Tag Archives: Outsource

Outsourcing

June 12, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: Keyword, Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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DEFINITION OF OUTSOURCING
Outsourcing is a business practice where a particular company will hire someone who does not work for their company such as another company or a freelancer to do particular tasks for them. Typically, tasks outsourced will be highly repetitive or specialized tasks such as calling long lists of names with a particular call script, accounting, programming, data entry, technical support, payment processing, or some other specialized task.

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REASONS FOR OUTSOURCING
The reason companies outsource work to other companies are multi-fold. One reason could be to:

Save Time — so that employees and management can focus more on the core competencies of the company such as selling widgets while outsourcing bookeeping and reminder calls to companies who specialize in those particular tasks. Another reason could be:

Cost Cutting — Many outsource companies are located in India, The Philippines, or Eastern Europe where labor costs are lower than the United States, hence, creating an opportunity to capitalize on less expensive labor.

Skill Optimization — is yet another reason to outsource work as outsourced companies specialize in particular tasks such as blog set up, eCommerce site creation or XML conversion while your company specializes in widgets.

Eliminating Uneven Schedules — if you have a job to be done that will take only 10-15 hours a week on some weeks and more or less hours on other weeks, hiring a full-time or even part-time employee is a commitment that you will have trouble keeping. If that employee quits in the middle of a project, you’ll have another problem. It might be easier to outsource the project to a company who specializes in that task and has dozens of people who know exactly how to do it rather than hire your own staff.

Reducing Hiring — hiring and firing is expensive and is an art form that you might not have time to master. If you have a particular job that people are always quitting every two months, it might be easier to have the job outsourced to Manila where they have full-time HR managers to handle the hiring and firing for you! That way you can focus on widgets instead of dealing with people who quit on a whim leaving you high and dry. The outsourced company you hire will have plenty of backups all in the same specialty when the employee assigned to you quits.

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TYPES OF OUTSOURCING ARRANGEMENTS

Freelancers — Some companies hire freelancers which is a type of outsourcing.

Fixed Schedule — Others hire another company for a particular schedule with a contract which extends for a particular number of months or years such as 40 hours a week for two years.

Employee Leasing — Some companies hire a team of workers from an agency which is sometimes called “employee leasing.” Other companies pay for results in specialties like lead generation rather than paying for particular hours of work.

Assignment Based — Programming or software development outsourcing often has a company pay for a completed product or for a particular number of hours to do a particular job although there is very rarely a deadline.

On Call — Some outsourcing is on an on call basis. Programmers might be hire to fix code only when it breaks or to do programming work as needed. Call centers might have a small assignment from time to time only when needed.

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CATEGORIZATIONS OF OUTSOURCING JOBS
Outsourcing jobs are sometimes categorized using particular terms such as:

ITES — Information Technology Enabled Services which could include data entry using computers, web design, technical support, or other tasks which involve technology to facilitate the task in some type of a way.

KPO — Knowledge Process Outsourcing is also a bype of Business Process Outsourcing that includes tasks that require a higher level of education, knowledge or skills such as Accounting, Software Development, Research, etc.

LPO — Legal Process Outsourcing focuses primarily on legal research, patent research, contract drafting and legal support services, but rarely involves actually going to court.

RPO — Research Process Outsourcing or Recruitment Process Outsourcing. Research outsourcing is popular in Bangalore, India as there are many companies that offer market research, web research, and Pharmaceutical research. RPO could also be a form of human resources outsourcing where an outside company will help you find employees or leased agents. This is by far the least popular form of international outsourcing as there are few providers who offer overseas assistance with recruitment.

HRO — Human Resources Outsourcing as mentioned above is the least popular form of international outsourcing as there are very few overseas companies who offer competent service in this industry. However, there are a few companies in India and the Philippines that allow you to lease call center agents and programmers at low rates. However, the quality of such help is dubious and not guaranteed in any way by the provider company.

MBPO — Medical Business Process Outsourcing includes outsourcing of Medical Billing, coding and Medical Transcription. Quality standards and billing in these fields is a lot more uniform than in other BPO tasks as companies can charge a percentage in Medical Billing and can offer rates per number of characters or words (or lines) in Medical Transcriptions. Quality standards are also easy to measure as there are international standards for Medical Billing and Medical Transcription. You can measure errors as a percentage rate. If a company makes more than a particular fraction of a percent of errors, they generally go out of business or get fired.

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TYPES OF OUTSOURCING JOBS
Commonly outsourced jobs might include: Accounting, Bookkeeping, Call Center, Data Entry, ePublishing, Legal Research, Market Research, Medical Billing, Medical Transcriptions, Social Media, Software Development, and Web Design. However, there are many specialties in most of these types of outsourcing jobs.

Accounting Specialties — Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation, Payroll, Bank Reconcilliation

Call Center Specialties — Appointment Setting, Chat Support, Collections, Customer Help Desk, Data Verification, Email Support, Inbound Customer Care, Lead Generation, Order Taking, Outbound, Survey Taking, Technical Support, Telemarketing, Ticket Sales,

Data Entry Specialties — Data Capture, Data Cleansing, Data Conversion, Data Entry, Data Mining, Data Processing, Data Quality, Data Security, Data Transcription, eCommerce Data Entry, Forms Filling, Forms Processing, Image Processing, Product Data Entry, Scanning, etc. Data Conversion includes XML, SGML, HTML5 conversion, PDF or JPG conversion, and conversion from one language or format to another.

Social Media tasks might include article writing, proofreading, posting on Facebook, managing a Twitter account, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, or any of the other common social media platforms. Most companies specialize in several social media platforms, but cannot provide service for ones they are not familiar with or don’t have sufficient staff for.

Software Development Specialties — Blog Set up, eCommerce Set up, Software Testing, Web Design, Employee Leasing, etc.

Common software languages include: C, C#, C++, ERP, J2ME, Java, jQuery, LAMP, MySQL, .Net, OpenSource, PHP, Ruby on Rails, SAP, SQL, XML, and more.

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You might also like:

Wikepedia’s article on — outsourcing

Investopedia’s article on — outsourcing

Entrepreneur’s article on — outsourcing

See our informational page on the term — outsourced.

See 123outsource’s compilation on best articles about outsourcing.
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/04/02/compilation-of-best-outsourcing-articles/

What countries are best to outsource a particular task to?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/04/07/which-countries-are-the-best-to-outsource-particular-tasks-to/

Six problems that only individuals working in a BPO industry would understand.
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/06/15/six-problems-that-only-individuals-working-in-a-bpo-industry-would-understand/

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Outsourced

June 12, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: Keyword, Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Definition of Outsourced / Outsourcing

Verb
Outsourced is the past tense of the verb to outsource.

(1) To obtain services from an outside or foreign supplier in place of an internal source.
(2) To contract work to an outside firm or abroad.
(3) To assign particular specialized and/or repetitive tasks that are not core competencies of the mother company
to an outside or foreign company.
(4) To procure back office services with an outside supplier or provider.

Explanation
BPO Outsourcing is becoming more and more popular as companies have to fight harder to survive in a world where margins are getting tighter by the day. If a company is doing a particular task even slightly less efficiently than the competition, they will lose profits and market share in the long run. One solution available which may or may not increase efficiency is to outsource particular tasks to a company that specializes in those particular tasks. For example, if your company focuses on widget production, but 10% of your labor resources are devoted to reminder calls, it might make sense to focus more on widgets, and outsource the reminder calls to Manila where there are companies who specialize in all aspects of the call center business. Knowledge intensive tasks are also more and more commonly outsourced to KPO and LPO companies who specialize in knowledge process outsourcing and legal process outsourcing.

Outsourced — the TV show
Outsourced is also an American television sitcom filmed in Los Angeles that was set in an Indian Workplace fictionally located in Mumbai, India. A catalog based company selling American novelty goods such as whoopee cushions, foam fingers, and wallets made of bacon hires Todd Dempsy from Kansas to relocated to Bombay. Every episode of this hillarious comedy focuses around Todd’s culture shock dealing with Indians and attempting to teach the local Mumbai staff all about American sensibilities and culture.

See NBC’s profile page for the show — Outsourced

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You might also like

See our feed of articles about — outsourced

See our comprehensive definition of — outsourcing — which goes over when and why outsourcing is done, types of outsourcing arrangements (freelance, contract, staff leasing), a detailed look at categorizations of outsourced tasks (BPO, KPO, LPO) as well as a detailed look at 55+ commonly outsourced specialties in the call center, data entry, software and other outsourcing industries.

Is it fair that American jobs are outsourced to India?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/12/25/is-it-fair-that-american-jobs-are-outsourced-to-india-2015/

What is the correct order of steps to screen an outsourced company?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/16/what-is-the-correct-order-of-steps-to-screen-an-outsourced-company/

Compilation of best outsourcing articles:
The best tasks to outsource are not critical or time sensitive
If you invested in BPO employees, what types of tasks would you teach them?
The 2 minute contact rule
more…
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/04/02/compilation-of-best-outsourcing-articles/

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Google’s Algorithm for Blogs is Harder Now

January 10, 2014 by 123outsource
Categories: SEO, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I wrote another article about how Google changed its algorithm regarding how blogs place in search results. Please keep in mind that this change happened in September 2013 and it was very pronounced. I do not do SEO for a living. I just noticed because I track my statistics for my notary blog and outsource blog regularly and train myself to notice things. The first relationship is between how good your blogs are and how you place on Google. The trick here is that a good article is not enough. You need to have incoming links and a way to get seen as well.

Blog tags are a wonderful invention, but are they all they are cut out to be? Using blog tags you can link up lots of blogs to each other in all types of ways based on keyword frequency. You choose tags based on whatever keyword you are trying to accentuate. The problem is that an incoming link is only given credit if several conditions are met:

(1) The link needs to come from a page with similar keywords. If you have tagged certain keywords, then we will assume you have the keyword relevancy. That is easy.

(2) The page that you link from needs to be indexed by Google. If a page gets low traffic, Google might not index it, which means you might get zero credit for an incoming link from that page. What I found is that Google will ignore a page which gets less than about 25-35 clicks per month. This problem wouldn’t affect a larger blog, but for small blogs getting less than 40,000 visits per month, your tags will only do you any good if they are for unusual keywords, or for particular entries which for some reason get lots of traffic. Newer posts that have been recently promoted might get a few hundred visits right away, but your older blog entries might get very little traffic even if your newer posts link to them. My outsource blog is tiny and my tags will not get me much play until I grow. A sad fact of life.

(3) If people actually click on a particular link, the value of the link becomes tremendously bigger. Very few people click on tags, but people would be more likely to click on a link in the body of an article, especially if it were dressed up in such a way that they would be encouraged to click on it. I often put suggested reading links at the bottom of articles and they get clicked on a fair amount, especially if they are highly relevant.

The value of a visit from Google
I noticed that despite how much harder it is to get blog traffic, for each additional click to my blog, I get many additional clicks to my site. Roughly 8 site visits per 1 blog visit. What an amazing correlation! I also learned that visits directly from Google give you much more reward in site visits. How does this work? I think that Google tracks how much traffic it gives you and then rewards you by giving your site higher placement as a result. It is a very helpful cycle, but you need skill to manage this relationship.

What is the solution?
Honestly, I am so overworked, that I make this mistake often — I do not put enough links on my posts until after the fact. Since blog entries on my blogs are generally only popular when they are initially promoted, putting the links on after the fact doesn’t help much. The solution is to pre-publish your blog articles and put as many quality outgoing links to other content as possible BEFORE you promote it. Put lots of good tags, and optimize the content so that you can put more tags as well. You can find creative ways to insert more of your essential keywords into the article to gain relevancy for your keywords.

Google is a wonderful tool. Try hard to master the art of blog promotion with Google. Facebook and Twitter have done miracles for me as well and should ideally be used to promote articles with good tags and outgoing links.

Tweets:
(1) #googleanalytics Google’s algorithm for blogs is harder now. It’s harder to get traffic period!

You might also like:

Social Media: The analytics are deceiving
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/27/social-media-the-analytics-are-deceiving/

The Google algorithm has some serious issues
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/04/the-google-algorithm-has-some-serous-issues/

Bringing Jobs Back to America: How ‘Bout the South Ya’ll?

December 16, 2013 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why do people outsource anyway? Approximately 46% of companies that outsource say they do it in order to save money. For example, in the Philippines, you can get a call center to do a 3-minute outbound call for about $12 an hour; in India, it will cost you about the same once you add in set up charges and find a place where you will have competent and intelligent English-speaking callers; in the Caribbean, it will cost you $15; in South Africa, it will cost between $11 and $16 per hour. But will outsourcing solve your problem if you depend on quality and callers you can trust?

Many firms actually outsource because, in some industries, American companies are too busy to take on new clients or give enough time to clients…and the combination of high prices, inflated American egos, slipshod workmanship, and bad attitudes is too much to palate. Has outsourcing solved these problems? Are workers in other countries more humble, more careful, more diligent, or more polished? Finally, some CEOs may outsource because they have an affinity for the culture (it might be their country of origin, they might have lived there for a time, or they might belong to a religious group that has a presence there) and may choose to give work to that country. For whatever reason, according to one source, outsourcing grew by more than 40% between 2001 and 2009. More than 2 million jobs were outsourced by the U.S. in 2011 alone (a conservative number); however, the numbers are deceptive, and do not include jobs in companies that actually built factories, offices, and call centers in other countries. In that same year, 2011, 53% of U.S. manufacturing companies, 43% of U.S. IT companies, and at least 15% of call centers had “a large portion” (75%?) of their work done outside the U.S. Add to that reports that show, for instance, that Russia’s income from taking on IT outsourcing doubles every year, and we now have an idea of the volume of jobs being outsourced by the U.S.

The reality of outsourcing, however, is that communication is never as good as it might be. Americans have higher standards for communication than other cultures, and it is like driving 40 miles an hour into a brick wall when you discover how low or non-existent the communication standards are compared to yours…or you find out that your “senior programmer” has only six months’ experience…or when, every time you call to find out “what’s going on,” you are put on hold and then the phone disconnects while you are on hold…or when you generally discover how incompetent, inexperienced and slow are the “excellent” staff who have been randomly assigned to your project.
Many U.S. companies that have tried outsourcing in the past few years are now looking for alternatives: in the end, they found that they did not save money but lost money because of jobs not completed or not done according to high work standards. Even though this may have been simply a result of not getting to know the company well enough or not finding the right fit, many companies in the U.S. are now wondering where to find competent, affordable help. Look no further, ya’ll: just mosey on down south of the Mason-Dixon line. In the U.S., the good ole South may be the place to do business.

In our experience, Southerners have an easy manner and a politeness that goes a long way. They try to make you feel comfortable, and will try to come up with solutions that work for everyone. Second, in the IT industry, for example, they have a great work ethic, and take pride in doing a great job. In the South, because the cost of utilities is less and wages are lower than in other parts of the country, “insourcing” is worth looking into. Office space in some parts of the South is as low as $1 a square foot, so companies can afford to work in an office and have a professional staff on board… whereas on the West Coast, for instance, where office space can be $5 a square foot for a modest office, many IT companies have virtual offices or a loosely monitored team of “experts” who claim to have known each other for over a decade but never meet in the office to collaborate and don’t really work for the company. IT developers, for example, are often independent contractors who are not interested in “your dumb project” and are not held to any standards. In this type of company, the business manager is at the mercy of the programmer and really has little control over which clients are accepted and whether or not work gets done or even started at all.

But it’s not like that in the South, ya’ll. It is not hard to find real offices with real employees, a manager who tries to get things done fast…but is likely to be good-natured and may want to go at a slightly more relaxed pace just to get to know you and find out what you really want. Statistically, not only is the price of office space less per square foot in the South, but the cost of labor is less. Although it is still more expensive than outsourcing to India, the superior communication and effort are well worth the difference. Doing business with the most expensive companies in India costs only a bit less than doing business with the South–but the communication and productivity will be a lot better in the U.S.–not to mention the time-zone factor. If you compare the least expensive parts of India to the least expensive part of the U.S. (the South), the U.S. comes out on top. If you look at the relative costs of doing business with India and California, the cost of doing business in the South may be the perfect solution.

For example, South Carolina is among 10 states with the lowest cost of labor in the U.S.–yet is ranked among the top 10 states in terms of business environment. Compare these rates, for example: India, $30 an hour (IT) for a senior developer…but the work often seems to take double the time; $75 an hour (IT) for a senior developer in the South…while in CA, you may pay $150 an hour for roughly the same quality developers. If you are talking about call centers, in Charleston, SC, for example, it is possible to find a call center that will do outbound calls for $25 an hour and will create extremely flexible terms. This is not only less than NY or CA prices ($35-45 an hour for the same number of calls and information), but is better quality–and a better deal, call for call–than call centers overseas that will cost you approximately $15 an hour.

Why? Because it’s not just about the rate they quote you. One of the first things you will find out is that some companies will not guarantee that they will “penetrate” the entire list for this money, and it seems that the level of commitment and feedback on the part of the callers is not as great at that of their U.S. counterparts in the South. In addition, many Americans have been turned off by calls from overseas call centers, particularly when Americans need the caller to inform or explain or reassure. In fact, although there is as of yet no official law requiring foreign call centers to forward calls to a representative in the U.S. if asked, many U.S. citizens have made this request and many companies have a policy of transferring calls to U.S. operators when asked to. And these requests have become more and more frequent in the past few years. Americans are also uncomfortable with the loss of call center jobs to foreign countries. Looking at these issues, many companies have chosen to insource calls to places like the U.S. South.

In 2013, many U.S. companies are already discovering the virtues of “insourcing” and are bringing call center work back to the U.S. Wages of call center employees in many other countries go up as much as 15 or 20% a year; this plus communication issues, security/ privacy issues, poor workforce training, and time-zone issues have made many companies reconsider outsourcing to India or other overseas destinations. According to one report, in 2013, given all the hidden costs of obtaining competent callers, it is about 15% cheaper to use a call center in the South than one overseas. At one point in the last few years, 30% of call center jobs in the U.S. were sent overseas, but now, in 2013, only about 10-12% of calls are made by call centers outside the U.S., according to one source.
These and other factors make the South worth exploring if you want to “insource” to a U.S. company that can take over a portion of your IT or call center workload.

You might also like:

Outsourcing to Russia, hour padding seems to be cultural
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/19/outsourcing-to-russia-hour-padding-seems-to-be-cultural/

5 reasons why you should have your company under one roof
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/04/5-reasons-why-you-should-have-your-company-under-one-roof/

Outsourcing: Build it and they will return

December 4, 2013 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

One of the reason so many American companies outsource their work overseas is that America simply doesn’t have reliable companies doing the work on American soil at any price! If you need custom programming done, there is not a single large company who does .net programming on American soil. There are many in Belarus and India, but not here! What if someone created a huge company on American soil that could get custom programming done for smaller clients? What if they had a location with lower office costs and lower labor costs because they were in Arkansas or Oklahoma. Such a company might actually do well if they were well managed.

Build it and they will come!
OR — Build it and they will return!

All of the companies who are offshoring your tasks to India, Philippines and Russia will be whistling a different tune if they can hire a friendly company on American soil! That different tune is likely to be Dixie if my dream comes true! California and the Northeast are expensive places to do business — they cannot compete for costs with overseas companies. But, land in Texas is cheaper than land in any metro in India. Transportation, cyber infrastructure, and phone lines are also more dependable. Locations in the American Midwest and South have a real chance to compete in outsourcing in the long run. Imagine if someone builds a huge outsourcing mega-center in Arkansas, companies that are outsourcing overseas will turn right around and hire the local company if they are any good!

You might also like:

Philippines is #2 in non-voice outsourcing
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2012/03/29/philippines-is-2-in-non-voice-outsourcing/

Gaining market share or the type of market share
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/07/18/gaining-market-share-or-gaining-the-type-of-market-share/

Outsource: A special economic zone for “Difficult Workers”

September 23, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Have you ever wondered why there is so much unemployment in the land of opportunity? Is it because of outsourcing, automation, or is it the economy? Is it because the government makes it hard to hire people without paying minimum wage, liability insurance, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, accounting, etc? What a headache! No wonder people want to outsource to Manila!

But, there are other reasons why unemployment is so high in America! Difficult workers! Many managers simply don’t know how to deal with difficult workers or don’t have the patience! It also might not be economical for them to deal with these stubborn workers. What if there were special government programs that were specifically designed to help deal with challenging types in the work place? Better yet, what if there were a special economic zone where unemployed people could go where they were guaranteed a job! Not necessarily a job they would love, but at least food on the table! Additionally, these impossible humans would be given some specialized education that would help them conquer their bad habits from within!

Types of difficult workers

(1) The late type.
Some workers are just late wherever they go. Maybe they operate on Middle Eastern time. People are always late in the Middle East you know. Maybe these workers should just pack up and move to Egypt? My solution is to have companies that the government pays to hire ONLY workers who show up late. The entire company could be configured to pay these workers based on productivity and NOT based on when they showed up. Or better yet, in order to gently refine the habits of “The habitually unpunctual”, there could be incremental small penalties for tardiness. A few pennies per minute during their first several months on the program. As time went on, the penalties could slowly increase. It takes months and years to reform bad habits, so let’s give these people a chance in an environment that is engineered to understand them.

(2) The argumentative type
Don’t get me wrong. The argumentative types are often late, and then will argue with you about how it is YOU who are the late one, or how YOU never told them that they had to be there at a specific time. With these types, everything needs to be in writing, otherwise you will lose the argument. But, imagine a company who is forced by the government to ONLY hire argumentative types? It might not be a nice place to work — HEY, IT’S a GREAT PLACE TO WORK — be quiet — no YOU be quiet…. but, they would at least not be unemployed and taking up food stamps. Instead, the government would give the company who hires them extra money as a reward for hiring these difficult people, and money for training them to be a little less argumentative — even though they are not argumentative — even though it is YOU who are the argumentative one and problem need the argue-reduction training more than they do.

(3) The careless type
A zone for these people already exists. It is called India. The entire country caters to careless people. You can’t paint a house in Tamil Nadu without spattering paint all over the walk-ways and the leaves of the trees. Has anyone ever heard of a drop-cloth? If people are too careless to hire, they need help! Special companies could be set up and given some funding by the government if they would just hire these careless types and try to keep an eye on them. Maybe they can learn to not make quite so many blunders with a little guidance!

(4) The missing deadlines type
If you have work that is not time sensitive, you might be able to work with these types of people. Some people come to work on time, but they can’t get any actual finished products delivered on time. What can you do? Special companies would be created to give work specifically to people who miss deadlines. That describes 90% of Americans, so this special economic zone will be a place where you won’t be lonely for long!

(5) Liars and cheaters
Good god. This group is larger than you think. Good luck trying to work with them. Special companies that monitor their workers carefully would be set up to hire these people.

(6) The drama type
Do you know people who are always stimulating, creating, or nourishing dramas in the work place? There is always a problem, or a scare with this type. You have to have a degree in Psychiatry to know how to deal with them.

(7) The slacker type
There are people who come to work on time, but the minute you stop watching them, they slack off. Such people need to be paid by the job. If you pay them by the hour, pay them based on what their productivity was the last month. If they did almost nothing, then pay them almost nothing. Minimum wage makes it impossible to hire such people, so our economic zone will not have a minimum wage. If you are worth $1 per hour, then that is what you get paid!

(8) The not following directions type.
You need to keep an eye on these people 24/7. The minute you stop watching them, they are going off on a tangent. Special following directions exercises need to be given to them to keep them sharp. Following directions is a skill that many of us are not good at. Those who are worst at it need to be helped! Otherwise unemployment will be through the roof.

Jobs? What types of jobs could be given?
Any type of jobs. Just because someone is a difficult worker, doesn’t make them any less intelligent than anyone else. I know tons of very gifted people who are like pulling teeth to work with. They all have trouble holding jobs, but they are all excellent at all of the tasks I give them. So, what gives? Quality of work is only one analytic. Coming to work on time, and getting things done on time is another aspect of work. Manufacturing, programming, teaching, writing, office work, and car repair are examples of jobs that could be dispatched in this zone. Ideally, this Special Economic Zone would have every conceivable type of work, so that the maximum number of people could be helped!

The goals behind this zone would be:
(1) To give jobs to people who might be able to function under specialized supervision
(2) To help unemployed people fix the problems that are within them that cause them to be unemployed.
This would reduce unemployment and benefit society in many ways.

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Special economic zone for insourcing in Oklahoma
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/04/a-special-economic-zone-idea-for-insourcing-in-oklahoma/

A free economic zone in America?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/03/a-free-economic-zone-in-america/

Is it better to outsource to one blogger or build a team?

September 16, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

It might be better to outsource to several part time writers instead of one full time writer. If one drops out, you will still have other writers who are trained and know what they are doing. It is always risky to put your full dependence in a new and untested writer, especially if you might have to go through several until you get someone tried and true who you can use in the long run. It might take you two months, when you are too busy to play games testing out new writers — to find your new writer. Then it might take another two months to get them experienced enough to the point where they can function on their own.

Having only one writer puts you in exactly that position where you will be left high and dry every time someone quits. Having a small team makes more sense. That way you always have a few tested people while you are in the process of testing new people. The momentum of your blog is never compromised in that case. By having a small army or gang, you can test the new writers more slowly, and at your leisure. That way if you get slammed with a huge amount of work and don’t have time to test people for a few months, you will not lose momentum on your blog.

Professional comedy writing teams operate under this principle. Sit-coms generally will have a dozen writers. Some of them quit, get sick, or are busy, and they need a quantity of writers who are experienced on that project to continue the momentum and collaboration. Think about it. We live in the real world Be prepared.

Unfortunately, in real life, if you don’t have a dedicated person who you can depend on for everything, you need multiple backup and redundant resources for each task which is necessary. If you need a writer, an outbound caller, and inbound phone agent, and a database manager, you might need multiple individuals for each task. If you are lucky, there might be some crossover for some of the tasks. Your inbound phone person might like doing a little writing, and your writer might not mind doing a few interviews.

Outsourcing your blog while sipping coffee

September 7, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m reading someone else’s blog about blogging. He says you can outsource your blogging to freelancers and sip coffee while the profits come in. When I read business books written by others, the theme is often how to make money without doing anything. That is the goal. But, in real life, that goal rarely presents itself at the beginning of your endeavor — which is generally the time you would spend reading blogs for inspiration. Sure, once you have outsourced all of your work and have more time, then you might do more blog reading because you have the time to do so. So, what’s the catch?

To develop a successful blog takes years of hard work, and most blogs don’t “take” so to speak. Most blogs never attract mass amounts of regular traffic no matter what the blog manager does. If you do nurture your blog to fruition and have 100,000 visitors per month, you can consider yourself hugely successful. I am nowhere near that level, but maybe one day. I am in niche markets where big traffic is not possible. But, my new blog is a travel blog which is widely popular in all countries — so, that one has a chance.

After you build your successful blog, which very few people will be able to claim to do, then you can think about outsourcing the work. If you start the blog rich, then you can hire others to build it, but if you are building your way to the top like the rest of us (starting modestly,) then you start by building it yourself.

Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to assess the quality of other bloggers, or instruct them in how you want your blogs written. If you hire the wrong people to help you write blogs, you could lose all of your traffic in a few weeks or months. So, before hiring others, assess their work by measuring traffic patterns in your blog while they are posting regularly. You need to take into consideration what happens if your newly hired help quits, or stops caring. You might need multiple tested people to help you out with your blog so that you always have resources. But, if you build your blog yourself, and hire “tried and true” helpers to continue your empire, THEN, you can make money while sipping espressos on your yacht off the coast of the Riviera. Basically what I’m saying is that you can live the dream, but building up to the point where you are riding on momentum could take many years of hard work as well as luck (and good karma.)

Tweet:
(1) Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to assess the quality of other bloggers
(2) Building your blog yourself is necessary, otherwise you will not know how to instruct others to help you write.

Tasty solution to employee turnover: Outsourcing (Apple turnover: Another tasty solution)

September 7, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Do you have a high attrition rate at your outsourcing company? Do you have more employee turnover than you can handle? Sometimes it is better to let an outside agency handle some of your hiring and firing. It makes your life easier, but, can also add a quality of elasticity to your company’s work capabilities.

I remember hiring several companies in India. Every three months, they would give me a new programmer. I didn’t like this. I want to know who I am working with so I know what to expect. But, imagine the hell I would have gone through if I had to hire these people myself. I would lose my mind! It is easier to let these other guys do the hiring and firing, unless you specialize in HR.

Remember, the rule of thumb in outsourcing is:
Figure out what your core capabilities are and do that work in-house
Everything else — outsource, outsource outsource.

When you calculate the cost of a worker, you need to have a formula. Keep this though acutely in your head. The cost of the employee is:

Salary
The office space they occupy
Management Costs
The cost of replacing them if they quit early
The cost of training them
The cost if they damage your relationships with your clients.

This formula clearly shows how it might be cheaper to pay workers more for their loyalty. By the way, loyalty is a word that dropped out of most dictionaries in 2011. Fooling around with new hires could cause you a lot of damage, not to mention what you invested in training them. If you outsourced your HR operation, it might cost you a few hundred or a few thousand to replace a single worker. In my mind it makes sense to remind people that they get a raise every six months whether they deserve it or not — unless they get fired. If your raises are good enough, and you keep a few seasoned senior employees around with salaries to boast of, your attrition problem might go away (by attrition.)

Speaking of employee turnover.
My favorite Tunisian restaurant has a lot of turnover too.
They call these potato and egg turnovers Brik.
“May I have some mortar for my brik please?”

Final Note
Instead of having your employees get fired or quit causing high turnover.
Put them in a large sheet of dough and make a turnover out of them to set an example for your other workers!