How To Manage An Outsourced Team For Optimal Performance
Today, many organisations have teams spread all over the world.
Remote jobs are increasing, and the number of companies that hire freelancers and outsourced services abroad is on the rise. But while there are many advantages to working with outsourced teams, this also poses a formidable challenge. How do you manage and coordinate distributed teams located worldwide? How can various efforts and tasks be synchronized across multiple time zones? It is essential that efforts are not duplicated, and all activities must integrate with each other seamlessly. In addition, all work should be coordinated towards meeting the goals and objectives of the organization.
Also, how do you create trust and make team members connect well with each other? Even those that are located within the same physical office may have issues with this, not to mention those that are thousands of miles away from each other. Finally, how can you ensure that everyone communicates efficiently with each other? The decisions made by team members located far away from each other must be in sync, and important decisions cannot be taken without consulting with all stakeholders that are involved.
The following are 5 tips for managing outsourced teams for optimal performance.
1. Implement a culture of accountability
Make each team member responsible for their jobs and let them be accountable for the tasks they deliver. Also, create an expected delivery time for all tasks and make this public. This will avoid any confusion as to when tasks are supposed to be delivered. Also, you can have regular meetings where every team member reports on their progress. This will make things more transparent and inspire people to strive to be better, so as not to let themselves and their team members down.
2. Create an efficient communication structure
You must make a conscious effort for virtual teams to communicate with each other. Virtual teams do not meet each other physically, so they won’t communicate with each other automatically. Apart from normal group meetings, group chats should be implemented. Skype and other software can be used for group chats. This will keep team members connected with each other and up to date on all developments. In addition, team members can get to know each other if they share regularly in the group chat. Smaller teams within a large team can also have their own groups for sharing work-related materials that are specific to their team.
3. Integrate new team members optimally.
It is important to integrate new members optimally into the team. After introducing them to the whole team, they should have one-on-one meetings with every member of the team. A lot of virtual teams don’t use this approach, but it is a great tool to create a sense of connection and trust between team members.
4. Use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to measure progress.
This involves creating a strategy of goals and objectives that the team will focus on. It is a pointer that will guide all team members and ensure their efforts move towards the right direction. Team leaders will use this blueprint to measure the efforts of their team members and guide each team member. This way, every effort taken by each team member all over the world will align with the objectives of the organisation.
The objectives and key results should be shared with the whole team so that every member of the team will make their contributions publicly. When efforts are made public, everyone will know what other team members are working on, and their efforts can be better synchronized.
Also, all results must be measurable and should be assigned a grade. This grade will help teams measure how well they are faring and will make them more focused on achieving concrete goals.
5. Create documentation, shared in a team database.
The sharing of expertise is important for teams to succeed. Virtual teams can share knowledge by using the cloud and other tools for knowledge sharing. Online repositories will enable both old and new members to access information anytime they need it. Virtual teams can easily gather information, store it, and access it faster than local teams with this method. No matter how many team members leave the organization over the years, this knowledge repository will remain.
Conclusion
These 5 tips can help any organization to manage an outsourced team better, and they can increase the efficiency and productivity of distributed teams. Companies can also appoint someone in charge of using these strategies, and the methods to integrate virtual teams can also be applied to enhance the performance of local teams.
Due to the fact that they are forced to make a greater effort in order to work together, virtual teams can actually be more integrated than local teams. For example, local teams often make little effort to improve communication with each other, while virtual teams must go the extra mile in order to function as a team.
Get in touch today to book a confidential call with our co-founders Kim Lombardi and John Rodgers.
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If you are considering outsourcing and find talent like Karl, start your outsourcing journey today with this e-book.
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What Are the Advantages of Outsourcing Data Entry?
Many businesses are now choosing to outsource their data entry tasks…
As opposed to having in-house teams handle them. This enables companies to place more focus on their core tasks, by outsourcing peripheral tasks. While data entry is often viewed as a mundane activity, it’s actually extremely important for many business operations, and hence must be carried out rapidly and precisely by every organization. Usually, data entry consists of transforming non-digital data into digital data. This takes place through both manual and automated processes. Effective data entry allows for improvement of operations and easier access to information. Most businesses don’t have the manpower to spare for effective data entry. Sometimes thousands of documents need to be processed and their data entered into various software programs.
But even if the manpower is not available, businesses can’t afford to neglect data entry. Because of this, a viable option that is increasingly used is outsourcing. Many companies now choose to partner with professional data entry providers. These data entry providers have qualified personnel to enter data from almost any kind of source: text-based or visual. They handle the extraction and conversion of data, as well as the processing of the data into other forms. Today, outsourcing of data entry has gone beyond a mere solution for cutting costs and saving money. It is now an integral part of a powerful business growth strategy and is used by companies to outgrow their competition.
The following are the key advantages of outsourcing data entry:
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Focus on your core business
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Access to state-of-the-art technology
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Increased flexibility
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Access to experienced and talented staff
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Increased speed of delivery
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Reduced Costs
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Better risk management
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Outgrow your competitors
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Improved data input services
Thanks to data entry outsourcing, organizations can spend more time on their core operations, while allowing professional data entry service providers to handle their data entry. If data entry were to be handled fully in-house, it would be necessary to hire appropriately trained and experienced staff, which takes a lot of time and resources. And once hired, you need to get them set up and trained in their roles. But by outsourcing data entry, you are freed from all of the issues above. This saves them time and resources that can instead be used to focus on your core business. This will increase your turnover rate and allow you to grow faster.
Professional data entry service providers continuously update their technology to the latest tools available. This is their core business and they want to remain competitive, so you are assured of benefiting from the latest technology if you partner with them. It is difficult for most companies to keep up with the latest data entry technologies. In addition to the cost of buying new technology, it is also necessary to train employees on using the new technology. However, when you outsource your data entry, you enjoy having access to the latest technology without the extra cost and effort.
Outsourcing providers can usually adjust their service packages to fit your needs and change it rapidly whenever necessary. This can help your organizations to scale rapidly and gives you more flexibility to customize your services to the requirements of your clients.
Talented staff is rare, and finding and hiring them can take a long time. Professional data entry companies focus their resources on hiring the best data entry staff, since that is the foundation of their business. Therefore, you can benefit from the services of experienced and talented staff without having to hire them yourself, or paying them huge salaries.
By outsourcing to companies that work in a different time zone, it’s possible to speed up the data entry process. Data that your company generates during the day can be processed during your night hours and will be available to your company by the time your next day starts. Companies can thus benefit from after-hour data entry support that allows them to deliver services faster than usual.
By outsourcing data entry, your company can save a lot of operational costs. This is not just because of lower salaries, but also includes labor costs, technology upgrade costs, infrastructure costs, benefits, and others.
When data entry is handled by professional data entry specialists, there are fewer errors, and any errors that do occur are well managed. This allows you to mitigate the risks associated with data entry.
By outsourcing data entry services, a company can leap beyond its competitors who still handle their data entry services in-house. Outsourcing peripheral operations like data entry, bookkeeping, and others is a great strategy that allows your company to scale faster than the competition.
When organizations outsource their data entry services to a reputable data entry provider, the quality of data input services can be increased. This is a result of the data being processed by expert encoders. Data is processed as fast as possible, and the best techniques are used without any reduction in quality.
Conclusion
Outsourcing your data entry services is the way to go if you want to better business focus and achieve your organizational goals faster. You will save a lot of money and you will gain improved productivity, improved ability to compete with competitors, better data security, and a faster delivery of your services.
Get in touch today to book a confidential call with our co-founders Kim Lombardi and John Rodgers.
If you are considering outsourcing and find talent like Karl, start your outsourcing journey today with this e-book.
Ready to Transform Your Business?
Discover how Cybalink Solutions can help you achieve up to a 70% overhead reduction through our Philippine outsourcing solutions. Let's explore how to optimize your operations, lower costs, and increase margins.
Book a free consultation!