Most start-ups have little dough to attract full-time developers, and that is because, on average, entry-level programmers demand more than $60,000 per year. However, with insightful outsourcing strategies, startups can beneficially use their money, while gaining skilled programmers.

In fact, some of the world’s renowned businesses have bagged success by implementing savvy outsourcing strategies as part of their long-term business target.

GitHub wouldn’t have nailed it without its CIO, Scott Chacon. The founders met Chacon, a huge expert in Git, after several local Ruby on Rails meetups in San Francisco. Since the founders couldn’t afford to hire him as a full-time developer, they outsourced him as a consultant, who eventually wrote the backend of Gist, a sharing feature in GitHub.

Alibaba.com, China’s eBay, started out as a small internet company under the name China Yellow Pages. Presently, as the world’s biggest global marketplace, they credit their success to their outsourcing strategies. In the foundational stages, Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma outsourced website development to a U.S firm that owned the skills and talent Alibaba was looking for. Even now, the company relies greatly on outsourcing partners for production while they are mainly located in China.

Outsourcing strategies when implemented on a long-term basis change the whole course of businesses. GitHub and Alibaba are exemplary examples of successful market icons, who, by outsourcing for business, have claimed the position of opulence in the global market.

Outsourcing for business would help companies work more efficiently and effectively. But framing the outsourcing strategies can be tricky. Companies must have a clear understating of what to outsource and when to outsource. Generally, companies outsource a sole part of their daily operations or establish outsourcing strategies as a long-term business target. Apple is a spiffing example of the latter form of outsourcing, which in fact is the ideal form of outsourcing for businesses. All Apple products are fabricated internally. But the outsourcing partners of Apple, operate on a complex supply and manufacturing chain on their behalf.

Therefore, outsourcing can rightly be defined as a form of business strategy wherein one company hires another or an individual to carry out tasks and operations or provide services to be executed or already performed by the company’s own employees.

To implement outsourcing strategies for a long-term business target, we need to understand the three ‘W’s of outsourcing strategies.

Why should you outsource?

Outsourcing for businesses has a wide range of benefits. The most notable are as below

• Outsourcing for business is time-efficient. While a company works on the core, its outsource can work on other requisites.
• Companies with outsourcing strategies gain a competitive edge. While companies may not be able to afford full-time talented workers, they could also follow the footsteps of GitHub and Alibaba and recruit talented outsources and provide globally appreciated end products.
• Outsourcing for business is yet another way to work on numerous projects simultaneously in a cost-effective manner.

What should you outsource?

A successful means of implementing outsourcing strategies is by determining what you should outsource. The outsourcing tasks can vary depending on your industry. However, these tasks can be classified into two in general.

Critical Tasks

These are the tasks that are critical to your business operations but are not a vital component of your strategy. For example, let us consider that you sell finished wood products like benches, beds, and chairs. While you ought to deliver your products to the market, your choice of delivering outlet is least likely to impact the people who could purchase your goods. Therefore if you could guarantee that your deliveries would be timely and cost-effective, so as to avoid unnecessary monetary spending, then outsourcing would definitely help you to complete the tasks efficiently.

Commodity Tasks

Just like GitHub, one could also include outsourcing for business to perform certain nitty-gritty tasks. For example, many services are offered by printing companies that encompass overnight shipping. If your printing business should pull such business cards of such high-quality services then you need to outsource your commercial-grade inks and printers.

When should you outsource?

By performing a cost-time calculation you would be able to decide whether or not you need to outsource your critical and commodity tasks. For instance, you decide to hire in-house web developers. But in the meantime, you got to update your website and back-end systems. At such instances, you could use outsourcing for business to meet the short-term need in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, we need to understand that outsourcing strategies help in boosting a company’s profits. When you are clear of the outsourcing tasks, be sure to frame a checklist for outsourcing your business. Engage with the right outsource and estimate the project deadline, budget, required skills, and resources. Practice and experiment maybe you could be the next GitHub or Alibaba.

 At TeemCorp we are willing to understand your outsourcing needs. We have the solutions that you require. Let us talk.