When businesses consider outsourcing, the conversation often starts with a role.
Can we outsource our bookkeeping? Could we hire someone offshore to help with marketing? What about an offshore administrative assistant?
Those are reasonable questions, but they may not be the best place to start.
Before deciding who to hire, where they should be located or what they might cost, there is a more fundamental question:
What are you actually trying to achieve?
In some cases, you may need another person to become part of your team. In others, you need a defined piece of work completed or an outcome delivered.
Understanding that distinction can make the difference between an outsourcing arrangement that genuinely helps your business and one that simply gives you another resource to manage.
You Probably Outsource Already
Outsourcing is hardly a new concept for most businesses.
Consider a small or mid-sized company with its own accounting team. The internal team may process transactions, maintain the general ledger, prepare management accounts and manage the normal finance function. However, when the annual tax return is due, the company engages an external tax accountant.
Nobody finds this arrangement unusual.
The business has decided that it makes sense to retain the recurring accounting work within its team while purchasing specialist tax expertise when required. It is buying an outcome and specialist capability, rather than employing another person throughout the year.
Businesses routinely make similar decisions with lawyers, IT specialists, recruiters, designers and other professional service providers.
But the same logic is not always applied to other parts of the organisation. The starting assumption is often that work must either be performed by existing employees or that another employee needs to be hired.
There is a broader range of options.
Do You Need Capacity?
Sometimes the need is straightforward: there is more recurring work than your existing team can reasonably handle.
Invoices need to be processed. Customer enquiries need to be answered. Reports need to be prepared. Databases need to be maintained. Marketing activity needs ongoing support.
In these circumstances, the business may genuinely need additional capacity.
A dedicated offshore employee can work much like another member of your existing team. They learn your systems and processes, develop knowledge of your business and customers, and perform recurring work under your direction.
That resource does not necessarily need to be full-time. If the requirement is predictable but represents only part of a working week, a part-time arrangement may make more sense.
The important point is that the business needs a person performing an ongoing role, rather than simply a particular deliverable.
Or Do You Need an Outcome?
Other situations are quite different.
Perhaps you need a new website built. A database reorganised or a large volume of data reconciled. A research project completed. A grant proposal written. A set of marketing materials designed. A recruitment campaign undertaken. Or specialist advice on an issue that arises only occasionally.
Regulatory and compliance requirements can present the same question. A business facing a new sustainability reporting obligation, for example, may need specialist capability to help compile the required information and reporting without needing — or wanting — to build an entirely new internal function around a requirement that occurs periodically.
In these cases, the real requirement may not be another person at all.
You want an outcome.
Hiring an inexpensive resource to perform specialist work can look attractive, but it can be false economy if your business does not have the expertise or time to manage that person effectively.
If you don't know how to build a website, for example, hiring somebody and then attempting to supervise how they build one may leave you managing a process you don't fully understand. A capable service provider that takes responsibility for delivering the agreed result may be the better solution.
It is essentially the same decision the business already makes when it sends its tax return to a tax accountant rather than hiring another accountant and attempting to develop specialist tax capability internally.
Sometimes the Answer Is Both
The distinction is not always absolute.
An internal or offshore accounting resource might handle bookkeeping, reconciliations and month-end preparation throughout the year, while an external tax specialist prepares or reviews the annual return.
An ongoing marketing resource might coordinate regular content and marketing administration, while a specialist provider develops a particular campaign.
A business might manage its normal recruitment internally while using an external recruiter for a particularly difficult or senior position.
These are not competing models. They are different ways of matching resources to different types of work.
Begin With the Business Problem
A useful approach is to describe the problem before describing the solution.
Instead of: “We need an offshore employee.”
Try: “Our Australian sales team is spending too much time maintaining the CRM and preparing routine reports.”
Instead of: “We need a graphic designer.”
Try: “We regularly need marketing materials produced, but we don't have enough work to justify a full-time designer.”
Instead of: “We need someone to manage social media.”
Ask whether you need somebody working within your team to manage the process, or a provider responsible for delivering an agreed social media program.
Once the requirement is expressed in terms of the problem or desired result, the appropriate resourcing model often becomes much clearer.
So, Person or Outcome?
Before looking at offshore salaries, job titles or potential candidates, begin with the end in mind.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Do we need recurring capacity or a defined result?
Do we have the knowledge and management capacity to direct the work ourselves?
Would this requirement be better met by a full-time employee, a part-time resource, a contractor or a provider responsible for delivering an outcome?
There isn't one correct answer.
The right answer is the one that solves the underlying business need with an appropriate balance of capability, cost, flexibility and management effort.
At Keyspan, our starting point is therefore not simply “Who can we hire for you?”
It is understanding what you are trying to accomplish — and then helping determine the most appropriate way to resource it.