Outsourcing is the new mantra being chanted together by the fortune 500 elites and midlevel entrepreneurs alike. But not every time we are successful in reaping the benefits of outsourcing. I am putting in a little piece advice about what to avoid when planning to outsource your job to an outsourcing company or freelancing individuals.

We know it all about making profits. Ethics do matter but its still money first. But if you take care of the following 5 points before outsourcing and while outsourcing chances are that you will make more money or save a lot of overhead expenses this way.

1. Don’t outsource a task if you have clueless about it.
If you get an order for Search Engine Optimization while you are a web designing company and you don’t know what SEO is all about. Don’t just blindly outsource the order to a company in India expecting some profit. You would not be in a position to explain the offshore team what exactly to do. You might end up in delivering a service that is seriously sub-standard. This way you will be loosing way more than what you earn through outsourcing. Your reputation is at stake. Either get some basic idea about the technology (job) or you should have a consultant who can guide you through. Mostly the cheapest rates are attained when you train the outsourcing team to do a particular bit of work for you. But in this case you can’t even dream of doing it.

2.Don’t spend too much time training an outsourcing team if you are not looking at a long term association.
I guess it’s a straight forward situation. If it’s a short contract and you are probably not going to use their services again, then don’t waste your resources on building teams and training them in offshore locations. This is definitely not cost effective. But on a long term aspect it can help you boost profits.

3.Big Companies are not always the best – Consider Individuals
    Big companies have many other things to cater to, apart form the core work.
Take for example facility management tasks, employee insurance, interior decoration etc. They all come for a price and it all translates into your cost. So unless your job is too important and too costly to be given to an individual don’t go to them. There are many reputed freelance workers who can do the same job for you at a good rate. They don’t have to pay big taxes either so you can be sure of a good profit margin.