Outsourcing Isn’t A Bad Word - Despite What Some People Say

Use of the word outsourcing has declined in recent years. In fact, if you compare searches on Google now to five years ago then there has been a 100% decline in how often people search for the word. However, this doesn’t mean that it has gone away.

In fact, although organisations like the National Outsourcing Association and Professional Outsourcing magazine have all rebranded to focus on partnership and sourcing in their names, there is really nothing new about what companies are doing when they work together.

A recent feature in The Next Web suggested the companies – especially smaller ones – shouldn’t fear the word outsourcing for a number of important reasons:

1. Brings familiarity to the unfamiliar; bringing in large experts in specific areas, such as IT, can be reassuring for your business. You might not understand how to deliver a global Big Data solution, but they have done it for many other clients and know exactly what to do.
2. Lowers the burden of bureaucracy; buying expertise as you need it with a service contract is much easier than hiring a large number of new recruits.
3. It keeps you local; dealing with multiple countries and multiple languages in a market like Europe can be difficult, but a partner with a multilingual workforce can make your business feel very local to your customers.
4. It impacts your bottom line; this improvement to your business will impact on revenue and profits – almost certainly!
5. Access to talent; accessing the best people where are when they are needed is possibly the single most important reason to use outsourcing as a strategy.
6. Staying lean; you can focus your own team on core competencies and buy in the additional expertise you need – important for staying focused on what is important for your business.

It’s true that many organisations have started dropping the term outsourcing in favour or partnership and there is a reason for this. Many new outsourcing contracts really are much more about corporate partnership, rather than just a client and supplier. There is still a client, but they really need their expert supplier. The supplier needs clients, but now they are working much closer to clients and creating innovative solutions now just agreeing a specification on day one and delivering the same thing forever.

I like this exploration of outsourcing in The Next Web. It’s a title that usually explores innovation and start-up culture so to see that they accept outsourcing as a part of the start-up environment and managerial toolkit is interesting and reassuring.