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Step by step guide on the process you should go through when thinking about and beginning outsourcing

Explains 10 things that everyone needs to consider before beginning outsourcing

Saving money isn’t the only reason to outsource – it also allows companies to spend more time on strategic initiatives and moving the business forward

How to outsource is just as important as WHEN to outsource. Read the link above for tips.

Detailed piece from a man in the know

How outsourcing is transforming the way we work

Reasons for outsourcing and what to outsource

Practical advice for businesses considering outsourcing

A checklist to use when outsourcing computer applications / programming

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2. Use a combination of both Skype, Instant messenging and email to get your point across. Usually an email is a good starting point then your employee will follow up with questions via Skype or an instant messenger.

3. Use proper English and avoid local slang or idioms when communicating via email. These can be misunderstood or not understood at all.

4. Remember that you may be unwittingly privy to more information than your employee is. Be careful not to overlook important facts that are common knowledge to you but to your outsourced employee may be crucial parts of the puzzle that build the big picture.

5. Make sure you prioritise work clearly for your employee so he/she knows what to do first.

Where previously, you employed someone in your office to do the task, the work will now be taking place in another office thousands of miles away. From now on, you will use a combination of email, Skype and Instant Messenging tools like Yahoo! Messenger.

Communicating and explaining tasks by phone or by email requires a slightly different skillset than when you’re explaining a task to someone face to face. When you’re face to face, it’s easy to gauge the other person’s understanding of the task by their facial expressions and reactions. When you outsource and you’re explaining tasks by email or instant messenger as you often will, you don’t have the benefit of this because the communication is one-way: it’s a monologue not a dialogue.

So how do you get around this problem?

Well clearly this is not a problem that can’t be solved or the multi-billion dollar worldwide market for outsourcing would not exist today. In fact, by recognising that this problem exists; it is already half solved as it will force you to approach the communication from a slightly different angle. Acknowledging a problem is, after all, the first step in solving it.

Let’s take outsourcing PHP development as an example. PHP developers (and other programmers of course) are used to approaching things in a logical manner and like a task description sent from a client to read from top to bottom in the logical, systematic way they are expecting. When giving a task to a developer, it’s absolutely imperative that you are 100% clear in your communication. You have to look over what you read and ask yourself 2 very important questions: “Could this be interpreted in any other way than the way I intend?” and “Is it complete?”. If the answer to either of those is “No” then you need to go back and edit what you’ve just written until the answer to both is “Yes”.

The worst thing that can happen when you send work to your developer when you leave the office at night is that when you come back in the morning, instead of having a nice working web page, you have an email from the developer saying, “Sorry sir, could you please explain this more clearly?”.

By being clear and complete first time around you will keep your outsourced developer working productively, efficiently and happily.

For more information about avoiding communication problems, have a look at this link

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