There comes a time in just about every business when growth starts to plateau. This is usually when it makes the most sense to outsource or use a citizen developer. If you were to try to expand your staff it would take a long time and cost a lot of money and may not result in enough growth to justify. Outsourcing will have immediate results that can take your company to the next level.
However, there are a lot of times when the results are not what you expected when you outsourced some work to a third party. When the results are less than stellar there is usually something behind it. There are a lot of mistakes that companies make when outsourcing so it is likely that those poor results were a result of one.
In this article, we will go over some of the common mistakes that companies make when outsourcing so you can avoid making one yourself.
1 – Unclear objectives
To have an outsourced problem get solved takes great communication with the team working on it. This means that you need to clearly identify the objective to them so they understand how to proceed to meet the objective.
In many cases, the objective was not communicated well with the team. In still others, the objective was not even clear to the company, to begin with. You may know the problem that needs to be solved, but there also has to be a clearly defined goal that should be reached. This is how the team is going to be able to create a roadmap that helps them solve the problem and also bring the project toward the objective.
Take the time to understand what needs to be accomplished so you can let the team understand what it is they are trying to achieve. Learn about how to communicate well so there are no misunderstandings about what needs to be done.
2 – No exit strategy
There are times when the problem is a result of a freelancer or team that is just not good enough. The trouble is there is a phenomenon called the sunk cost fallacy that prevents companies from cutting ties and moving on since it has already cost money and time to this point.
What should happen is that milestones are created so that you can determine if the freelancer or company is living up to the task. If milestones are not met then it is time to drop that freelancer and move on to Plan B. this requires a clear exit strategy with different contingency plans planned out in advance just in case. You can create such a contingency plan on a project management software that your company is already using.
3 – Not vetting properly
Your company needs to have a process in which many different outsourcing teams or freelancers are vetted. You can’t just go with the first company that looks good on paper. Have an interview process that covers a lot of ground to make sure you are hiring the right team which may mean interviewing several and picking the best of the bunch.