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Outsourcing To Offshore Service Providers – 10 Things That You Need To Know!

maneetpuri — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:35:15 +0000

Offshore outsourcing has come to become a valuable business strategy for companies and organizations to cut their expenditures and at the same time enhance the quality of their processes. In fact, in this economically handicapped business environment, offshore outsourcing has come to become an indispensable strategy for businesses. Not only does it allow to run processes at a significantly lower rates, but also offshore service providers employ their professional skills to enhance the quality of the processes.

Outsourcing is also the perfect solution for handling temporary work overloads, reduce fixed costs, speed products to market, simplify distribution, provide more or better service to customers and steer ahead of the competitors.

The key to successful outsourcing is – Planning. Before you start your outsourcing endeavor, you need to strategize effectively and have a clear plan of action. Also you need to find reliable and professional service providing companies for the same. Here are some tips to strategize your outsourcing project.

1. Define Clear Objectives
Your outsourcing project should have a clear goal or objective. Although offshore outsourcing provides you with a range of benefits, you at your end need to be clear about what you wish to accomplish by outsourcing the work to third party service providers. Therefore, think through the scope of the project and define clear objectives that you want to achieve through it.

2. Identify the Requisite Skills & Expertise
Identify what kind of skills and what all resources would you need to complete the project that you outsource. This will guide you in choosing the most compatible service provider.

3. Draft an Outsourcing Agreement
Offshore outsourcing is no different from other business alliances. Therefore, you need to adhere to certain business policies as well, first of which is creating an outsourcing agreement. An outsourcing agreement is a contract the outlines the basic roles and responsibilities of both parties, milestones for the project, ownership rights and so on. This will not only ensure that the works get done as per the plan but also prevents any future issues and differences between the clients and service providers.

4. Set Realistic Expectations
Offshore outsourcing is a profit-minting business strategy. However, don’t set unrealistic objectives for your project. Instead, evaluate the various aspects of the project and set realistic time tables for the same.

5. Maintain Regular Communication
Communication is a key aspect of any offshore outsourcing project. In fact, communication is what drives the project and ensures that everything is being done properly. So, make sure that you communicate regularly with your service providers and monitor their performance and time. Don’t be over-intrusive but keep yourself informed about what is happening at their end.

6. Insist on Documentation
Ask your service providers to document their work as and when they proceed with it. This will give you a recorded information about what was accomplished and when.

7. Ask for Copyrights
If you are hiring service providers to create original work for you, make sure you ask them for all copyrights in the work. You would require unrestricted license to use and modify work that has been completed for you whether or not you remain with the same vendor.

Maneet Puri is the managing director of LeXolution IT Services, a premier it outsourcing company based in India. His company specializes in delivering a range of Knowledge Process Outsourcing services includes data entry services, data mining services and virtual assistant services.

Offshore Outsourcing – How To Choose A KPO Services Provider

maneetpuri — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:17:22 +0000

KPO is an emerging field in the offshore outsourcing arena. Focusing on strategic processes and applications, KPO services help businesses with an extensive range of business support and administrative support functions. However, in order to make sure your offshore outsourcing project runs well, the first that you need to consider is choosing your service provider. The work of your service provider and your relationship with them is what ultimately defines the success of your project.

That is why you need to be extremely cautious while choosing your service provider. Here are some things that you will need to consider:

Communication
Communication is often a great challenge in offshore outsourcing projects particularly when the client and the service provider come from different backgrounds altogether. They might have different languages and different work cultures as well, not to mention the time zone differences. All these factors hinders communication which ultimately effects the project. So make sure that the service provider you select is fluent in English (or any other language you communicate in) and find out their hours of availability when you can contact them.

Case Studies
Ask your service provider to show you some case studies of the work they have previously done. This will give you an opportunity to assess their quality of output and expertise. Once you know their work style and level of expertise, you can be sure if the service providers understand your needs and requirements or not. Also, you would know if they have the relevant processes, technology and staff to handle your project.

Stability & Credentials
before you sign on the dotted line, you need to be totally sure that your potential outsource partner is financially secure. There shouldn’t be a case where the company closes down mid way of the project and you are left nowhere. Also, try finding out about the qualifications and work experience of the directors and managers so that yo know the company is being led by professional people.

References
Request your service provider to furnish you with some reference so that you can find out more about the quality of service they provide, how timely their deliveries are, and get an idea about their customer support services. You will also get insight into issues such as the level of responsibility of your service provider and their turnaround time.

Track Record
Last but not the lease, find out everything you can about the outsource partner on the web. Just a quick search on the internet will give you a fair idea about their experience, the different types of businesses they have handled, the kind of services they have previously provided and the number of projects that they have successfully completed. Also, try to find out if they have particular experience in delivering services of the same type as your business needs. This will be an added advantage!

Once you are convinced above all the above mentioned factors, then yo can go ahead and finalize the deal. Remember, successful outsourcing projects are based on seamless relationships between the client and the service provider.

Maneet Puri is the managing director of LeXolution IT Services, a professional IT services company that deals with a variety of administrative and business support functions like data entry, data processing and data management.

Outsourcing Opportunities In Times Of Crisis

maneetpuri — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:54:47 +0000

Economic crisis, global recession, layoffs, corporate downsizing, bankruptcy! These are the words that rule the media in present times. Industry experts are busy assessing the damage and corporate businesses are finding it difficult to survive in the instable market scenario. Businesses across the globe are facing difficult times and it’s not unnatural for small businesses to feel vulnerable and assume that it is a dead time to make sales.

Dire financial situations do pose a difficult challenge. However that does not mean there are no opportunities to sell your products and services. In fact, the situation can be actually profitable for you if your market your services the right way. The trick is to make your offerings match the current requirements of the industry.

What Happens in Companies
Companies and government agencies across the world are laying off their employees cutting down costs. But that doesn’t mean they can stop their critical business functions performed by the lost staff. Company budgets become strained and they have less money to allot to business activities. However, that doesn’t mean they can do without the activities altogether. That would be the closure of the business altogether. Therefore, in times of financial crisis, companies undergo a rampant reorganization process and make use of external resources and services to make sure their business processes run smoothly without any hiccups.

What Can Small Businesses Do?
Small businesses need to make the best use of this situation in order to sustain themselves and make business. If the regular sales of their products and services decline, they need to market it thus that it becomes appealing to the current requirements of companies of the industry. Consider ‘repackaging’ them altogether so that outsourcing companies and government agencies find them as a cost effective replacement for all the cost cutting measures at their end.

Opportunities for Offshore Outsourcing
Because of the easy availability of cheap and efficient labor in offshore boundaries, western countries will increasingly indulge in offshore outsourcing activities to keep their businesses profitable. Foreign companies will use the products and services of small businesses in offshore countries to compensate for the lack of in-house employees. In fact, in the current financial distress its only outsourcing that can save both the Outsourcer and the Outsourced party.

Reasons for Outsourcing
Foreign companies have a number of advantages by outsourcing business activities to offshore boundaries. Here are some:

• Lower cost of business processing as compared to maintaining in-house staff

• Reduced overhead costs like employee benefits, office space, equipment costs etc.

• No costs regarding over-time

• No loss of revenue

• Availability of expert labor

• Enhanced quality of output results

Apart from these advantages, foreign companies would also be considering choosing a service provider that best suits the needs and requirements of the project. Here are some qualities they would be looking for:

• Flexibility to match the time constraints of the project

• Capability of matching the quality standards of the project

• Ability to coordinate between both the companies

Maneet Puri is the managing director of LeXolution IT Services, a top notch offshore outsourcing company in India that provides an extensive range of KPO services. Its services include internet market research, virtual personal assistant and various data processing and management services.

Data Entry Services For Online Forms – Why Are They Important For Your Business

maneetpuri — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:51:46 +0000

Online forms have come to become a popular feature of many websites on the World Wide Web. Many webmasters include form boxes on the pages of their website where visitors and customers can fill in information. Online forms perform a series of functions that facilitate communication between two or more parties, ideally the webmaster and the audience.

• They gather visitor comments and whatever that they need to communicate.

• They acquire personal, professional or business knowledge about visitors.

• They can receive data entry information from online users

• They obtain crucial information for online cash transactions and funds

Data Processing for Online Forms
Online forms are very important to gather important consumer information crucial to your business. Based on these facts and figures you can formulate strategic marketing and promotion solutions that would be more effective. Therefore you need to store the data contained in online forms well so that you can use it effectively in the future.

This is where data entry and data processing services come to play. Instead of composing lengthy and comprehensive emails for online transactions, it much easier to hire data processing services to take care of the data stored in form boxes. Moreover, most online forms adhere to conditions specified by the receiving party which minimizes errors that may creep up when information is filled up. For example, if the form box asks for your name, it may refuse to accept numerical and special character entries. This negates the risk of blatant errors.

Creating Online Forms
A thorough knowledge of HTML coding and know-how of using PHP database is what you need to create efficient online forms. And if you score zero on both the fronts, there are still many freelance programmers on the Internet who can help you with the process. You just need a set of great tools and good methodologies; you can develop very stable online forms.

Benefits of Online Forms
Online forms facilitate easy communication amongst users, particularly the webmaster and the website visitors. It gives an outlet for them to express their opinion and let known their needs and requirements. Moreover, with the information that is supplied to online forms, the webmaster or business owners can get better insight into the psychologies of their audience. This lets them formulate effective marketing strategies and take powerful business decisions that would reap good benefits.

Online forms also make for an easy way to enter information. This is because specific information is filled out under particular heads and this eases out the processing functions later on. Also, with a sorted display of information, it becomes easier for the webmaster of other concerned parties to compare and analyze points across different forms.

Data Entry Processes
Processing information in online forms using data entry and data processing services require minimal effort. However, the task tends to be monotonous and time consuming. This becomes a reason for errors to creep in. Data entry and data processing requires high level of attention and speed of performance.

Hiring data entry and data processing services from professional and experienced services providers makes sure that expert professionals handle your work and ensure that all the data is entered and processed efficiently.

Maneet Puri has been in the knowledge process outsourcing industry for over 10 years of his career. His heads LeXolution IT Services, a premier IT outsourcing company that specializes in tasks like data entry, data processing and data management services.

Beat Recession Blues – Tips For Effective Online Marketing

maneetpuri — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:42:10 +0000

The global economic crisis continues to have severe impact on business across the world making them adopt desperate cost cutting measures. And one of the major changes that come in business strategies is a cut back in marketing and promotion campaigns. While this may seem like a sensible business decision, in the long run it may harm your business.

Here are 5 online marketing tips that will help you face the recession blues.

Take your Business Online
The credit crunch is an especially bad time for companies when business comes to a standstill and investments become an additional cost as well. It gets particularly expensive to carry out regular business proceedings at their usual pace. However, it is a good time to take your business online and invest in a website.

A website not only portrays the online face of your company on the World Wide Web, but it also acts as an efficient alternative sales channel. Your customers and niche audiences can browse through your website and acquire information about your products and services.

Optimize your Web Presence
Having a website is not enough. To make sure your website works for your business and performs as a powerful sales channel, you need to get it noticed by the Internet population. And to make it popular on the web, you need to invest in the search engine optimization process for a website.

Search engine optimization ensures that your website ranks well in the search engine listings and therefore gets more traffic. Increased traffic towards your website translates into more exposure and therefore greater business opportunities.

Take Marketing Efforts Online
One of the most successful marketing practices on the World Wide Web is e-mail marketing. It is not only cost effective but also makes sure that you are communicating with members of your niche audiences. The two crucial aspects of e-mail marketing are:

• Database expansion
• Message delivery

Build a contact database that lists contact details i.e. email addresses of members of your target market, your existing customers, past clients and associates and potential sales points. Then make sure you send out regular emails to them. It could be either your company newsletter or just an email mentioning about new developments at your end. The basic aim is to make sure that you remain fresh in the memories of your audiences and they propagate information from their end. By keeping them informed about your products and services, you can be sure they will turn to you in case they require any of the products and services that you offer.

Promote your Brand
Online presence also allows you to promote your brand name on the World Wide Web. Make sure you create your presence in social networking communities, popular industry forums and discussion joints. This will not only give you an opportunity to get in direct touch with your audiences but also promote your brand name among the masses. Be an active participant in online activities that exhibits your expertise and establish your reputation as an industry expert. This is will attract lots of sales and business opportunities.

Extract Benefits from Market Conditions
Because of the credit crunch, currency rates have gone down significantly. However, this could be a boon for this could be a boon for offshore service providers. Use the situations in your favor and make the best out of it.

Maneet Puri is the founder and managing director of LeXolution IT Services, a top notch web development company based in India. His company specializes in providing professional website design services to its clients across the globe.