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Tips For Successfully Outsourcing Services To Freelancers Or Outsourcing Service Providers
from: Parveen PanwarSmall businesses and entrepreneurs always benefit by outsourcing
their services to professional service providers or freelancers
as this saves them time and money. The money saved due to
outsourcing can be effectively and successfully utilized to
focus more on strategic and core business functions.
This article will help small businesses and entrepreneurs in
making the right decision in choosing the correct service
provider for them and managing their projects.
Tips for Finding and Choosing the Right Freelancer or Service
Provider for your Services
1. Where to find a Service Provider
You can find service providers or freelancers through online
outsourcing marketplaces. All you need to do is submit your
requirements. Service providers whose skills match your criteria
will submit bids/proposals. Alternatively, you can search for
providers through search engines and directories - this step is
more time consuming.
2. Confidentiality Agreement
If your requirements contain some confidential information, then
do not give all the requirements to the service providers. You
can give them a short description of your requirements and ask
them to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before you provide
them all the information.
3. Provide clear Scope, Schedule, and Deliverables
Clearly define the scope, schedule, and deliverables for your
project. It is recommended that you give service providers as
much information as you can in order to allow them to submit
realistic proposals with reasonable rates.
4. Evaluate Proposals
Evaluate service providers' proposals against your evaluation
criteria. An evaluation criterion is a measure that you will use
to evaluate proposals, e.g., experience in similar projects,
approach and methodology, price, etc. Always find the key
differentiators between all competitive proposals. Feel free to
ask them any questions to learn more about them. One of the
important questions can be about what kind of support will be
available during and after the project is finished.
5. Review Portfolios/Sample Work and Feedback from Previous
Clients
Short-list the service providers whose proposals satisfy your
evaluation criteria (cost, approach, etc). Check their
references and get feedback from their clients. View their
samples and completed projects or portfolios to understand their
quality standards and work capability. Do not choose a service
provider based solely on price: you need to take overall quality
apart from price into consideration.
6. Choose a Service Provider
Finally, compare the competitive bids to make the right decision.
What next after you have chosen a Service Provider
1. Service-Level Agreement
It's good practice to get everything in writing from the service
provider, who will provide the agreement and project plan. The
agreement must have the project plan attached which outlines a
project's scope, deliverables, timeline, and payment terms. This
will help in avoiding disputes during the project. You should
also ask the service provider to give you a list of
deliverables/milestones with tentative dates of completion.
Ownership of work must be stated and included in the agreement.
2. Releasing Payment
Service providers always demand advance payment. This should be
20-30 percent. The rest of the payment should be dependent on
agreed deliverables. Only release payment when a
deliverable/milestone is met.
Tips on Managing your Project
1.When a project starts, introduce yourself or your team members
to the development team. Specify meeting, reporting, and
feedback timings.
2.Project scope, deliverables, and price can change during the
course of a project: it is highly recommended that all these
changes be agreed upon, documented, and signed by both the
service provider and you.
3.If your service provider is located offshore, the greatest
challenges of successfully managing offshore projects are
overcoming differences of language, culture, and geography. All
the processes must be well documented to avoid any confusion.
These processes may include: resolution of problems, reports,
feedback, discussion timings, etc.
4.Depending on your flexibility, ask the service provider to
submit daily or weekly progress reports to see the actual
performance in comparison to the plan initially submitted.
5.Make sure the service provider understands how you intend to
use the deliverables that they are agreeing to provide. It must
be clear about who owns the final work.
6.Save all information from the chats, emails, messages and
discussions between you and your service provider. It may be
helpful in resolving disputes.
About the author:
Parveen Panwar is founder of http://Go4outsourcing.com
(http://www.go4outsourcing.com), an online freelance outsourcing
marketplace to find freelancers/outsourcing companies. Freelance
web developer, freelance software coders, freelance software
developers,freelance web designer register at with us to
showcase their services.
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