As your business grows, so will your workload. When you find yourself stretched to the limit doing everything yourself, it’s time to start outsourcing certain tasks to contractors. This will free you up to focus on the growth and direction of your business. The first step is to determine which tasks to outsource. Look at things that take up an inordinate amount of your time on a daily basis that someone else could easily do and/or one-time projects that an expert could do at a higher quality than any one on your team could do – call center duties such as customer service and telemarketing, tech support, office management and accounting.

After you’ve decided on the tasks to outsource, it’s time to think about hiring contractors. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a Request for Proposal (RFP), which is a document that invites potential contractors to bid on outsourced services. This sample will show you the format and content of a typical RFP. Use it as a guide when writing your own RFP.

Next, you’ll need to find contractors. The best place to look is on the Internet. Popular sites include:

• Elance – find highly qualified professionals in fields such as admin support, sales and marketing, finance and management, and tech support. Post your job listing and individuals in that particular field will bid on the job. This is a great way to find work on demand.
• OutSource Connect – this site offers accounting and bookkeeping services online. These bookkeepers replace the need for in-house accounting and can also be hired on a part-time basis. Everything is done online daily to keep your books current, which saves you time and money.
• Map Call Center – provides outsourcing services for your call center. Map Call Center can handle your incoming calls, manage all calls, and gather data for data and trend analysis. Each call is handled with a high level of personalization and their services are available 24/7.

Finally, after you’ve found a contractor to fulfill a particular task, you will want to have them sign a Work-for-Hire Agreement. This document states that any work done by the contractor is within the scope of employment and is thus owned by the company. CopyLaw has an example of what a Work-for-Hire agreement should look like.

Tips:

• If you outsource work to individual contractors, pay them after the service is delivered to your complete satisfaction. This will ensure that you are getting what you asked for in your RFP.
• Make sure that you own the work by requiring contractors to sign a Work-for-Hire Agreement.
• Make sure that your trade secrets are kept confidential. Consider requiring contractors to also sign a Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA), which restricts them from sharing information outside of the company. IPWatchdog offers samples of four different NDAs.
• Reset passwords after the project is complete. This is simply to ensure that everything within your business remains secure after the contractor has completed his or her specified duties and is no longer in your employment.

Resources:

• If you’re ready to start outsourcing some of the tasks in your business, check out Entrepreneur’s article on the pros and cons of outsourcing. It covers such things as why, when and what you should or should not outsource. Also, refer to a basic list of pros and cons on the Cath Lawson website.
• TechRepublic offers 10 keys to successful outsourcing. Not only does it provide compelling reasons to outsource, these keys can also help you develop and maintain a solid outsourcing partnership.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under 8. Build Your Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.