A lot of businesses have been in a position whereby they have had to think about alternative ways of hitting their targets and satisfying the demands of their customers. Agencies in particular are often inundated with orders that they can’t say no to, usually because of an ongoing relationship with a key customer or client that they daren’t risk losing, or for financial reasons. Losing major or high-paying customers can be highly detrimental to business success both in terms of the bank balance and businesses reputation. Therefore, when hiring new staff to fulfill the demand is out of the question, outsourcing becomes the best (and sometimes only) option.
However, this in itself poses further complications, as it’s never as easy to organise people working outside of the business, as it is to keep an eye on those sat in the office with you. With deadlines to hit and standards to meet, contractor management system & services are often the most effective way of organising those performing the outsourced tasks and ensuring that your clients stay happy.
There are a number of reasons why a company might outsource work, ranging from the previously mentioned financial worries to ensuring that you meet the quality requirements set out by your clients. Sometimes agencies receive orders for work that they are not necessarily skilled enough to do themselves but rather than turning down the work, they might employ ‘expert’ help from someone who knows the field and is able to do the job on their behalf. There might be quality issues within the company due to in-house staff being overworked or under pressure to meet other deadlines. So rather than take on extra work and cause standards to slip, they choose to outsource the work to someone who has the skills and time to get it right and to a high standard.
Managing and organising external employees such as freelancers and contractors can be a difficult balancing act, but the implementation of modern software can take a lot of stress out of the situation. When you allocate any work to any employee, either full-time, part-time or freelance; you do so with the knowledge (or hope) that they’re going to be able to complete the task to the best of their ability, according to the deadlines given whilst meeting all of the specifications set out. You would expect the people working in your office to provide you with detailed and ‘live’ updates on the progress of the campaign, and thanks to modern technologies and systems you can now enjoy that same clarity with the people you outsource your work to.
The key to the overall success of any outsourced work is communication, and contractor management systems make this much easier than trying to talk by phone or email, which may not always be possible or be time consuming. Clear, detailed discussions are required to make sure that everyone working on the project is on the same page and working to the same specifications so that there are no problems when the work is sent. The system will allow both parties – the company and person performing the task(s) – to document their progress, ask questions, upload files and discuss the project to make sure that everything is running as smoothly as possible, the expectations are clear from both sides and concerns are addressed at the earliest opportunity making the whole process as smooth and efficient as possible resulting in timely project fulfillment and most importantly, a happy client.