Outsourcing has gotten a bad name in some circles. But, it doesn’t always mean shipping jobs off to China or India. Outsourcing is also a tool that can use local companies to help jump start a business by using them to help make your product or provide part of your service until you can afford to bring these things in-house.
My Tennessean column this past weekend looks at the bootstrapping power of outsourcing.
Bootstrapping operating costs through outsourcing can help owners get to break-even sooner and improve profit margins as the business grows.
Outsourcing is a strategy that can work very well for a start-up and very small businesses. Rather than bear the cost of renting space and hiring a staff, these businesses utilize the excess capacity of someone else’s business to make their product.
Dr. C., I actually had a good idea…we’ll talk about it later but I think I’ve come up with a way to do this.
“..until you can afford to bring these things in-house.”
This implies that in-house is always better, but I feel that’s not necessarily the case. Some jobs are so specialised that they’re better outsourced no matter the size of the company.
For example, many government agencies in Singapore where I come from have outsourced their IT operations to vendors like HP. This way they can control their costs and source for the best vendor.
Hun Boon
http://www.starbamboo.com