It is not uncommon to any employee or employer that the trend for business to earn more profit and cut back on the expenses nowadays relies heavily on outsourcing. It’s no longer limited to Customer Service or Human Resource functions but even IT services are now being outsourced as well. IT outsourcing, especially in the Philippines, is recently gaining a lot of attention from various industries both foreign and local who are interested to improve, expand, and make their businesses more profitable by utilizing the power of the worldwide web. However, just like any other business ventures, engaging in IT outsourcing also has some risks and one (and the most critical) of which is the possibility of not being able to get the return of investment you have forecasted to hit and the quality of service you expected to receive. To prevent this from happening, there are 5 tips on how you can keep IT outsourcing on track:

1. Communication

Behind almost, if not all successful business partnerships is a perfect communication between both parties. This thought also applies to having a successful IT outsourcing venture. If the client and the provider can engage in a comfortable and yet professional discussion, it would actually help them proceed with their business smoothly. It would also make working together less stressful and easier because both parties can freely discuss with one another their concerns, needs, and demands about the project without hesitation. Lastly, if the client and the provider have a healthy communication then doing the other tips would just naturally and effortlessly follow.

2. Budget

It’s very important that in engaging into outsourcing, the client should be honest with his/her ideal budget to his/her provider. He/she should not make reservations as to declaring his/her planned budget for a certain project because most providers are actually willing to adjust and be flexible to the client’s monetary capacity without sacrificing the quality of service they sought for. Knowing the budget before the start of the project would actually be very beneficial to both parties because they would be able to forecast the possible expenses and profitability of the said project.

3. Goals

To determine the success of a certain IT project, the client and the provider should establish the project’s goals among any others. They should be able to create feasible and realistic goals so both would know if their partnership or their collaboration is actually beneficial to both of them or not. By identifying these goals, both parties would have a clear framework to help them start their project on the right note and later on, a concrete reference which they can use as basis that the work has been successfully completed.

4. Test-out

One of the most risky things that people do when they engage in outsourcing is the choice to trust one’s money and/or one’s skills and labor to a complete stranger. Worst case but realistic scenarios like not getting paid for your work or not being able to get your money’s worth are all possible risks one takes whenever you decide to engage in this kind of business arrangement. Not only that, there are also instances where the partnership just doesn’t work at all; the client and the provider just don’t fit right with each other. Thus, to eliminate all these from happening, or at least to lessen the damages these risks might caused you and your business, it would be wisest if both parties would try to test the waters first and actually see if things would work out for the better or worst. The client should try to request for samples of/or previous works done by the provider first, and if s/he finds it to his/her liking, then he can start to engage in a very small project just to see if they would actually clicked. If everything goes well after that, then it would be much safer to proceed with a larger project the next time since the risks have been mostly if not completely eliminated.

5. Professionalism

In outsourcing there’s no employer – employee relationship, there’s only Partnership. Thus, both parties should treat each other as equals and therefore should keep the professionalism at all times. Regardless if it’s a person-to-person (micro-outsourcing) or company-to-company (macro-outsourcing) outsourcing, it still does not change the fact that the relationship one has with the other is that of a partner and not of an employer-employee unless clearly defined otherwise from the beginning of the engagement.

Keeping all this 5 tips in mind and seriously applying it whenever you plan to do IT outsourcing can definitely guarantee a comfortable and a profitable business venture.