The competition is only one aspect of how difficult it can be to turn a small business into a success. The odds are not in the favor of a small businessman, with most small businesses faltering within a few years of opening. The narrow margins of profit and the various financial obligations that a small business has make it difficult for an owner to feel comfortable with their financial situation for years on end. However, small business people should not let this information stop them from realizing their dream.

Successful small businesses have a number of factors working in their favor. The most important aspect of success early in a business’ life is the quality of product that is being produced. As well, the unique nature, the necessity, and the cost of a product can contribute to the success or failure of a small business. Small business owners who are successful often have a strong set of short, medium, and long term goals which push the company toward the top within their industry. Finally a business model that ensures financial stability, while producing a great product or products for years to come is the backbone of any successful business.

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of small business is the recruitment of high quality professionals. These professionals can make or break a business, depending on their reliability, creativity, and commitment to the business. Small business owners should work with a recruiting agency in order to develop a strong set of personnel. Agencies can help owners target specific skill sets in their employees while saving them the expenses of excessive advertising and promotion. Small businesses can grow into big corporations or industry leaders through the use of creative recruiting methods and a commitment to excellence.

Source

Recruitment or outsourcing specific business functions from conception will immediately show savings in your overhead costs.  New start up business have had to streamline their operation in order to save money on overhead costs which means they initially hired a larger staff, paid for larger office space to house the employees and spent more money on computers and office expenses.

If they would have outsourced from the beginning they could have extended their operating capital reserves more efficiently.  In today’s global economy there is really no reason to perform back office functions within your own facility, whether you are a start up small business or a large multimillion dollar company savings are savings and outsourcing back office processes is the simplest and easiest way to do save significantly on your overhead costs.

For more Offshore Outsourcing Information contact us!  Get a FREE Quote Today!

Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765

I’d like to take a moment to go over several simple tools and methods to help small business owners keep track of and prioritize the various tasks involved in operations.

1. Use a Whiteboard

Whether it’s a whiteboard, blackboard, bulletin board, or a simple notepad, try to keep a weekly log of primary tasks up front and center. While there are a plethora of online programs and tools for organizing daily/weekly tasks, it helps to back it all up with a basic pen and paper list. It is integral to have this weekly ‘grail’ to refer to when you hit a wall – try placing it in the center of your office for everyone to see. Utilize different colors or check boxes to re-enforce accomplishments or the completion of a task.

2. Use Google Documents

While Microsoft Word is still the standard in word processing, Google Documents has several advantages that make it the perfect online tool for inter & extra-office collaboration. Need to brainstorm a list of potential clients for your wedding cake business? Simply hop on Google Docs, create a new sheet, and share it with as many collaborators as you like. The whole team can then log onto the document and make edits ‘live,’ to avoid the hassle of huge email chains or lengthy phone conversations. Also be sure to try out Google Spreadsheets, a MS Excel alternative that allows you for seamless organization and collaboration.

3. Use Recruiting Software

If you are a small business is the process of finding the best talent available, the task can become process intensive and fairly complex. Keeping track of multiple candidates, reviewing resumes and tracking progress can drastically slow your company’s forward movement.

One way to combat this small business brain freeze it to utilize a recruiting software package to track applicants, manage resumes, and provide a collaboration tool for your hiring managers. Many modern day recruiting software solutions live completely online, making it incredibly simple to access and utilize with the click of a mouse.

4. Prioritize with Flexibility

Sometimes, when it’s just you and 500 different tasks, there will be a tendency to jump from one task to another before completion. This can be good and bad. It’s good to be flexible and not bang your head against any one task if you aren’t making any progress. Sometimes it helps to step back, breathe, and come back to something with a new outlook. However, if your mind wanders too far and too often, nothing will end up done. Try to find the balance between priority and flexibility that allows you to find a natural rhythm in completing weekly tasks.

5. Early Calls

If part of your business involves contacting potential clients, cold calling, emailing or collaborating with various individuals, I would suggest using the first half of the week for this. People have the natural tendency to be more receptive during the first half of the week. After Wednesday many potential business contacts begin to fade into their weekend shelters. Getting a hold of these people on Monday or Tuesday will make the second half of your week far more productive.

For more Offshore Outsourcing Information contact us!  Get a FREE Quote Today!

Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765

Once very dependent on its tourism and agriculture as its leading GNP it is now one of the leading Latin American countries for Offshore Outsourcing in IT development and manufacturing, high-tech telecommunication services for call centers and customer service centers.  Costa Rica has one of the highest literacy rates in the world next to the US and Canada and offers foreign companies the same quality of employee in Costa Rica that they could find in their own country.

IT programmers, developers, graphic designers, web page designers, fluent in English and Spanish and submerged in the US culture.  The US has an incredibly large presence and influence in Costa Rica and contributes significantly to the economic stimulus so much so that the Costa Rican Government, ministries and financial institutes continue to improve the ease in which foreigners can do business in Costa Rica.

What companies in the US are finding is the manufacturing plants for IT production are financially more feasible than production in the states and because of the level of education, experience, infrastructure and technology that the quality of production meets the same standard of excellence as you would find in the US, if not better.

By Omar Pinto

For more Offshore Outsourcing Information contact us!  Get a FREE Quote Today!

Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765

But to hire a dedicated online virtual assistant, you need to keep some points in mind. Read on to know the tidbits that can help you in appointing a worth virtual assistant.

• The first step of Virtual Assistant recruitment includes enlisting of tasks that you want to be accomplished by your virtual assistant. This is followed by preparation of Job description and calculation of time (monthly basis) until when you want your online virtual assistant to work for you. The job description should include all the major skills, which you want in your virtual assistant service provider. As an instance, you must single out whether you want your virtual assistant to be good with communication skills or writing skills.
• Next stage of hiring virtual assistant talks about determination of hourly wage. Most of the virtual assistance service providers offer this service between $15-50/hour and monthly/weekly rates are calculated accordingly.
• There are numerous virtual assistant providers in market but if you are looking for a best one, you must do a comprehensive web research first. You can find out your service provider on the behalf of user review and client testimony. Normally a virtual assistant offers its service not only around the country but also offshore…
• Prior to hiring a virtual assistant, you must conduct an interview to ensure that the assistant is able to proffer the service in accordance with your need.
• Virtual assistants can accomplish every sort of office work but you must be particular about the service prior to hiring, as later, dissimilarity in service offered and requirement can cause irksome for you.
• You can also ask your provider to offer a trial service pack or a short-span service pack… this will help you in deciding whether the service taken by you in apt for your profession or not.

Virtual Assistant service is considered one of the most revolutionary steps in the world of personal assistance service… This service lets you enjoy a full-fledged assistance without spending much on real assistants.

by Stell Ferrero

For more Offshore Outsourcing Information contact us!  Get a FREE Quote Today!

Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765

Introduction The question that a client asks before choosing an outsourcing vendor is that do they have the expertise & understanding of my nature of business? Clients aren’t interested in saving a little cash if they feel that they are exposing themselves to significant additional risk or hassle. You need to show them that while they will be able to enjoy the advantages, they can also trust you to minimize/eliminate the downside.

Convince them about your capabilities:
The question that a client asks before choosing an outsourcing vendor is that do they have the expertise & understanding of my nature of business?

You need to spend most of your time listening to the client to understand their business objectives, concerns and priorities. Try to learn as much as possible about their business functions – operations, resource management, areas of work, who their end customers are, etc. Then identify their need to outsource. Understand what are they currently investing on – R&D, technology maintenance, customer support – and their pain points like project over-runs, maintenance, legal issues, HR costs etc. Then come out with a solution that shows how you can address the pain areas, save costs and minimize risks.

Clients aren’t interested in saving a little cash if they feel that they are exposing themselves to significant additional risk or hassle. You need to show them that while they will be able to enjoy the advantages, they can also trust you to minimize/eliminate the downside.

Strive to be the partner with whom the client can achieve a long-term partnership and minimize financial risk exposure. Comparing hard cost between ‘outsourcing’ v/s ’staying in-house’ is inevitable, so build some soft-ROI during the process, including mitigation of risks, business continuity, opportunity cost, and so forth.

Counter their apprehensions (perceived or real) against offshoring: Anyone who has looked at outsourcing (particularly offshoring) would have had a bad experience of some kind. Most of us have had a frustrating experience at some point dealing with outsourced customer care when calling our bank, telco or utility company.

Usual drawbacks that are associated with offshoring are
- Fear of loss of control over processes and performance
- Language/communication difficulties
- Deadline difficulties
- Productivity issues
- Quality issues
- Customer relationship issues
- Increased risk
- IP issues

There is no point in pretending these perceived drawbacks aren’t out there – you have to convince customers that you can overcome these by providing evidence of how your organization handles these issues – use examples from previous engagements, or client testimonials to demonstrate successful transition & execution of offshore work by your company.

Closing the deal: To clinch an offshoring deal, you will need to break up your proposal to a potential client in three parts:

Value Proposition – Why outsourcing to your company can deliver benefits over in-house alternatives.

Peer & Industry Comparison – What their peers and competitors in the same industry and some famous ones in the other industry are achieving through outsourcing. Explain how outsourcing has practically been increasing over the years – That companies are only too happy with the overall results … with more & more companies signing bigger & bigger contracts now.

Missed Opportunity – What will they miss out on if they do not outsource now. Explain how outsourcing will make their organization re-look at the ways it does business and at a strategic level, will help accelerate the growth of their company regardless of the specific objectives around cost savings and quality improvement.

by Biplab Saha

]]> http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/convincing-clients-for-outsourcing-their-business-offshore/feed/ 0 http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/obstacles-to-success-of-offshore-outsourcing-endeavors/ http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/obstacles-to-success-of-offshore-outsourcing-endeavors/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:55:30 +0000 opinto http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/?p=157

Introduction
Many well intentioned offshore projects get off to a flying start, but fail to succeed over the long term or worse still are abandoned mid-way, even though a considerable time & effort is spent by companies before and during the initial stages of an offshore engagement on activities like documenting the project RFP, evaluating and shortlisting service providers, defining quality parameters, training the offshore team, and the like. This article looks at some factors that may impede the success of the offshore outsourcing endeavor with suggestions to avoid or overcome them.

Unrealistic assumptions on cost savings
The first and major obstacle to success is the unrealistic assumptions on the savings. Organizations assume savings will happen right from the day the delivery starts happing from the offshore location. The initial costs involved in the offshoring (often referred to as the soft costs or hidden costs) that are over and above the direct cost of the contract, often bring down the resultant savings drastically in the first six months to a year. These costs arise due to time spent in pre-offshoring activities like process documentation, vendor evaluation & selection, overseas travel both to the vendor location and of their pilot project team to your offices, and upfront investment in equipment & other hardware to facilitate data communication between your office(s) and the vendor’s offshore location(s) before the process transition can begin.

Also many companies that outsource work offshore wrongly assume that labor arbitrage will yield savings on a person-to-person basis (i.e., Since a full-time equivalent employee in India cost 40% less, the savings will be in the same range!) without factoring in the difference in productivity of and offshore worker v/s that of an inhouse employee; and the differences in operating model of the offshore vendor. Hank Zupnik, CIO of GE Real Estate, who has overseen numerous projects outsourced offshore for over a decade, rightly observed that one offshore worker couldn’t simply replace all the work done by one American worker.

In reality, most organizations save 15-25% during the first year; by the third year, cost savings often reach 35-40% as both the sides move up the learning-curve and the client modifies their internal operations to align to an offshore model. Its is important to set realistic targets and timelines for cost savings at the start to avoid a mid-course ‘blame-game’ both internally and with the service provider.
Lack of well documented in-house processes
Documentation is a time intensive and often neglegted activity. It is observed that most internal processes are only about 30% documented, while one of the prerequisite before offshoring a process is that the documentation level should be at around 90%. The documentation activity should include mapping the current process, putting down the transition strategy, evaluation of all risks of failure and drawing up a contingency plan. Once the documentation is completed, the company may change its outsourcing strategy (e.g., from a single vendor to multiple vendors); or it might actually give a greater thrust to offshoring if the vendor(s) seem better equipped to reduce risks while keeping the costs low; or the company might be deterred from outsourcing offshore due to the high risk involved if the endeavor fails. Though the results of risk analysis vary between companies, documenting the risks & preparing the contingency plan are important and a lack thereof may lead to mid-way abandonment of the offshoring project.
Poor expectation management
Outsourcing engagements have a supplier (vendor) and a recipient (client), and both will have different expectations from the relationship. That the service is delivered from offshore complicates it further, and expectations mismatch become problematic.

An expectation gap may arise when you are in doubt about the vendor’s capability and hesitant to offshore anything beyond a specific task, while the service provider expects greater chunk of “higher value” work and might feel unchallenged by dealing only with standard, unchallenging tasks. If this expectation gap continues, the vendor may over time, accord low importance to your project or may even want to get out of the relationship as soon as a higher value-add work comes their way.

Similarly, you may expect the vendor employees to come up to a level of understanding that matches that of your in-house staff, but they may not be able to think or perform beyond the task that has been outsourced, and may ask questions that may seem ’silly’, resulting in frustration at your end and possibly an early termination of the contract. You should chart out a growth plan for the outsourcing relationship so that the service provider have their eyes set on the next target in terms of new processes coming their way. Knowing this growth path, the vendor and their employees will try to gain deeper insights into your business, thus resulting in superior results during the initial ‘unchallenging’ stages of offshoring too, and a stronger sense of loyalty to their relationship with you. Also ensuring continuous knowledge transfer to the vendor’s employees working on your project, make feel as a part of your extended organization and perform better.
Failure in Bridging the Cultural Gap
Most of the offshore workers will not have an exposure to the Western way of life and to the Western work culture. Therefore besides the training related directly to work, your in-house staff may need to spend time in acquainting the vendor’s employees with the cultural nuances of the organization and that of the your company’s home base, be it Europe or US. For example although English is an official language in India, pronunciation and accents can vary tremendously. Though many service providers put their employees through accent & language training and have cultural education programs, inherent differences due to culture, religion, social activities, way of dressing, and even the way a junior interacts with a senior colleague will not be easy to overcome. Something that’s common sense to the Western worker may be a completely foreign concept to an overseas worker.

Similarly your senior management & your in-house staff directly involved in the transition process need to acquaint themselves with the culture of the country where the vendor is located to communicate effectively with them and be able to understand the soft aspects of doing business with them. This avoids issues that can arise due to misunderstanding the ‘language’ at either side. Mutual visits to the other country are very helpful for effective working relationships as they help in drastic improvement of each others understanding and in the quality of work. Some companies may try to save the travel cost by communicating over the phone or using video conferences, but in the long run this proves to be more expensive because of the delay related to transitioning the process overseas and the longer time taken to get the expected quality or performance from the offshore team.
Disaffection of in-house staff
Extensive knowledge transfer and training are required prior to and during the transition of work to the vendor, and this needs to be consistently supported by the in-house staff. However layoffs can cause major morale problems among the in-house “survivors,” leading to disaffection and work slowdowns. Internal people may refuse to transition to the offshore model because they have a certain comfort level, or they don’t want their co-worker to lose his job. Some of your staff may also start proclaiming, that offshore outsourcing is not saving money to the company after all and that it was a bad idea, which futher lowers morale of other employees. Sometimes your in-house project management team may need to work into the night and arrive at work in the early morning to manage the offshore team, and their perception about who is benefiting and who is hurting becomes personal.

You have to set aside management and employee time before, during and after the offshore transition to talk to your employees about the whole proposition of offshoring and how it will help the company to become more competitive in the long term. A consensus needs to be built among all employees favoring the company’s offshoring efforts. Without this kind of a mandate, offshore endeavors are doomed.
Backlash from customers as a result of poor quality control
The cost savings resulting from offshoring is the primary motivation for businesses to engage in the same. It is often realized late in the process that quality is an important factor for a successful offshore engagement. Poor quality of service delivery will have a negative impact on the performance and the reputation of the company may suffer in the eyes of their customers. A lack of adherence to the quality norms by the vendor and lack of monitoring of their output can result in considerable rework, and associated follow-up costs.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of the offshore engagement should be defined in the beginning itself, so that the performance can be measured objectively during the tenure project and mid-course corrections are done wherever needed. It is also advisable to institutionalize regular satisfaction surveys that measure the “perception” of the engagement across several stakeholder levels.
Conclusion
Offshore outsourcing is a phenomenon that’s here to stay. Companies that are adopting this are learning operate in a global business environment, and will benefit in the long run as they gain insights into other countries and their way of conducting business. However a failed or abandoned offshore outsourcing venture may set back the company by both the money spent and the willingness to take up such opportunities in the future. It is therefore important to study and analyze all factors that will affect the offshore endeavor and ensure that steps are taken to overcome the pitfalls well ahead of the offshore transition.
References
Dean Davison; Top 10 Risks Of Offshore Outsourcing; www.janutcc.com
Fleming Parker; Key Success Factors for Offshore Outsourcing to India; www.articlesbase.com
Dr. Joe Greco; The Hidden Costs in Offshore Outsourcing – a Case Study; www.articlesbase.com
M.M.Sathyanarayan; How to Determine True Business Value of Offshore Outsourcing; www.articlesbase.com
Stephanie Overby; The Hidden Costs of Offshore Outsourcing; Sep. 1, 2003 Issue of CIO Magazine

They are:

1. Focus On The Customer – They sign everyone’s paycheck.

2. Get In Step With The Future – This is where opportunity lies.

3. Be An Innovator – In this era of rapid change, continuous improvement through innovation is king.

4. Do It With Quality – It lowers costs, increases speed, builds pride and improves customer loyalty.

5. Get Rapid, Accurate Feedback – Know what your customers, competitors, employees, suppliers and the market are doing. Ignorance can be fatal.

6. Ability Means Agility – Be flexible and quick to respond and adapt.

7. If It Doesn’t Add Value, Don’t Do It – Any job or activity that doesn’t add value is creating needless overhead. Don’t do it.

8. Build Teams Not Empires – Cross functional work teams make better faster decisions than bureaucracies.

9. Lifelong Learning Is Everybody’s Job – If you want to stay in business in a rapidly changing world, learn how to learn and keep learning.

10. Just Do It Now! - Set challenging deadlines that force that make yourself and others to use time in the most efficient and effective manner.

In business, speed is your trump card. It raises revenue, lowers costs, complements quality, overcomes competitors, customers love it and it’s absolutely necessary when growing your business to the next level. The most cost effective ways of implementing these strategies is to effectively leverage outsourcing, technology, automation and the internet.

by Wharton Business Foundation

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Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765

What is Mailroom Outsourcing?

With mailroom outsourcing, your re-directed mail will be received and digitised with the key points pulled out. Digitised documents will then be stored on a document management system so that all processes associated with the mail can then be handled on-screen and in some cases automated.

You don’t need to outsource all your mail processing if you choose not to. Often it works best for businesses just to outsource business critical mail, as this benefits the most from outsourcing anyway.

Mailroom outsourcing can be particularly beneficial for things such as:

* mail shot responses * customer service reply paid cards * surveys

Using mailroom outsourcing in these situations takes the pressure off in-house staff and means you will usually have results much quicker than if you tried to handle things in-house.

Mailroom outsourcing is also useful for:

* redirected remote office mail * application forms * regular correspondence

The cost of handling business critical mail can be very high when you add up all of the staff and overhead costs. Most companies still rely upon less efficient manual paper routing processes to convey mail from one location to another for processing.

Key benefits

Some of the key benefits mailroom outsourcing could bring to your company are:

* Allows you and your staff to focus on core business activities * Reduces storage needs * Improves speed of delivery * Reduces transport costs * Centralises mail processing * Automates mail routing * Improves traceability and compliance * Introduces ongoing process automation * Reduces cost of processing * Eliminates postage costs * Eliminates copying costs * Reduces overheads * Means greater business flexibility and agility * Improves service levels and reliability.

by S Cornish

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Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765 ]]> http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/the-benefits-of-mailroom-outsourcing/feed/ 0 http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/how-outsourcing-data-entry-is-beneficial/ http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/how-outsourcing-data-entry-is-beneficial/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:34:48 +0000 opinto http://www.offshoresavingsolutions.com/blog/?p=113 Outsourcing is one of the most cost effective and reliable ways to manage your business’s customer service. One customer service position that can easily be outsourced is data entry, quite frankly for time and cost saving purposes alone it should be outsourced, there is no reason to manage data entry in-house in today’s global economy.

Data Entry is one of the most widely outsourced business functions and by a diverse variety of companies.  The high demand for data entry services has created outsourcing solutions on a global level.  Every company and small business compiles huge amounts of data, in many cases data entry and the use of that raw data has becomes the backbone for an organization’s ability to grow, retain clients and streamline their operation.

Data entry customer service providers cover most business and professional activities, including data entry, document processing and data conversion.  This process can take up an entire floor of a building and whole teams of employees; it is a very time intensive and tiresome job.  Imagine placing those individuals in departments that focus on the company’s core business function.  Imagine not having to pay for that floor along with the electric, office supplies, office equipment and furniture required to house these employees.  Obviously the best option for companies to take care of these overhead costs and headaches is through data entry outsourcing, which is their core business function.

Some Industries Utilizing Data Entry Outsourcing for:

-          Medical Claim Forms

-          Processing Legal Documents  

-          Clinical Trial Data

-          Violation Processing Records

-          Financial Statements

-          Direct Mail Responses

-          Medical Billing

-          Tax Forms

-          Patient Records

-          Customer Lists

-          Insurance Forms

The demand for data entry processing crosses all fields and industries. Outsourcing data entry services is a beneficial and cost-effective option for your business. Outsource your data entry requirements to reliable company’s that are capable of performing accurate data entry and provide ideal customized solutions for your entire organizational needs.

Benefits of outsourcing data entry services:

-          Professionally experienced data operators

-          Error free and accurate data entry services

-          Affordable data entry that will significantly cut your overhead costs

-          Time savings

-          The ability to shift your complete focus on your core product

Outsourcing services in today’s global economy have the ability to integrate high quality processes, provide advanced technology, have well established infrastructure and expert professionals who are capable to achieve better results and cover the entire range of data entry services. If you are looking for a way to save big on your overhead costs and you still enter and process your own data then now is the time to significantly increase your bottom line.

By Omar Pinto

For more Offshore Outsourcing Information contact us!  Get a FREE Quote Today!

Omar Pinto
omar@offshoresavingsolutions.com
Offshore Saving Solutions
310-928-3765