How to Monitor the Performance of Outsourced Teams

How to Monitor the Performance of Outsourced Teams Back office outsourcing allows access to skilled and qualified people for specified jobs and improves productivity.

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Outsourcing is a good business strategy to improve efficiency, minimize costs and focus on core competencies. Back office outsourcing to a reliable BPO service provider allows access to expertise and productivity. When businesses start expanding and are loaded with many projects that require special skills, businesses resort to outsourcing. Outsourcing helps business to maximize use of external resources and provide tailored solutions that make business processes less cumbersome and increase revenue.

Although outsourcing offers many advantages it comes with many challenges like rushing to outsource in the absence of a good business case, difficulty in implementing an efficient outsourcing arrangement etc. The client seeks better service, often at lower costs, than it would get doing the work itself and the vendor wants to make a profit. That tension must be managed closely to ensure a successful outcome for both client and vendor. Therefore businesses should always monitor outsourced projects. The following are some of the tips suggested by 12 members of Forbes technology Council to measure the success of the individuals or teams handling their outsourced projects.

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Identify whether they are delivering what they said- Stephanie Roberts, Sunrun: Tracking “say:do” helps to measure success from outsourcing. This can be showcased via OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and shared among all. If the development team is unable to deliver what they promised then your organizational objectives and desired results cannot be met.

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Monitor sprint velocity- Ryan Chan, UpKeep Maintenance Management: Tracking sprint velocity should be standard practice in your engineering team. One of the biggest drawbacks in outsourcing to remote teams is poor communication and by tracking sprint velocity you can bridge the gap and hold the team together.

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Check whether they can speed up- Kishan Patel, Kunai: The essence of outsourcing is looking for external talents and it needs time to acquire the context around your business and what they’re building for you. The ability of the external resource to grasp the context and get productivity quickly shows that the external partner is best suitable for you organization. Make sure that you provide enough time, otherwise it can lead to problems.

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Daily meetings are good- Nacho De Marco, BairesDev: Daily meetings help business owners to prioritize and distribute tasks and align themselves with the delivery schedule.

The work is adjusted as required and revised and corrected against client feedback. This helps the team and client to have a better management of the project and it also ensures efficient and fully optimized results.

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Automation is a must- Fred Voccola, Kaseya: Companies should measure managed service providers (MSPs) on their ability to work as an extension of the IT team and their ability to meet service-level agreements. By adopting automation and with the power of integration, MSPs can provide value to enterprise and boost overall productivity.

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Make sure that the work aligns with company objectives, Dan Stuart, Bidvine: Outsourced projects should align with the organization’s objectives and every outsourced development project must have an internal owner with smart objectives.

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Consider the cycle time- Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster: Cycle time refers to the total time that elapses from the moment work is starte on an item and tracking this metrics helps you to set realistic and clear expectations for your outsourced developers.

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Transparency and communication is important- Marc Fischer, Dogtown Media LLC: Good relationship with your outsourced developer helps to set clear expectations. Having a point of contact on your side who has frequent communications with the team you’re managing, and having the ability to see how tasks are progressing helps to have transparency.

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Set correct milestones- Alexandro Pando, Xyrupt Technologies: It is difficult to find a good partner. It is the duty of the company to handle the project efficiently and it requires a different approach. Setting appropriate milestones and deadlines is a good measure of how the relationship can go. Begin the milestone with something small and then evaluate the work.

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Use standard measurements- Tarek Alaruri, Fairmarkit: It is important to ensure that all development teams are being measured consistently. Make sure that the features are delivered on time within the expected tolerance for quality, all expected unit tests and quality-assurance processes being completed to satisfaction.

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Measure the risk burndown- Christopher Yang, Corporate Travel Management Outsourcing projects comes with complexities and so risk management is important. Risk

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burndown is a great metric to be tracked and revisited periodically so companies can proactively measure the rate at which risk exposure decreases over time and fittingly apply any mitigation strategies as necessary.

The era of outsourcing is not going to end any time soon. But there are not many non-core activities left to outsource in mature outsourcing industries and markets anymore. Therefore, businesses in these markets are starting to push outsourcing’s boundaries into more core and advanced business areas, such as idea generation and innovation. In the year 2020 outsourcing will spread out to new areas. The following are some the changes that can be expected by 2020.

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New outsourcing will challenge internal limits: Pushing outsourcing to advanced areas requires overcoming structural constraints and pushing internal limits without giving up controls over the strategic direction of the company. Organizations that can successfully identify new value creating set ups in advanced business areas will have an advantage in the year 2020.

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Innovation and idea generation is important: To meet the new realities facility and service management providers should increase their innovation and idea generation capacity. At present the majority of service providers are not capable of providing this service due to no economic incentive to provide innovation when service providers are bound by contract and secondly, the business in general is not willing to pay for advice on innovation.

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Emergence of experienced economy: In an experienced economy the economic value resides in experience and in other immaterial attributes. This creates new pathway for service innovation and market opportunities. Customers will demand more outsourcing service related to design, aesthetics, culture, storytelling, values and experience. These are immaterial in nature and entails a greater focus on service design and the user experience for existing offerings. This type of client-centric approach, with particular emphasis on the emotional journey, will be essential. With more significance given to the wellbeing of organizational employees, new organizational wellness will be demanded by the customer.

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Outsourcing areas become more specialized: As technological advancements are rising at rocket speed, the domain of outsourcing will expand to new service areas, creating new

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market opportunities for both the customers and service providers. New service opportunities will emerge for customers where information and data constitute the primary economic asset. Large volumes of data with integrated storage, analytics and application will drive the efficiency, quality and personalization of products and services.

Back office outsourcing allows access to skilled and qualified people for specified jobs for better quality business processing and also improves customer satisfaction and revenue. Business process outsourcing company also ensure privacy and security with specialized security processes and work to provide a competitive advantage to the business.

www.managedoutsource.com

(800) 670 2809