We often feel like John, a hypothetical developer whose story goes like this. John goes to Jane’s (his boss) office everyday, but there is noone in the office, no colleagues, and no Jane. John gets an instruction on what to do once or twice a week on a short email. John works on the to-dos, deliver the results, but he very rarely gets a response to his reports. What’s worse, when he asks questions, the questions left unanswered for days, although it’s blocking him to complete the task.
Dont ever let your outsourcing relationship goes like this! The disadvantages are easy to spot…
As the boss, Jane is wasting her money. Imagine how many hours wasted because a question is unanswered in a timely manner, and how many hours wasted because a task isnt done quite as expected because Jane doesnt have time to check on the deliverables.
As a developer, John’s motivation is down to the drain pretty quickly. Motivation translates to productivity, so it hurts the client as well. As the boss, Jane needs to constantly set expectation, give sufficient pressure to pump up John’s adrenaline.
What’s worse, Jane might suddenly get mad looking at the results delivered by John. After all these days, and John delivered results that are not according to what Jane wants! Jane knows she has wasted a lot of money. But it’s easy to see that it’s not 100% John’s fault.
In essence, both Jane and John (client and developer) are responsible for the success of an outsourcing relationship. We all know that as clients, people are busy and barely have time to manage an offshore programmer(s). But if a client cant delegate the management of programmers to someone (such as her PM), then the client needs to do it herself.
As a good rule of thumb, a client needs at least 30 minutes a day, to:
- assign more tasks than that fit in a single day, so that if the developer is blocked on an unclear task, the developer can work on another task
- answer questions within at most 1 work day
- check deliverables (not code review, just something that can be checked on browser)
This is very important to make sure an outsourcing relationship is a success and clients can prevent wasting time and money and avoid frustrations.
One comment
Call Center Outsource
January 22, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Outsourcing makes your business more easy to handle and it has a low cost of paying. But there are some disadvantages of outsourcing.
1.Loss Of Managerial Control
Whether you sign a contract to have another company perform the function of an entire department or single task, you are turning the management and control of that function over to another company. True, you will have a contract, but the managerial control will belong to another company. Your outsourcing company will not be driven by the same standards and mission that drives your company. They will be driven to make a profit from the services that they are providing to you and other businesses like yours.
2. Hidden Costs
You will sign a contract with the outsourcing company that will cover the details of the service that they will be providing. Any thing not covered in the contract will be the basis for you to pay additional charges. Additionally, you will experience legal fees to retain a lawyer to review the contacts you will sign. Remember, this is the outsourcing company’s business. They have done this before and they are the ones that write the contract. Therefore, you will be at a disadvantage when negotiations start.
3. Threat to Security and Confidentiality
The life-blood of any business is the information that keeps it running. If you have payroll, medical records or any other confidential information that will be transmitted to the outsourcing company, there is a risk that the confidentiality may be compromised. If the outsourced function involves sharing proprietary company data or knowledge (e.g. product drawings, formulas, etc.), this must be taken into account. Evaluate the outsourcing company carefully to make sure your data is protected and the contract has a penalty clause if an incident occurs.
4. Quality Problems
The outsourcing company will be motivated by profit. Since the contract will fix the price, the only way for them to increase profit will be to decrease expenses. As long as they meet the conditions of the contract, you will pay. In addition, you will lose the ability to rapidly respond to changes in the business environment. The contract will be very specific and you will pay extra for changes.
5. Tied to the Financial Well-Being of Another Company
Since you will be turning over part of the operations of your business to another company, you will now be tied to the financial well-being of that company. It wouldn’t be the first time that an outsourcing company could go bankrupt and leave you holding-the-bag.
6. Bad Publicity and Ill-Will
The word “outsourcing” brings to mind different things to different people. If you live in a community that has an outsourcing company and they employ your friends and neighbors, outsourcing is good. If your friends and neighbors lost their jobs because they were shipped across the state, across the country or across the world, outsourcing will bring bad publicity. If you outsource part of your operations, morale may suffer in the remaining work force.