Thursday, May 21, 2009

Get Immediate Productivity with Outsourcing

By Jay NaPier

Outsourcing has quickly become a great way to build a business. It reduces costs, time to learn new things, and lowers your overhead. By simply allowing another person or company to do what you might have done in house, you can increase your productivity and conserve resources.

Outsourcing is not new, it's simply used more often. For years people have outsourced things they didn't want to do, like cleaning the house, mowing the lawn or cleaning the pool. In business, outsourcing is used for websites, graphic design and accounting. Doing this allows you to leverage other peoples time and knowledge without bring a new person on staff.

For business, it allow you to perform tasks that generally only a larger business can do, but you don't have the expense of an additional employee. Payroll is a great example. Many business owners find it is cheaper to outsource payroll than to have a full time person doing the work. Webdesign, maintaince and sales are other skills you can outsource and not have the regular wages, benefits and office space required to maintain a full time position.

You might have already experienced outsourcing and not known it. Many of the top tv infomercials outsource their order taking to an independent business owner who works right from their home through an outsource agency. Computer companies have used outsourcers in other companies to handle tech support for year as it's cheaper to hire labor in other countries.

The concept of outsourcing work to foreign countries is a controversial issue for some. Believing that native citizens should be a company's first choice or that companies who use inexpensive foreign labor are exploiting workers, many protest the practice. However, companies with a focus on the bottom line proceed as the benefit to them outweighs contrary opinions. Also, considering that the cost of living can be incredibly less in some countries, workers in those countries consider the pay to be very good.

If you're going to use outsourcers, you'll want to know these keys. Don't expect to find the right person upfront, ask for samples of their work, and have a trial period. It is cost effective, but don't get emotionally attached to just one person. Hire several to start, then pick the one or two who do the best work.

Finding the right person or company is a process and you should use caution with sensative information. After you've gained a level of trust with a company you can allow them access to financial information and proprietary information that you wouldn't want your competitors to have.

You can expect to see more and more people who use outsourcing. Web Design, Bookkeeping, and customer service are just a few of the ways we use virtual assistants. You can also use them for your online and offline marketing tasks as well. Using a virtual assistant is just like having a secretary who works right there with you, but there are not social requirements and many times the assistant can be more productive.

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