Outsourcing
The term comes from the English phrase “outer-source-using”, which means “the use of resources attracted from outside”. In Russia and CIS countries, outsourcing should be understood as the involvement of third-party companies in solving a certain task.
For example, many corporations use the services of:
- ordering food to the office;
- cleaning;
- security of objects;
- transportation of anything;
- repairs, etc.
Small companies most often outsource any legal and accounting tasks, order IT infrastructure maintenance, etc. The main parameter of cooperation in outsourcing is the transfer of non-core functions to another company.
Managed IT Services
Why outsourcing is necessary
Third-party companies are most often used in such situations:
- The company is small and it is financially unprofitable for its management to form a separate division to service a particular system.
- The company is large and has a lot of narrow-profile divisions that do not bring profit, which is badly reflected in the statistics. The management decides to outsource some processes.
- The firm is financially unable to spend money on non-core work, is non-competitive in certain specialties and cannot find the right specialists.
- The company needs to reduce the cost of personnel remuneration or simply reduces the number of employees.
Varieties of outsourcing
Literally any task can be outsourced. Let us consider the most popular types of outsourcing:
- IT. In small companies you can rarely see large staffs of professional programmers and more often people with a minimal set of knowledge in this area are hired. And when it is necessary to solve a more serious task, it is outsourced. Accounting services. Just as in the previous case – not all small firms are not profitable to keep a staff of accountants.
- Just hire employees is not enough, you also need to buy special software, customize it, etc. The way out of the situation – accounting outsourcing.
- Legal services. Almost all companies resort to legal outsourcing, regardless of their scale and profile. After all, it is impossible to find a lawyer-professional, who is equally well versed in all types of jurisprudence.
- Personnel outsourcing. Usually secretaries, lawyers and accountants work with personnel in enterprises. The level of distribution of responsibilities in this approach in 99% of cases leaves much to be desired. HR outsourcing solves this problem.
- Sales outsourcing. Professional sales managers are valued everywhere. Company managers are ready to pay them good money, but the main difficulty is finding such a specialist. And narrow-profile companies that provide outsourcing services in this niche have such experts.