Tag Archives: Giving up Control

Giving up control
 
When you outsource to an overseas BPO company, or even give work to another individual to do, you are giving up some control. They do the work their way, and when they want to.  I personally even have this issue when I give simple tasks to a new assistant. 
 
The issues can be various, but in order for a company to grow, they have to delegate tasks to responsible entities who can effectively take care of them in the long run.  Sure, the other company will do things their way, and on their time table, but if the job gets satisfactorily done, that is the bottom line. 
 
On the other hand, if you hire a company who you have to fire, or if they stop work, then you can get yourself badly behind schedule and in a real bind. 
 
However, the fact that your job is outsourced globally doesn’t make much difference from it if were given to the girl next door — except that the culture is different and the phone communication has time zone issues.  Companies are companies wherever you go, and a good outsourced one will be crucial to the development of your company’s growth.
 
Keeping metrics on how the new company is doing is hard. People work at their own speed, and the quality of their work can be very difficult to determine, especially with communication.  If you give a data entry job to someone, you can count how many forms they fill out in a specific time period, and what their error rate is.  But, with custom programming, how can you tell if they are fast or slow, good or bad,unless you are very experienced.
 
What if someone is doing customer service for you, how can you tell how good they are? You can ask the clients they spoke to how their experience was, and base your opinion on feedback.  If someone is doing sales, then you can look at how many sales they make, but what if they made sales by exaggerating facts about your service?
 
The biggest issue is really your comfort zone.  Learning to be comfortable having others do your work is critical, and finding the right “others” to do your work is the next hurdle.