to the outsourcer. People, after all, need clear and detailed instructions to get to work. In order for the outsourcer to understand what it should do, the company should be able to convey the direction in which the business is moving to with regards to the services being delegated to third-party providers.

There are instances that one can find a certain department in the company just slouching and doing nothing even though there is evidently work to do. Part of this is because management has given no clear indication as to what the job really is all about; hence, the department becomes confused and becomes ultimately non-productive, because of the lack of effective communication. From this example, you could infer that even in an internal set-up, management needs to utilize effective communication if it wishes to guide its business along the path of success.

A manager can also take advantage of the expertise of the third-party to effect changes within the company’s existing internal system. Because of its outside nature, an outsourced firm can make expert comparisons of your existing systems to its own system or to those that it has outsourced for before, thus it is qualified to give recommendations for internal changes. In order to solicit these recommendations, however, management has to make sure that the relationship is on stable footing and that the outsourcer is comfortable with it. To do this, fostering good communication is essential and necessary.

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The functions performed by outsourced companies are part of your business, and is directly tied to your operations. Despite their advantages in terms of cost reduction, outsourced companies can actually make or break your business. Thus, as part of your managing routine, you should watch closely and make sure that the outsourced functions are of highest quality. This entails visits to the outsourced site every once in awhile, even if it means you have to cross oceans to do so.

One of the challenges of managing outsourced operations is controlling or addressing the negative employee backlash that the move may generate within your ranks. For example, vengeful employees may want to discredit the outsourcer by deliberately withholding information that the latter may need to function properly. Deadlines and specifications are intentionally held back in an effort to show that the outsourcer is not performing well as required, and the company would be better off using internal sources of manpower instead.

From this, one can say that one disadvantage of availing outsourced work is that a company cannot easily go after employees that commit violations because of employment technicalities. Instead, it has to rely on the outsourced company to pursue legal actions as needed, which will take some time to accomplish. Due to the arrangements of outsourcing, Citibank was exposed to the risk of losing customers, because the recovery of the stolen money will take a considerable amount of time if done through legal channels.

There are some in the public who hold the view that outsourced offshore services are a form of exploitation of workers in countries with lower labor wages, because of the demanding nature of the job (especially call centers) and the minimal amount of wages that they are paid. Defenders of outsourcing, however, say that these individuals are benefiting from outsourcing because of the creation of paid jobs for them.

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These SLAs provide a measurement control for the client to gauge and evaluate the quality of service provided by the outsourced firm as part of the contract. They are useful later on in deciding whether or not to terminate or renew the existing contract when it expires.

Ongoing Service Delivery

This phase is the actual delivery of the service agreed upon by the parties during the earlier phases of outsourcing. This phase lasts from the beginning of the transition phase to the last effective date of the contract. Ongoing service delivery may have periods in which the company outsourcing the services would perform evaluations on the outsourced company. This is to ensure that the services rendered are in line with the SLAs provided for by the contract. The parties may also meet periodically to discuss possible problems with the engagement including those that arise from contingencies.

Termination or Renewal

The last phase of the outsourcing process is the “termination or renewal” step, which is marked by the last day that the contract is effective. This date is specified in the final contract, and has been agreed upon earlier by the parties during the negotiation phase. There are two options that the company could take at the end of the contract with an outsourced company. It could choose to take back its services and engage in insourcing, the opposite of outsourcing. If it chooses to do so, the company would have to set up a stand-alone entity within its organization. This entity will specialize in the skills that the company previously availed from the outsourcing firm.

Another definition of insourcing, however, is to subcontract the process to a firm within the jurisdiction or country that the company is located in. This mode of contracting became famous in 2006 because of some companies’ negative experiences in outsourcing some business functions, especially customer service, to firms in foreign countries.

If insourcing is not a viable option, the company could avail another outsourced company’s services in place of the previous provider. This decision would then require the company to go through a new process of outsourcing, and would have to start looking for a new provider to close an outsourcing contract with.

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Outsourcing critics have also pointed out the absence of visual representation, which could minimize the occurrences ofnmisinterpretation. This danger concerning communications is a risk that a company must recognize in the decision-making process, because this risk could potentially incur damages to a company’s reputation. However, in some countries, non-English speaking call center agents undergo accent training in order for them to speak like natural English speakers. Accent training also includes lessons on the different accents of American speakers in order for them to understand.

Outsourcing has also come under fire especially in call center services. Some people argue that the agents working as outsourced customer service representatives do not have any semblance of understanding of the company’s processes that can only be acquired by being part of the system. Thus, they feel that these agents could not provide satisfactory customer service as needed to retain clients.

Because of factors such as language, and a thorough understanding of the company’s processes, people, who are against the concept of outsourcing, often call the qualifications of the outsourced employees into question. nnOutsourced customer service companies or call centers also pose a security risk not just for the company, but also for their customers. Because of the outsourced nature of the job, the companies utilizing these services are usually unaware and unable to address directly the security problems that affect their customers. The nature of customer service itself is inherently a security risk.

One example is a theft involving Citibank and call center agents based in India. The arrangement between Citibank and the Indian call center inherently compromises the security of the client’s customers, because sensitive information like credit card numbers and account passwords were conveyed by voice to the call center receiving every customer call. What happened in April 2005 was that employees of the Indian call center used customer information to steal money and transfer them to their own accounts. The worst thing was Citibank was powerless despite being notified to address the discrepancies in its customers’ accounts. The reason for this was because the workers were not under Citibank’s turf.

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RFPs typically request other information that can back up the bidder’s capability to deliver the requested service. This information includes the most important information of all financial. Having access to financial make the company discerns and fish-out high-risk bidders that could affect the company’s ability to continue as a going concern if a relationship is entered into with them. A company would not want to engage into a relationship with another company that is in danger of going into bankruptcy, because the former could incur operating losses from this kind of arrangement.

RFPs allow the company to look into a potential bidder’s technological capability for the requested service. This is important if the company intends to enter into a foundry or third party manufacturing agreement. It would help the company decide whether or not the bidder has the necessary know-how and equipment to shoulder the company’s production without negatively affecting it. Since it is the business that is at risk, a company should always ensure that not only can the bidder efficiently dish out products to the market; it should also help the company retain its customers. This is especially true for companies outsourcing customer service functions, since there are cases where customers have judged companies through their customer service capabilities.

To sum it all, a company should look into the balance of cost and the technological capacity of a potential bidder before it makes a decision to transfer part of its operations to an outsourcing company.

Supplier Competition
This is a lengthy process, and could take months and even up to a year of deliberations.

Supplier competition involves a stringent process of weeding out the worthy from the unworthy among the bidders. The company usually evaluates carefully all the proposals provided by the suppliers wishing to win the contract to shoulder the services for the company, and ranks them according to the degree of their qualification for the contract.

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1. Determine your target market and reach out to them.

You could be very well spending thousands of dollars on ads that don’t click simply because you haven’t made them specifically to your target market. Generic sounds broad, but it doesn’t sit well with advertising. You need to develop a niche and speak their language. In the article How to Identify and Reach Niche Markets for Your Business, it affirmed that once you have determined your niche market, you have to capture their attention by emphasizing what is beneficial as well as what’s essential about your product or your service. All advertising materials need to utilize ideal language, while getting rid of lingo.

2. Place your ads at the right places.

You are not trying to please yourself or even your business partners. Hence, if your favorite radio station or magazine isn’t the one your target market likes, then you have to pick those that they often read or watch. This way, even if you know that you’re going to spend some money with your advertisements, you’re still getting an ROI.

3. Set a budget and, as much as possible, stick to it.

You need to develop your budget not just so you can come up with a projected income statement but for you to be properly guided. Basically, the amount will be the most that you can afford when it comes to advertising. It will also help you identify the different advertising media that can guarantee you a good return for your advertising budget.

4. Test the ads.

Before you start spending thousands or even millions for advertising, you may want to test the effectiveness of your ads first. At least you won’t be wasting a lot of money if ever your ads don’t work at all. There are many ways on how you can do this. One of these is through a focus group. You can also develop a questionnaire and give them to your target market. It is a simple and easily categorized way to gather information directly from customers.

5. Diversify your advertising media.

This is how you can reach out to as many people as you can through your ads. You cannot simply depend on Internet advertising, as there are still some individuals who don’t go online. At the same time, you cannot rely on print and TV alone. There are also several people who would rather shop through the Internet for convenience.

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There are nine steps involved in the process of outsourcing a company function to a third-party. The first is the decision by the company to transfer a function or two to an outsourcing company. After that, the company goes on a process trying to find a suitable third-party provider that will dedicate itself to the performance of the tasks to be outsourced. This usually accompanies a lengthy process, after which the company zeroes in on the ideal provider and enters into negotiations that will ultimately lead to the signing of the contract.

Cost savings should not be the only consideration to be taken into mind when you decide whether or not to subcontract functions to outside parties. There are some instances that outsourcing could be just as expensive as tackling the service internally, but can afford several advantages related to skills and expertise that are not otherwise found in using internal manpower.

The signing of the contract would then allow the outsourced company to start taking over the functions, and another process is then commenced where the company gradually integrates its business function to the outsourced firm.

Deciding to Outsource

The decision to resort to external providers for specific function is an executive decision. The company’s board of directors is the only body within the company authorized to give the green light whether or not a third-party should be contracted to provide the services on behalf of the firm. This is because outsourcing includes giving the supplier ownership over some assets, which would be instrumental to the provision of the service or function.

In deciding whether or not to avail of outsourced services, the decision-making body should take a look on what the organization as a whole needs in keeping up with the company’s strategic interests and goals both in the short-term and long-term. If by careful evaluation, the Board decides that there is a need to outsource some of its functions, the green light is then given to start looking for third-party providers to address that need.

Before making the decision to outsource, the board would need to tackle several critical issues. These issues include quantitative considerations, including expenditures. Analyses of expenditures would include weighing the costs that would be incurred if the company decides to provide the services by itself against the costs incurred, when the services is provided by a paid BPO company.

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