A common approach when a business has decided that additional resources may be the right solution is to ask:
What role could we outsource?
The obvious response is to start listing job titles — accounting, administration, customer service, marketing, design and so on.
But job titles are not necessarily the best way to think about it.
Two people with exactly the same title can perform very different work. Equally, one position may contain some activities that are very well suited to outsourcing and others that should remain with your local team.
A better starting point is to look at the nature of the work.
What Makes Work Suitable for Outsourcing?
There is no rigid formula, but activities particularly well suited to outsourcing generally share several of the following characteristics.
The Cost Difference Is Meaningful
Cost should not be the only reason to outsource, but there needs to be sufficient benefit to justify changing how the work is delivered.
Where appropriately skilled people can perform the work offshore at a materially lower cost than an equivalent local resource, outsourcing can allow a business to add capacity that might otherwise be uneconomic.
The opportunity becomes particularly interesting when the work is currently being performed by an expensive Australian resource whose skills could be better used elsewhere.
The Work Is Process-Driven
Work supported by established procedures, checklists or workflows is generally easier to transition.
The process does not need to be perfectly documented before you begin. But if the work can be explained, demonstrated and learned, it is usually easier to transfer successfully.
The Work Is Repetitive or Recurring
Activities performed every day, week or month are generally stronger candidates than small, isolated one-off tasks.
Repetition allows the person performing the work to learn your systems, understand your expectations and become more efficient over time.
That doesn't mean one-off work is unsuitable for outsourcing. A substantial data clean-up, reconciliation exercise or other finite project may be very well suited to external support if the scope and desired result are clear.
The workload does not have to be constant. Month-end accounting activities, periodic reporting or recurring marketing work may fluctuate while remaining predictable enough to resource effectively.
The Work Is Time-Intensive
Some of the best outsourcing opportunities are not particularly complicated.
They are simply consuming a lot of time.
An Australian salesperson may spend hours updating a CRM. An accountant may spend significant time gathering information and preparing schedules before applying professional judgement to the result. A manager may lose several hours each week preparing routine reports.
All of that work may be necessary.
The question is whether it needs to be performed by that particular person.
The Inputs and Outputs Are Clear
Work is easier to outsource when everyone understands what goes in, what needs to happen and what a satisfactory result looks like.
That doesn't mean the task must be mechanical. It means expectations can be communicated.
Clear inputs and outputs also make it easier to train people, identify problems and improve the process over time.
Performance Can Be Measured
If performance can be assessed against reasonably clear standards, the work is generally easier to manage regardless of where the person performing it is located.
Those measures might involve turnaround times, response times, accuracy, volumes processed, deadlines met or other relevant KPIs.
Not everything worthwhile can be reduced to a number, but both the employee and the manager should be able to understand what good performance looks like.
The Work Does Not Depend Heavily on Local Presence or Judgement
Some work genuinely needs to happen locally. Other activities depend heavily on senior judgement, particular licences, local legal or regulatory requirements, face-to-face relationships or detailed knowledge of the Australian market.
Those activities may not be appropriate to move offshore.
But that does not necessarily mean the whole role needs to remain local.
Don't Just Look at the Job — Look Inside It
Consider an Australian accountant.
Part of the role may involve advising management, interpreting results and exercising professional judgement. Those activities may appropriately remain with the senior Australian employee.
But the same person may also spend considerable time gathering information, reconciling accounts, preparing schedules and producing standard reports.
Or consider a sales manager.
Building customer relationships, negotiating terms and closing significant opportunities may require the manager's experience and local market knowledge.
Maintaining the CRM, researching prospects, preparing routine reports and organising follow-up activities may not.
The opportunity may therefore be to redesign the role rather than replace it.
In many positions, you can separate judgement and ownership from administration and execution.
The Australian employee can retain responsibility for the work, make the decisions and perform the activities where their experience, judgement and local presence create the greatest value. An offshore resource can support the processes and execution around them.
That isn't necessarily outsourcing a job. It may simply be a better way of organising the work.
Full-Time Isn't the Only Option
Another common assumption is that there must be enough work to justify a full-time offshore employee.
Not necessarily.
Businesses don't generally apply that logic when hiring locally. Few people find it unusual for a business to employ a bookkeeper two days a week, use part-time administrative support, engage a cleaner for a few hours, or have somebody assisting with marketing on particular days.
The business has a recurring need, works out how much resource it requires and hires accordingly.
Yet when businesses look offshore, that same logic can sometimes be overlooked. The conversation jumps from “we need some additional support” to “do we have enough work for a full-time offshore employee?”
It doesn't have to.
If there is a predictable requirement for two or three days each week, a part-time offshore resource may be appropriate. This can also make outsourcing practical for smaller businesses or functions where there is a genuine ongoing need but nowhere near 40 hours of work each week.
And if the requirement is genuinely finite or centred on a specific deliverable, you may not need an ongoing employee at all — as discussed in Begin With the End in Mind: Person or Outcome?
The objective is to match the resourcing model to the work rather than manufacture enough work to fill a position.
Start With the Work
So, what could you outsource?
Accounting, administration, customer support, research, marketing and many other functions can lend themselves to offshore delivery. But a list of job titles only tells part of the story.
Look instead for work that is recurring, teachable, measurable and time-consuming, with reasonably clear inputs and outputs — particularly where it is consuming the time of people who could be contributing more elsewhere.
Then look inside existing positions.
You may discover that you don't need to outsource an entire job at all.
You may simply need to give your existing team better support.
In the final article in this series, we'll look at a practical way to evaluate your business and identify where those opportunities may exist.