In recent times, the rise of service agency has resulted in increased business outsourcing. It has become quite a common practice to contract secondary and sometimes even primary business functions to third party contractors.
Services including marketing, customer support, content production, writing, and design as well as packaging solutions among others are all some of the departments businesses can conveniently outsource. There are countless benefits associated with outsourcing but the job is not free of risks either.
We have listed some of the major benefits and risks associated with outsourcing your projects that will help you make a business decision better.
Benefits or Outsourcing
Talking about the good parts, there are countless benefits associated with outsourcing. A staggering 90% of the companies across Australia consider outsourcing very crucial to their growth. There are tons of outsourcing agencies in Australia providing a wide range of services to businesses. Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing
- Cost Optimization: With an outsourced department, your spending on the technology infrastructure within your office decreases so does the human resource cost you would have to bear for hiring industry experts With more people in office, you would need more computers, more desks and greater bandwidth of the internet, each of which would add to the cost of your business. Outsourcing simply reduces all these costs to a wholesome cost which you have to pay to the agency and that is much lower than it would be the other way around
- Increased Focus & Efficiency: While you get your work done efficiently by industry experts who are being efficiently utilized to work on multiple clients, you get all the time to focus on the more important issues of your business such as product development and research on the market trends.
- Round The Clock Availability: With outsourcing, you can make sure your business is open 24/7. A lot of service agencies operate round the clock and thus make sure that none of your important customer calls are missed or no client project is ignored.
Risks of Outsourcing
Coming to the bad part now, while outsourcing has many benefits, it isn’t risk free. Here are a few risks associated with outsourcing that must be considered
- Remote Connectivity: Remote connectivity with your outsourcing agency can be a tough job. Since you don’t have the team working in house, you cannot really monitor the progress or communicate real time changes in strategies or design. Especially, if you don’t have firsthand knowledge or experience of the department you are outsourcing, it can be extremely hard to manage a remote team.
- Confidentiality & Trust: One of the key disadvantages of outsourcing is breach of confidentiality and trust. A lot of outsourced agencies have access to confidential data and client information, and even though they are bound by contract to not disclose such details, there is always a margin of breach.
- Knowledge Transfer: Transfer data and knowledge to outsourced teams can also be a great difficulty. Without all the necessary data and a business representative at their disposal, outsourced agencies can at times face difficulties in understanding your requirements and can be unable to deliver to you expectations.
