Outsourcing For All
In part one of this blog series, I went over many main points of my recent interview with Aderson Oliveira on his OuchSourcing podcast, including the benefits and opportunities that come from outsourcing transcription services for podcasters.
Welcome to part two, where I’ll be concluding the series by explaining how to outsource work and the importance of outsourcing work for all types of brands, businesses, and endeavors as I described in the latter part of the interview. I’ll also be touching on a few struggles that I continue to experience despite the advantages of outsourcing, as well as some potential solutions.
Why Should You Outsource?
No matter what your field and specialization may be, it can be highly beneficial for both you and your business to outsource any and all types of work. In addition to outsourcing transcription services, it’s possible to hire a worker to do nearly anything under the sun. As I mentioned in part one, I’ve outsourced both transcription work and design and audio editing work, and I plan on outsourcing even more in the future.
Outsourcing can help keep you on track by holding you accountable and ensuring you’re working at a steady pace. It can also free up your schedule by eliminating tedious or tiring tasks, giving you more time to focus on the work you’re most passionate about and what you do best.
How Should You Outsource?
In addition to asking for personal recommendations from your business associates, friends, and other contacts, there are a number of online platforms that exist to connect you with freelance workers. Though there are many popular websites for outsourcing work, but I use the Upwork platform myself as I’ve had luck in the past finding hardworking and reliable users there.
When delegating tasks, it’s important to remember to keep your objectives clear and communicate with your workers on a regular basis. Don’t spend too much time micromanaging, though! Keep in mind that one of the main advantages of outsourcing work is saving your time, and that a good number of workers do have the relevant experience needed to complete the job on their own.
The only drawback of outsourcing is that, on occasion, some freelancers can simply disappear. A lack of communication in the form of delayed responses to your comments and queries is typically a sign of an incompetent worker. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for some to take the initiative and responsibility required to complete an assignment or project on their own without active supervision, but thankfully, their behavior will quickly make it obvious to you if this is the case.
While it might feel like it takes a lot of effort to find a dedicated and hardworking freelancer, they do exist, and once you do find one, you can make further use of their skill set by promoting them within your business. In this light, outsourcing your work by hiring freelancers is a great way to test out a potential team member before formally employing them.
Tips For Evaluating a Transcription (And Other Work, Too)
As with evaluating potential freelancers and employers, accuracy and quality are the main indicators of above average work. It’s also important to factor in how long it took the worker to complete the actual assignment; if they can meet the deadlines, this will show your clients that your business is professional and reliable. Deadlines are a very important aspect of the outsourcing process in general, as deadlines tend to push productive workers to serve and complete their work as soon as possible.
It’s also vital to have a separate person review the work after it is finished. No matter how experienced or intelligent your worker seems, this step should never be omitted. Even the best workers make errors, no matter how small, and putting the work through one more round of editing is just one extra way that your business can guarantee quality service to your clients.
Outsourcing Isn’t The Ultimate Solution to Every Problem — But it Does Help
Despite utilizing outsourcing and reaping its benefits, I still find myself struggling with customer acquisition and market and operations management.
In terms of customer acquisition, there’s no one right way to go about finding new customers, so I experiment a lot to figure out which channels will get more leads. Customer acquisition is a vital part of any business; one of my managers once told me that if you don’t have a customer acquisition strategy, you don’t have a business at all because you cannot grow and, as everyone knows, what doesn’t grow eventually dies. While outsourcing alone won’t solve this ubiquitous issue, it can help as workers can come up with ideas based on their own knowledge and experiences.
I am currently grappling with optimizing my market and operations management on my own, although I am hoping that outsourcing will find me a reliable worker to assist me with small related tasks. In general, this is an ongoing process, and I’m finding that the “letting go” aspect of outsourcing these kinds of jobs is surprisingly liberating.
The Major Takeaway
If you’re starting your own business (especially if you’re familiar with utilizing the Internet), you would most likely benefit from outsourcing at least some of your work. You can start by identifying a problem or an area you can work on to create more value for your business, preferably something that your potential clients have a real need for in the market, and testing it with outsourcing. Once you complete this step, things will seem to come together on their own.
In this sense, outsourcing is a great vehicle to locate both problems and solutions in addition to saving both time and money. Outsourcing tends to lend itself to a lot of different issues, and this is just one of the many great things about it.
Watch the whole podcast, access the transcript, or send me an email at evaldas@castsource.net if you have any questions. Don’t forget to read part one of this series!
Originally published at CastSource.
