If you tell a businessperson that good communication is one of the key ingredients to good outsourcing, he or she most probably will tell you that that is just stating the obvious. How can you work with people outside of your firm if you are not going to communicate will with them, right? But despite being such an apparent bit of knowledge, not very many people actually practice good communication when dealing with outsourcing.
For us to understand, maybe we should take a step back and first of all analyze why we choose to outsource in the first place. For the most part, outsourcing brings in more procedures and process compared to if the work were to get done internally, yet more and more companies are choosing to outsource various types of jobs. The main reason for that is that, more often than not, outsourcing is done to cut costs. Cutting costs is a good quality for a company to have but when that becomes your only focus and everything else gets dumped onto the backseat then you could be running into some trouble.
When bottom lines come into the picture, it often becomes very difficult to keep in mind that cutting costs is not the only thing that will have an impact on the organization?s success. The fact is that if the outsourcer and the outsourced do not have a good idea about what is going on then it is unlikely that you are going to save much money in the end. The point is that one should not get so carried away with the prospects of cutting costs that they forget to look at the project in hand and the company as a whole.
That is to say that you could have a great firm that you outsource to and they are capable of doing great things for you, in addition, technically they might be topnotch but if the communication between you and them is fuzzy then there are lots of things that could slip into cracks. For example, you might have something specific in mind and they might be looking at it differently and these creases have to continually be ironed out as the project is being worked on.
Technology these days makes it possible for us to communicate in a number of efficient and prompt ways so even if the firm you are outsourcing to is located all the way on the other side of the globe, it is still possible for you to carry out effective communication. The fact is that the mediums of communication might be available to us but we are not always using it in the best ways we can.
At the same time, the importance of good communication is a concept that should be understood by employees throughout the organization. It might be the managers who are initiating and improvising channels of communications between the outsourcer and the outsourced, but every employee needs to participate in this exchange of information for things to work out well.
It is possible that managers from both firms might be putting up information on the Intranet system so that all employees have access to and can be aware of what is going on as part of a certain project. Eventually, however, it is up to the employees to read or ignore whatever is posted on the Intranet system. Only if these employees understand and agree that effective communication is what is going to lead them towards a positive end result, will they also involve themselves in the various stages of the communication process.
Of course, employees also need to be made aware of the kind of information that is out there and where and how often this kind of information is to be accessed. If you fit these communications into a schedule then employees might be able to keep up-to-date with the information is a more systematic way.
Good communication can be cultivated in an organization when various parties in the organization actively make an effort to communicate well. Communication, after all, is not as easy as one might think. Especially when it comes to outsourcing where physical, geographical, and sometimes even cultural spaces, have to be taken into account, clear and constant communication is a must.
Jeev Trika is a principal at azentec, Inc.,. an e-business consulting firm, based out of South Bend, Indiana. He possesses extensive experience in sales methodologies and holds over 9 years of experience in assisting organizations with their online experiences. His professional services have been garnered by organizations like IBM Global Services, Siebel, Jordan Industries, Cayman Islands Government, and more. Jeev holds a Bachelors in Computer Science and an MBA, both from Purdue University.
