Outsourcing is obviously a hot topic in business these days and has become big business in itself. Becoming more popular in recent years is outsourcing of business processes or activities in which your organization may not feel is a core competency or that can be performed faster and (possibly) cheaper by an organization that excels in that activity. Some examples of such activities include shared service units like HR, accounting and IT.

Here some tips about outsourcing, if not all of them, could apply to any outsourced arrangement to help ensure a successful and as-painless-as-possible implementation.

1. Strategy
Understand why you are pursuing an outsourcing engagement. Hopefully, it goes beyond simply trying to reduce costs by taking advantage of cheaper resources elsewhere.

2. Be Involved in the Hiring Process
You understand your business and expectations the best, so why not make sure your outsourced partner has the benefit of your insights as part of this process to help ensure success?

3. Understand the Pitfalls of Outsourcing
You’re doing that right now! By reading this article on tips for successful outsourcing you are already doing your due diligence so that you can understand where possible problems may occur and how to be proactive in ensuring success.

4. Knowledge Transfer
To help ensure a shorter ramp-up timeframe and maximum understanding of our industry, products and business strategies.

5. Early On-site Representation
As I mentioned in tip #4, we brought over several of our new off-shore team members, but one thing that really helped facilitate all of the project management of this difficult and fast-paced implementation process was an on-site project or program manager. Now, this may not be as necessary in some outsourcing engagements and you will need to verify if it is necessary for your situation realizing that this position it is often pricey.

6. Measurement and SLAs
While there are many more tips that come to mind, I think metrics and service-level agreements (SLAs) is a good one to round out this list. Your outsourced team may be the most talented in the world and work hard and long hours, but if they are not providing the value, quality, or product you expect, it’s a losing endeavor.

I wish you luck in your future outsourcing endeavors and I hope you find these insights useful.