Outsourcing for small businesses

RISE Austin, May 2013Dan Crean

Outsourcing

St Expeditus - Patron of emergencies, expeditious solutions, against procrastination, merchants, navigators, programmers, people who have to deliver work or products on a tight schedule

…and victims of outsourcing.

Why Outsource? Core competency

Competitive Advantage

Faster

Cheaper

Better!

Lower risk

More variety

Kinds of tasks to outsourceOne-off projects vs continuing

Expeditionary marketing

Tapered backward integration

Time-consuming “drudge” work you can’t get employees to do.

Kinds of tasks to outsource - specificLogos, graphics, illustrations, background articles, data entry, bookkeeping, transcription, website design, email campaigns, market surveys?, marketing plans?, fashion and interior design, architecture?, product design?, financial plans, programming/code, research, fact checking, virtual personal assistants, proofreading, video editing, event planning?, tagging photos, cropping photos, customer service?, translation, simple animation, payroll processing, statistical analysis?, project management?, shopping, mailmerge, transcription, website maintenance and updating

How good does it have to be?

How does skill level and confidentiality affect choice?

Difficult

Easy

Proprietary

Generic More Likely to Outsource

Less LikelyLess Likely

More Likely to Outsource

Am I contradictingWhat I said earlier?

Specifications

• Set out must-haves.• Give contractor some

creative flexibility• Do not impose overly

tight deadlines

Managing your project

• Break it up into small projects

• Don’t necessarily get the same contractor for all phases.

• Minimize risk• Derrick Sivers says “take

just the first milestone, and treat it as a complete project.” http://sivers.org/how2hire

Choosing a bidder/contractor

Large marketplace platforms have rating systemsWhat is everybody is rated 5 stars?

What is the value of related experience or formal qualification?Why are medical doctors better writers than people

with journalism degrees?

Leap of faith! Hire more than one contractor for same project.

Derrick Sivers recommends “hire at least two different people “and “Some will definitely go bad. Just expect it and don't let it upset you”

Local Services

Craigslist, TaskRabbit, Jellifi – for events,Zaarly, more coming on line all the time

General Purpose Marketplaces

Elance, Odesk, Guru

Huge marketplaces. Thousands of contractors.

Great services for employer. Pay with credit card. Recourse if contractor tries to cheat you. They handle all 1099 stuff. You just show cost as an expense.

You can request bids from specific contractors or put project out for competitive bid.

Other marketplaces or suppliers (some)

• Textbroker (articles, 4 levels of price/service)• Rev.com

(transcription)• Amazon mechanical

turk (many)• Fiverr (wild!

Everything $5!)

• Logo marketplaces:99designs, stocklogos.com, brandcrowd.com…

• Design contests!• Gets you a wide choice

of designs for reasonable price

• Crowdspring.com, logoarena.com, forums.digitalpoint.com/forums/contests.94/

Project Management• Dropbox• Google docs• GotoMeeting/WebEx• Evernote• Asana• Zoho - $20/month• Basecamp - $20/month and up• Hipchat • Trillian (IM)• Email• Hire contractor to manage project?

Paying Contractors• Elance, Odesk, etc. allow credit card payment• Paypal, Dwolla• Bank wire transfers?• 1099 – a headache?• Contracts – another reason to not use craigslist.• Copyright/IP – YOU OWN IT!

Follow-on work

Is this a good idea? Pluses and minuses

Case Studies• Translation – pro company vs odesk• Logo design

This presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/dancrean/rise1

Resources: http://www.dancrean.com/rise