It’s a big challenge when you set out working as designers either in a design agency or as a freelancer. Making the most of your time efficiently is the main requirement to be successful in design business but it becomes hectic when one person has too many roles to look after for example a freelancer. A common way to deal with such a difficulty is to outsource your work. The work can be of any type, development, marketing or the design work itself.
When one wants to outsource wok to others, there are always some valid reasons behind it and there are also some reasons going against it. In our article today, we aim at highlighting the pros and cons of outsourcing so that it helps anyone who is thinking of outsourcing.
OutSourcing for Designers: to Be!
1. Sharing the Efforts:
Whether you have your own design agency or are a freelancer, looking after other aspects of your business is as critical as designing itself. One key of running a successful business is that you handle all the aspects at the same time and give them equal attention. You may earn by providing design services to your client by operating as a one-man business but if you outsource your work to others, you may be earning money from other’s works as well.
2. Chances of Increase in Income:
Naturally, when you outsource work, you are increasing the potential of higher income. When you have outsourced one project, you can have increased efficiency and can take up another projects or portions of it. In case of the income, if your cost of having the project done is lower than what you are getting, it’s all easy profit for you.
Although outsourcing increases your expenses to some extent, it also gives you more time where you can spend it doing some other work and earn. Or that time can be spent on marketing, advertising, reaching out to new clients or other administrative work.
3. Greater Efficiency:
Like anyone who is running his own business, you will have but little time for all the things you want to do for your business. Outsourcing work can allow you that time you are seeking to do something more. Increased efficiency means that you spend a little money to get yourself your free time in which you can make a lot of money.
4. Lets You Figure Out Your Strengths:
Freelancing asks you to do everything on your own; no matter you’re good at it or bad. Through outsourcing, you can give away that task which is not really your strength and in turn increase the overall efficiency. Some business owners take help from the virtual world to take care of the administrative work while designers who are not very adept in coding and development can outsource it, allowing you the time to do creative work.
5. Lesser Need to Turn Away Clients:
Freelancers and people running their own designing agencies are often seen turning away one or two potential clients just because their hands are full at the moment. Outsourcing is a help in that situation as it gives you plenty of time to take up more projects as the present ones are out of the way. Also, if you lack in certain area or don’t have a desire to work on some project but it can get you good money, then you can take help of the service providers without doing the work yourself.
6. Allows Segmenting Projects:
Now outsourcing does not mean that you have to give away the entire project. In web design especially, you have the option of breaking the project up in segments that can be separately worked on and giving over one or more of them. Taking the example of coding, there are a lot of people out there who can do your job in lesser costs so while you work on other aspects of the project, you can hand over the coding to the service provider. It may not be the ideal situation for every project but designers suggest it can really help boost the efficiency as you are doing the project yourself entirely while only taking help in developing one small aspect out of it.
OutSourcing for Designers: Not to Be!
1. Quality of Work at Stake:
Either your client knows that you are outsourcing work or not, your reputation can get into jeopardy. That is one of the main reasons why designers don’t want to outsource as it can affect the quality. There are a lot of people who can do the outsourced job to yours and yours client satisfaction but there are also those who might not turn up with the quality expected from the project and finding those right kind of people is not an easy job.
2. Inclination Towards Administrative Work:
It is true that outsourcing can help get you some free time but as it happens, you will be paying more attention to the administrative work rather than the work where all your income is coming from. Moreover, you will increase your responsibilities in the areas of record keeping, interviewing people and supervising the activities and work and it will affect your design work in return.
3. Third Party in Client Communication:
When layers are added to the communication process, it becomes more challenging. When you outsource, you still have to act as a bridge for communication between the worker and the client and that sort of makes you a middleman. Plus, it also increases the chances of misunderstandings and miscommunications. And this is the part you cannot pass it onto someone else as you have to stay in the loop.
4. Lesser Control Over Deadlines:
If you want to keep your client happy, you need to meet the deadlines. When you outsource the project or even parts of it, you are losing control over the deadlines. This is also a main reason that people watch out for before outsourcing.
To cover this up, you can set a shorter deadline for the service provider hiring so that you still have some time even if he turns up late work. This also gives you time to review the work and settle any discrepancies.
5. Finding the Right Person:
Outsourcing is effective only when you have the right people working for you. However, unfortunately, it’s not always possible or easy to find the right kind of people for your work. It will require extra work and interviewing a lot of people, perhaps passing through some bad experiences as well. At some point, you’ll realize all that is taking as much time as it could have taken for you to do it yourself and that becomes a downside. Moreover, instability of the team hired may also have damaging effects.
Final Word:
Just like any other aspect of human life, everything has its pros and cons and cannot be decided for sure whether it’s right or wrong. Same is with outsourcing of Designers. While you cannot figure out what the absolute is, you can always make use of your judgment and see whether outsourcing has more pros in your situation, project type and work or more cons. You need to weigh both in accordance with your goals and your business and take the decision and steps accordingly.
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