Future of Outsourcing – Bubble Burst or 21st century Business Marvel?

Outsourcing, since its inception, remains a tricky proposition for companies worldwide. Despite a gushing wind of optimism blowing about this concept, some companies didn’t find it profitable at all. Instead, in the end, they lost some of their precious customers and also went away with heavy financial losses.

Why it has happened? Why a concept that deems to be a new century business model is not able to create an atmosphere of trust and importance among businesses? Is outsourcing another bubble that will soon burst taking many companies down with it?

Undoubtly, nobody knows the answer. But one thing is for sure; Concept of Outsourcing has the power to change the way businesses used to work worldwide, provided it is being dealt with maturity.

Outsourcing binds the whole world together and further nullifies the distance gap that telecom and Internet have filled over the last decade or so. It has the power to create new partnerships across the shore, integrate diversified business environments and can lead to singular business approach all over the world.

The eventualities mentioned above have logical reasoning behind it. And we can read it beneath its definition. Outsourcing can be explained as “Assigning your non-critical tasks to experts offshore who in turn, provide you the quality and the cost advantage as well.”

Thus by outsourcing, you have two direct benefits of Quality and Cost. Now, let’s see some indirect benefits also.

Outsourcing absolves your mind from recruiting or maintaining in-house professionals to do no-critical tasks. Thus, you can now concentrate your mind on improving the quality of critical tasks, dealing with customers more effectively and in overall improvement of your offerings. Besides, you can also save money that you might spend on providing other social benefits to your employees.

If we further minutely observe Outsourcing, it has one more big advantage. Outsourcing helps you creating partnerships across the shore. These partnerships can come fruitful at those times when you are planning to grow your network across the shore.

For ex, let’s suppose you own a software development company and have outsourced your recruitment department, accounting department and transportation department to some companies. There could be possibility that Transportation Company working with you might need software to maintain its inventory. Obviously, the company will contact you and you in response get a new customer or revenues. Thus, slowly and steadily, you are creating a web of companies that are working in tandem and growing using each other’s connection.

21st century brings with itself a new kind of business opportunities. It’s time for us to look at the Outsourcing with a new perspective, which is based on long-sightedness rather than fulfilling short-term objectives.

Content Outsourcing – Is it really beneficial?

It is not entirely wrong to call Outsourcing, an end product of today’s customer driven businesses. Today, customer is the king and demand “Value for Money” services. Amidst intense competition and increased operating cost, businesses are turning towards cost cutting in such a way that it doesn’t deteriorate their quality levels.

Outsourcing, through its innovative concept of hiring offshore experts at low prices, provides the perfect answer to this perplexity. Outsourcing not only helps businesses retain or improve their product quality but also reduce their operating costs as well. Thus, Outsourcing fulfills businesses’ dual purpose – one is to achieve high levels of Customer Satisfaction by maintaining quality and secondly fulfill their cost cutting targets by availing offshore services at low prices.

Following its peer, Content Outsourcing has also expanded itself marvelously in last 2-3 years of Offshore and Outsourcing boom. Today, companies are outsourcing their content related work like website content, articles, newsletters, press releases, manuals, CBTs, tutorials etc to experts offshore and getting benefits in terms of quality and cost. Few companies are so much optimistic in Content Outsourcing that they have even setup a base in countries where they are hopeful to get the content related work at low prices.

But question arises is whether the Outsourcing picture is really so rosy? Does Outsourcing possess the right key to generate extra profit amidst highly competitive business scenario? Can outsourcing really be able to maintain high quality and low cost in the times to come???

The answer lies in mature thinking. Like DOT COM bubble burst, Outsourcing Bubble could also burst under high expectations, lack of planning and unrealistic targets. One must remember that Outsourcing does not hold a magic key that can immediately take profit graphs of businesses soaring to new heights. It is just a concept that help businesses get rid of non-critical tasks or burdens by outsourcing them to people /providers who are expert in managing those tasks. Besides, Outsourcing can also be used to enhance product quality since we expect domain experts to work on these tasks.

Thus, Outsourcing basically can only be used to enhance the quality of your non-critical tasks and one must ensure that critical tasks are managed in-house only. Because the person / provider who is managing your critical tasks can also become your competitor in the near future.

For ex, if you are a website development company based in UK and has outsourced its content work to a company in Russia. In this scenario, you both are working on a same domain, though, in different countries. But, in today’s small world where information flows with a speed of light, it could happen that Russian company might contact your client online and offer it lower rates to snatch it from you.

Alternatively, you are an engineering goods company and would like to develop and maintain your own website. For that, you have hired an Indian website development company who is an expert in this domain. Now website development is a non-critical task for you but critical for the Indian company. Thus, you both seem to gain benefit out of this collaboration.

Another general perception about Content Outsourcing is the cost. People / Companies expect dirt cheap prices for their outsourced work and to save few extra bucks often contract with companies/ individuals who are not as proficient as you want them to be; and in the end you lose more in terms of customer satisfaction than what you really like to gain. Thus, take informed decisions while outsourcing your content related work and maintain a balance between cost and quality to get maximum benefits from Content Outsourcing.

Below are some useful tips that could further optimize the benefits that you ought to get from Content Outsourcing: -

1) Always demand for live projects from service providers to evaluate their content skills.

2) Give your each and every requirement in detailed and concise manner since distances could act as a hindrance and your demand for grilled fish could end up with a live whale on your plate. :)

3) Do bargain for money; but without compromising on quality because in the end your customers are more interested in easting tasty food rather than knowing the steps of how it is being cooked.

4) Select countries where you want to outsource your content work carefully because companies based in countries with poor business environment cannot offer you the quality that you desperately want to maintain.

5) Keep an eye on Govt policies of your service provider country since these companies are able to offer low cost by attaining a support from its government. For ex., Indian Government offer several sops to Indian IT companies to help them generate more businesses and more foreign currency.

6) Also keep a watch on currency disparity. Currency disparity reflects the difference in the currency of your country and of the country where you have outsourced your work. The larger the difference, more benefits you are ought to get from outsourcing. Though, it is not an ideal benchmark but still could be worth considering for.

Content Outsourcing is more of a modern age business tool than the magic wand that can help you survive and thrive in today’s competitive business scenario. In the end, success lies in your mature decisions and how you can use Content Outsourcing to maximum benefits for you.

Outsourcing Content Work - An Insight

Offshore and Outsourcing are a buzzword in today's business circles, thanks to higher emphasis given by companies towards product quality and cost now a days. Today, everyone from a Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) to big Multi nationals Companies are looking to outsource their work to experts offshore in order to get quality work at the right cost.

Cueing from outsourcing trends in several aspects of businesses, Content Outsourcing has also gained momentum in recent times. Ranging from copy writing, to website content, press releases, promotional emails and writing articles, Content Outsourcing can fulfill all your content related requirements easily at low cost.

To give you an insight into Content Outsourcing and its related aspects, below are a list of FAQs that will help you know more about this upcoming trend: -


Q1. What do you mean by Content Outsourcing ?
A1. Content Outsourcing can be explain with the following statement, “Rather than hiring in-house professionals, you outsource your content work to an individual/organization offshore who holds expertise in content related work and can deliver you the quality work at right prices.”

Q2. What are the benefits of Content Outsourcing ?
A2. By outsourcing your content related work like copy writing, press releases, website content, user manuals etc to an expert offshore, you can avail several benefits:

1) Quality Work: - Outsourcing brings quality to your content work since you are hiring individuals / organizations who are specialists in this domain. Thus, by hiring them, you can always be rest assured that end result will be the quality content work and Customer Satisfaction.

2) Right Cost: - Outsourcing cuts your input costs between 30% -70% easily. It is due to the fact that experts offshore concentrate in only one domain and provide you the maximum monitory benefits that otherwise, companies in diversified segments cannot.

3) No / Less Hassles: - This is the major underlying benefit of outsourcing content work. By outsourcing your content assignments, you are now free to concentrate on your strategic goals, since you no longer bear the task of maintaining in-house professionals and fulfilling their needs to get the task done.

4) Customer Satisfaction: - This is an obvious benefit with Content Outsourcing since offshore experts offer you the quality content work, thus, satisfying your customers and subsequently, gaining their trust.

Q3. Why Content Outsourcing is a win-win situation?
A3. Content Outsourcing is a win-win situation for you as well as the offshore content service provider, since you are getting the quality content work at the low cost, whereas, the service provider is getting assignments that help it in sustaining its business needs.

Besides, you both can now build a new relationship across borders that might help you grow yourself in the near future as well.

Q4. Which countries are preferred for outsourcing content work?
A4. It is advised to outsource your work to countries that have open business environment and are emerging, since these provide friendly commercial policies to help them grow further. Thus, you can outsource your content assignments to BRIC countries i.e., Brazil, Russia, India and China or you can also opt for countries in Eastern Europe.

Though, India is the best bet for your content outsourcing work thanks to its democratic nature, friendly govt policies, huge pool of talent to offer quality, and low cost that content providers present in the country are providing now a days.

Q5. What are the risks involved with Content Outsourcing?
A5. Like with every business, Content Outsourcing too has its own implications, though, these are marginal and rare. One of these is change in service provider country’s policies. There could be a possibility that country where you are outsourcing your work have sudden change at the government level and the new government is no so favorable in terms of offshore and outsourcing. It could cause a problem, though it is very unlikely in today’s aware world that you are not able to sense problem in any country.

Another implication is Cheating or Forging. Fairly, you are not aware of the company to whom you are outsourcing your content work, and frankly speaking, you cannot visit the company personally for every small content work. Thus, you need to be sure about the company / individual to whom you are outsourcing your content work. My suggestion to you is to pay the money in stages / phases according to tasks completed. By doing this, you can cut down your financial risk easily.

Though, there is an old saying that “Businesses run on trust” and there is no better approach than trusting the individual/organization to whom you are assigning the work.