Understanding what your company can and cannot do is probably one of the most crucial insights you can gain. Is your time, effort, and resources being wasted? What parts of your product should you create yourself, and what parts should you delegate to someone who can do them better, faster, or cheaper? Digitalization has revolutionized serialization. The possibilities are endless in this modular world.
It can, however, be intimidating to think of endless possibilities. The outsourcing world is crowded with companies claiming to offer the best service at the lowest price. Many of them use the same catchphrases to justify their claims: a long list of solid methodologies, innovations, and empowerments. How do you decide which one to choose after reading all of their web pages and admiring their beautiful designs and impressive testimonials?
A meaningful outsourcing partnership is essential to achieving business growth and development. Connections are easy to establish, but partnerships should be mutually beneficial.
Despite the digital age revolutionizing the way businesses do everything, business process outsourcing remains a priority. Researchers have found that businesses from different industries outsource at least one or two of their non-core activities. The same reasons businesses outsource are to guarantee a higher quality of service and a faster turnaround.
Outsourcing offers endless possibilities. Business types and sizes are not limited. Almost anything is possible.
Establishing a successful outsourcing partnership
One strategic move is to guarantee a few characteristics on both sides in addition to ensuring that the foundation of a budding partnership is present.
- Compatibility With Culture
Your search for a capable outsourcing partner will take you through several companies that offer services that seem too good to be true. But don’t give up. Seek out an outsourcing company that shares your cultural beliefs and ideas. You will feel more confident that you are working together towards success if you find one.
Both sides should ensure their cultures align at the earliest stage of engagement. Developing and executing the right program and approach requires a focus on company culture and values. A successful partnership is built on shared perspectives.
- Flexibility
You may not be able to achieve everything you envisioned for your product or service. As they say, “we can never create exactly what we picture in our minds”. If your outsourcing partner tells you what you’re planning is impossible, consider their advice. You may not believe it, but they also want nothing but the best for you and your business. It may even be better than what you had originally imagined, even if the end product is far from what you had imagined.
- Transparency
Businesses should also establish expectations, timeframes, and resources at the exploratory stage so that the outsourcing partner understands exactly what to expect. When the right information is not provided at the beginning, an outsourcing partner may second-guess a hiring strategy and fail to deliver. In order for the organisation to make the right decision, outsourcing providers should be open and honest about their capabilities and experience.
- Continuous Improvement
In order to measure success, methods must be implemented from the beginning. Setting clear benchmarks throughout the process will help identify the right metrics. This ensures the outsourcing provider demonstrates results and value, but it also highlights areas for improvement so any deviations from the shared goal can be corrected. With proactive evaluation and continuous improvement, small setbacks can be quickly addressed before they derail the relationship. The most successful providers today go beyond any KPIs or SLAs, keeping the company’s goals and vision in mind. Their service can help their client well beyond the limitations; they can enhance collaboration and innovation and should have specific ideas about their contribution as well as strategies and ideas for the future. Rather than just reducing costs, the best partnerships are value-based.
- Trust and Communication
You can’t provide excellent outsourcing services if you don’t trust the company you are working with. Your services could be negatively affected if you second-guess their strategies and question their processes. Sometime, you just have to take a leap of faith and believe that they are doing their best, since their reputation is on the line. Communicating with them regularly might also help clear up any doubts.
Similarly, you must be clear about your expectations, time frame, and resources so that your outsourcing partner can prepare thoroughly.
In order to establish a successful outsourcing partnership, communication is essential. In the absence of clear communication with an outsourcing partner, a company’s priorities may become misaligned, making agile decision-making more challenging. In order to move forward, it is important to share goals, challenges, expectations, and feedback on a regular basis. It should be more flexible than scheduled catch-ups, with real-time information shared via preferred digital collaboration tools, email, or telephone.
- Invests in itself
Any partnership’s success is dependent on the quality of its employees, which is why a high performing outsourcing partner invests in its people. In order for an outsourcing partner to rank high on all KPIs, it must have a high performing team. Approximately 75% of top business performers attribute the success of their outsourcing activities to the expertise of their provider. Understanding how a provider recruits, develops, engages and retains its own talent is just as important as understanding how they will do this for you.
Conclusion
When choosing the right outsourcing partner, you must consider many factors. This list could have included technical factors like the skill of their programmers, industry expertise, or client records, but those are all just stating the obvious. Based on experience, there are deeper things to consider to determine success.
You have to choose someone that thinks like you so that you can trust them; and once you do, you have to be flexible and understand that you are building something together. As long as you keep these points in mind, you will be on the right track.
Let us help you find top talents in IT, technical support, digital marketing, and cloud services so you can leverage all the benefits of outsourcing in the new normal. Request a FREE copy of the e-book on Third Wave Outsourcing .
