Owner: StartOutsourcingNow.com URL:http://www.startoutsourcingnow.com Join Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:47:46 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: StartOutsourcingNow is a blog that provides articles and advice to help people start outsourcing. Site statistics:Click here
Bookkeeping Outsourcing Has Its Eye On Your Bottom Line 2007-11-04 20:33:00 It's all about the numbers; a business is made or broken by the numbers. And without an expert eye on the numbers, no business can survive for long.The problem for many business is that having a full-time bookkeeper on staff is often cost-prohibitive. Full-time bookkeepers mean another salary on the payroll and another health benefits plan to pay for, maybe a 401(k) as well. The unfortunate truth is that many small to mid-sized businesses can't afford to hire that all-important eagle eye on their bottom line.But now outsourcing agencies like ifr: Integrated Financial Resources are offering expert bookkeeping services on an ongoing, seasonal, short-term, and on-call basis, at far more affordable rates than the sundry costs of hiring another full-time staff member.Read why outsourcing bookkeeping isn't just for accountants and accounting firms in this article on BookkeepingOutsourcing Read more:Bottom
How to outsource logo design 2007-11-03 13:01:00 If you're looking to outsource your logo design
you won't be short of options. Your broad options are: (A) Find a provider through a search engine, classifieds site, or outsourcing marketplace directory(B) Buy a package deal on an outsourcing marketplace (C) Post your project for bidding on an outsourcing marketplaceSo which of these options is best? It really depends on whether you want your logo designed quickly, easily, or cheaply.This article will talk you through these options, and then give you some guidance on how much outsourced logo design should cost you.Fastest option = (A) Find a provider through a search engine, classifieds site, or outsourcing marketplace directoryTry Googling "logo design" and you'll get millions of results (as of writing, 474 million, to be precise).Between the search results and the sponsored links, you'll have a wide selection to choose from.For more relevant lists of options, both online classifieds (like Craigslist.org) or directories within out
VoIP and Outsourcing: A Perfect Match 2007-11-01 08:23:00 VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol. Telephone via the internet, basically.A relatively recent innovation that's finally starting to gain its due credence, VoIP helps open up a world of possibility heretofore unattainable by small businesses in a world a corporate globalization.VoIP brings convenience and economy to all businesses large and small in much the same way that outsourcing does. And as the article linked to below points out, the two - VoIP and outsourcing - can be integrated seamlessly to take any business to the next level.Read more at ihotdesk. Read more:Outsourcing
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Benefits of Outsourcing Software Problems Apply to All In-House Tasks 2007-10-30 10:57:00 Check out this gem of an article by Ryan Smith on the benefits of outsourcing software problems. What makes it such a gem is that Smith's cogent, rational arguments in favor of outsourcing software problems applies to outsourcing any and all in-house tasks a small business may need accomplished.Whether it's software, HR, IT, customer service, secretarial, or any other type of work you need done, the considerations are the same, among them: the availability of in-house employees capable of performing the task and the comparative cost of outsourcing the task.Read about the rest of the considerations and benefits in deciding whether to outsource your software problems or any tasks here. Read more:Outsourcing
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Outsourcing Secretaries: It's Not Just for Customer Service & IT Anymore 2007-10-29 12:17:00 In the Money section of today's Guardian Unlimited, the online version of The Guardian, is a piece by Andrew Shanahan about the outsourcing of secretarial work.No longer is outsourcing just for technical services and customer support. Many companies are now outsourcing their secretarial work as well. Is this good or bad for secretaries, businesses, and the local economy? These are the questions Shanahan investigates.In short: outsourcing secretaries is not the shift to be concerned about, offshoring secretaries is.When outsourcing secretarial work offshore, businesses are faced with problems caused by the language and education barrier as well as their workers' lack of available access to pertinent information needed to do the job right (ie medical data for medical transcriptions). UK Businesses can avoid all that by outsourcing to local, UK-based outsourcing agencies, like Moneypenny, a telephone and PA services agency based out of Wrexham.Read more about it at Guardian Unlimited. Read more:Outsourcing
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100 Words for Outsourcing: An Outsourcing Buzzwords Primer 2007-10-28 16:23:00 Just like the Eskimos have 100 words for snow (or so the saying goes), so are there becoming multiple words for outsourcing depending, like snow for Eskimos, upon its constitution.For example: you certainly know already what Offshoring is (even if most word processors' Spellchecks don't yet), but do you know what Nearshoring is? Nearshoring is outsourcing to communities geographically nearby to your own. Similarities in time zones, languages, and cultures, make this a desirable option for some businesses.To learn about more interesting buzzwords born of the outsourcing boom - like Crowdsourcing and Farmshoring - check out The Skinny On Outsourcing
Buzzwords on the oDesk Outsourcing Tips blog. Read more:Words
Survey Reveals Why Some Outsourcing Relationships Fail and How to Prevent It 2007-10-26 08:18:00 According to a press release by Eleanor Winn and Roger Bickerstaff, research conducted jointly by outsourcing consulting firm Quantum Plus and law firm Bird and Bird revealed several key elements that can lead to an unsuccessful and unsatisfying outsourcing relationship.Among these is a clear disparity between the expectations of the user and the service provider. The fierce competition among outsourcing firms and independent contractors also creates a climate that causes them to overpromise and underdeliver, further widening the gulf between a successful and an unsuccessful relationship.To learn what solutions the research proposes to these problems, read the full article at ComputerWeekly.com. Read more:Outsourcing
, Relationships
An Excellent Outsourcing Tool Kit 2007-10-24 17:01:00 Look what I found: http://www.outsourcing-toolkit.com/This site is packed with small business outsourcing resources! It's like a one-stop shop for all the tools you could ever need to make outsourcing a viable alternative for your business.The makers of this fantastic package, explain that their intent is to demystify outsourcing, giving eyes to all those who feel like they're fumbling around in the dark as they blindly explore the potentially-intimidating world of outsourcing.Here you'll find:templates for Service Level Requirements (SLRs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)a Benchmarking Audit Kit that includes a questionnaire and checklistan Outsourcing
Contracta Transition Planand a training guide called the Government Plan - An Introduction to Service ManagementThe Outsourcing Toolkit costs $199, but you can go to the site now and check out sample pages of all these documents for free. Once you take a look at it, you'll probably agree there's no need to reinvent the wheel whe
Outsourcing Is Good for Small Businesses Too 2007-10-23 16:34:00 I just read a great article by Liz Roberts that demystifies outsourcing from being an enterprise only suitable for large, international, multi-conglomerate corporations to a viable way that any small business person can economize. She shows how you can increase productivity and save money by looking to outsourcing agencies and individual freelance contractors alike, both domestic and abroad, to handle various tasks for your business. She lays out the reasons why outsourcing can be so beneficial to a small and struggling business in a competitive environment, and she explains just how to go about doing it, so that you have a positive and profitable outsourcing experience. You can read "Understanding how outsourcing can help your business" at 1888articles.com. Read more:Outsourcing
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Outsourcing your recruitment 2007-09-29 06:24:00 While Aliaxis isn't the kind of company you might describe as a SME with 12,000 odd employees, the tale of how they outsourced their recruitment across their 8 business units does make for interesting reading.Key points of note include that Aliaxis made a point of using a recruiter (ResourceBank) with whom they had a solid existing relationship, that they began with a three-month trial before establishing a new business unit staffed solely with the ResourceBank people, and that the end result was clear cost savings and faster hiring.Check the case study out at Contract Journal UK:http://www.contractjournal.com/ Articles/2007/09/26/56327/ recruitment +focus+outsourcing+ let+them+ do+the+ jobhunting+ for +you.html Read more:Outsourcing
Outsourcing direct versus outsourcing via an outsourcing marketplace 2007-09-03 16:08:00 You've thought it through and decided to give outsourcing a try. So where to start? This posting will help you decide between your broad outsourcing options, contracting direct and contracting via a marketplace.Outsourcing direct or marketplace?The short answer is "it depends". Contracting a provider direct is best for outsourcing processes, and marketplaces are best for outsourcing projects.The long answerIf you've got a single piece of work with a defined output and timeline - for instance you need a logo designed or a website coded - then that's best called a project. If you're looking to outsource some ongoing work covering some specific responsibilities - for instance you need your payroll managed or customer service delivered - then that's a business process.Outsourcing your projectIf a project is what you've got, then a marketplace is the best place to start your experience with outsourcing. By "best", we mean "easiest, most cost-effective, and most reliable". Marketplaces Read more:versus
Tips for Outsourcing Success 2007-11-09 17:56:00 Outsourcing can be the best new decision your business ever made. It can, however, also be the root of disaster if handled improperly. Fortunately, we can all benefit from the trial and error of those pioneering businesspeople who've outsourced before us, and learn from their mistakes.The lines of communication in outsourcing must be open, and it must be two-way. There must be a coordination of efforts and a balance of trust between client and outsourcer in order for the relationship to work.To learn other important tips for ensuring success in your outsourcing endeavors, read this informative article on How to Outsource Effectively Read more:Outsourcing
, Success
Outsource HR with PEOs: Professional Employer Organizations 2007-11-08 14:57:00 Human Resources is a tricky business. If handled poorly it can cost your company dearly. But handling your HR needs well by going the traditional route- hiring trained and experienced HR staff - could also cost your company a great deal more than you can reasonably afford.Enter the Professional Employer
Organization, or PEO: an outsourcing agency devoted solely to human resources and related administrative duties, such as payroll, worker's compensation, and employee benefits.Many small businesses are discovering the convenience and economy of contracting a PEO to hire their employees, thereby becoming the official employer of recordLearn more about how PEOs can take a financial and administrative burden off of you and your business by reading about the newly published guide to Professional Employer Organizations
: the ABCs of PEOs Read more:Outsource
New Source for Meeting Outsourincg Needs Online 2007-11-07 16:46:00 In the spirit of sites like Guru.com and eLance.com, the internet now boasts yet another source for companies large and small to get all their outsourcing needs met online.ESalesGuru.com is an online platform for connecting businesses with screened and approved experts to whom they can outsource their internet marketing tasks, including: * blogging, * affiliate marketing; * search engine optimization (SEO); * search engine marketing (SEM); * social media; * lead generation; * and more!Read a detailed and impartial analysis of this new service at The Alpha Marketer Read more:Source
, Needs
Local Companies Benefit from Outsourcing Too 2007-11-12 22:29:00 It used to be that outsourcing and offshoring were considered synonymous. But more and more, a bevy of factors - the declining U.S. dollar against the Euro and America's sagging economy among them - are leading to domestic companies receiving outsourcing contracts previously sent offshore.In the November 9, 2007 issue of Newsday, Daniel Wagner reports on Hailo, LLC, a company based in Holbrook, Arizona that produces the ladders used for the towers built into wind turbines. Hailo used to import all their parts from Germany, but has of late found far greater benefits - including Empire Zone tax breaks and the ability to hire non-union workers - in outsourcing their parts instead to a Long Island, New York company.Read about their decision and its impact in greater detail in: Outsourcing
Rolls Back Read more:Local
, Companies
Billion Dollar CIO Gives Top 10 Outsourcing Tips 2007-11-12 22:13:00 Talk about learning from the best. Steve Phillips is CIO of Avnet, a global technology communications company based in the U.S. that generates nearly $16 billion a year. And today he blessed all of us in the business world with the gift of his experience.Outsourcing
, he points out in the November 10, 2007 issue of InformationWeek, is fundamentally an issue of people. Whether you outsource, insource, offshore: however you manage your business, Phillips says that your key focus must be the effect of your decisions on your team.From setting benchmarks to performing quality assessments to remembering who's in charge, although Mr. Phillips' advice is centered around IT (Information Technology), his revelations are universal, and will benefit any businessperson in any industry considering outsourcing any of their in-house tasks.Read all of Steve Phillips' 10 Outsourcing Tips Read more:Dollar
, Billion Dollar
Fun with Outsourcing 2007-11-15 19:26:00 Want to take a little break from work (or a big one), and have some fun? Then stop for a moment and consider how many people you know who are starting to outsource parts of their personal lives for the same sorts of convenience and economy that your business seeks from the same practice of outsourcing?Do you, for example, pay someone else to shovel your walk? Or walk your dog? Or pick up your mail, dry cleaning, groceries, or children?Well, this holiday season people across the nation are taking the outsourcing of personal chores to a whole new level, outsourcing their holiday shopping and their greeting cards writing. Is that something you would consider?What personal tasks would you like to outsource, if you could? James Lileks, a writer and editor for the Star Tribune, is compiling answers from people like you to this very question. To read about this fun and unscientific study, and to participate yourself, read: Outsourcing
Holiday Chores - er Joys
Leading Firms Make Bold and Promising Predictions for the Future of Outsourcing 2007-11-15 19:09:00 IQ Backoffice is a leading outsourcing firm that handles accounting-related business process outsourcing (BPO). Today IQ Backoffice announced their predictions for the outsourcing industry in 2008 based on recently released findings from research conducted by EquaTerra, a leading BPO research firm.Such findings from the research include a rise in outsourcing demand for the 3rd quarter of 2007 among 51% of those interviewed. And such predictions based on the research include outsourcing of individual accounting tasks as opposed to entire accounting function.To read more of the bold and promising findings and predictions for the future of outsourcing, read the MarketWire Press Release Read more:Outsourcing
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4 Steps to Outsourcing Success 2007-11-15 17:07:00 InformationWeek is chock full of outsourcing information this week. In the second article this week worthy of linking to from this blog, InformationWeek presents a short and sweet 4 step plan for outsourcing work in a way that works for you.Though brief, this article is not to be taken lightly, as it takes the complex and potentially overwhelming subject of outsourcing and breaks it down into its 4 key elements. Learn a bite-sized, all-purpose formula determining whether outsourcing is right for your business, identifying a partner, and negotiating a contract.And what's the 4th step? Read the Outsourcing
Action Plan to find out. Read more:Success
Outsource Search Engine Submission 2007-11-23 20:04:00 Here's a tip any business of any size in any industry can benefit from:Outsource
your search engine submission!It's such a brilliant idea, I wish I'd thought of it first. To succeed in business these days, you have to have an online presence. But right after most businesses sink a sizable portion of their budget into building a stellar website, they founder, unsure how to properly and effectively market it.Any conversation on the benefits of outsourcing, therefore, wouldn't be complete without broaching the subject of internet marketing. To find out how search engine submission outsourcing agencies are taking the lead in taking businesses down the fast track to online success, read this article on WHIR Read more:Search
, Engine
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Call Center Checklist Gives Outsourcers An Easy Guideline 2007-11-20 16:10:00 A recent posting on the Call Center
Consultant blog, targeted at people who run call centers and aiming to teach them ways to ensure success can help anyone seeking to outsource to a call center achieve success in evaluating potential providers and picking the best one for the job.The posting is called "5 Tips for Every Call Center", and breaks the elements of success for every call center down to 5 key components:Value CreationPeople DevelopmentBusiness DevelopmentMotivation and MoraleRewards and RecognitionFind out more about what is meant by each of these qualities, and learn how to identify them in any outsourcing provider you're considering contracting, here at Call Center Tips Read more:Checklist
New York Times Examines the Ubiquity of Outsourcing 2007-11-25 20:54:00 In the Small Business section of the November 14, 2007 issue of the New YorkTimes
, an article appears about the tremendous surge in outsourcing by individuals and small businesses to Virtual Personal Assistants (or Personal Virtual Assistants, take your pick) both within one's own country and offshore.The article examines the widespread popularity of this practice among small to mid-sized businesses, sole proprietors, and other lower-budget operations and reveals some of the craftier and more creative outsourcing services some far-think entrepreneurs have already devised.Read all about it in The New York Times Read more:Outsourcing
Outsourcing ICT: It's Not Just For the Big Guns 2007-11-25 20:29:00 Purchasing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as a managed service is now accessible to the little guys too. In fact, experts now reveal that outsourcing ICT successfully has absolutely nothing to do with the size of one's company.Some even argue that medium-sized businesses, already more easily able to adapt to fluctuating market conditions, can benefit more from outsourcing ICT than their larger counterparts as it gives them an instant quantum leap into managing a vast array of tasks they could never afford to manage in-house. Outsourcing
ICT allows small and mid-sized businesses to enjoy the benefits of full-scale ICT departments without running, staffing, and maintaining them on-site full-time themselves.The bottom line: outsourcing is as good for small business as it is for big business. To learn more about this empowering revelation, read the article on iWeb
How to Outsource SEO 2007-12-06 20:44:00 If you've decided that DIY SEO
is not for you, then you're looking to find the right partner to outsource SEO to. First off, some red flags to watch out for: companies that advertise "Guaranteed 1st position on Yahoo" or "Guaranteed top ten rankings on Google" or other such claims tend to use black hat techniques and spam to accomplish their feats;many internet marketers and webmasters try to pass themselves as SEO professionals when really their expertise is limited to internet marketing and web development;the lowest bidders are usually amateurs or questionably proficient outsourcing partners (individuals and companies) from India and elsewhere outside the US and UK who can afford to lowball all other freelancers and outsourcing partners but fail to deliver. Before beginning to question who to outsource SEO for your business, you'll want to take several factors into consideration, namely: what industry you're in; how big your company is; the size of your marketing budg Read more:Outsource
Outsourcing City Services: Good for Cities, Good for Business 2007-12-04 16:30:00 The Mayor of San Diego recently announced plans to outsource a number of city services, such as roadwork, trash collecting, and maintenance of traffic lights, sidewalks, and storm drains.A controversial move seen as a threat to city workers, the voters of San Diego approved the plan by a wide margin. Clearly, this is because they see that outsourcing city services is not only a boon for the private companies to whom the city will be outsourcing its services, but for the people of the city themselves, who will benefit inordinately from a program of managed competition that forces service workers to prove they can do the most efficiently, effectively, and economically.Once taxpayers elsewhere see that outsourcing city services saves them money and improves the quality of their lives too, they are bound to pass similar measures in their cities.Read about Mayor Jerry Sanders' managed competition plan on NBC.com Read more:Outsourcing
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How to Outsourcing Copywriting 2007-12-06 20:34:00 As with obtaining the services of any other business professional, for success in outsourcing copywriting you must perform your due diligence. Finding prospective copywriters is easy. Finding the right copywriter for your needs is a little more complex. To find prospective copywriters, you can Google "Freelance Copywriter" or you can go to any number of online services that connect companies with outsourcing professionals, including: Guru.comElance.comGetaFreelancer.comScriptLance.com On any of these sites or sites like them, you can post a project for prospective copywriters to bid on, or you can simply peruse the candidates' profiles on your own. Whichever you decide, as you examine the profiles of prospective copywriters, browse their portfolios, review their resume, identify their areas of expertise (both in genre, writing style, and subject matter), and look for references. Once you've assembled a list of prospects, it's time to contact them to have certain key ques Read more:Outsourcing
5 Unusual Outsourcing Trends 2007-12-04 12:30:00 A common theme in this blog has been that outsourcing is no longer strictly the realm of big corporate entities, that individuals and small to mid sized businesses alike can gain huge value from outsourcing.As a result of this, we've been finding all sorts of odd and innovative ways that outsourcing has been applied, a whole host of tasks that businesses and everyday consumers both have taken pleasure in outsourcing. And of course, we're not the only one's noticing this.Consider this article in Entrepeneur Magazine, highlighting 5 Out-Of-The-Ordinary OutsourcingTrends
. An example is #4 - voip-ing ahead your next fast food order (like to Wendy's) to call center that forwards the information to the franchise nearest you.Read the article for more, and learn among other things what the term "crowdsourcing" means.
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