Increase Your Company's Efficiencies While Reducing Your Employees Workload

We’ve all experienced it – too much work, not enough time or resources to complete it.  Day after day passes, the work doesn’t slow down but your timeframes become shorter and shorter furthering the stress of the looming workload

All companies, start up to conglomerate, experience this same situation.  They’ve got work they can’t get to given the circumstances of their business.  Usually it’s…

• Don’t have enough time to complete all the work we have
• Don’t have enough resources to complete the work
• Don’t have the right resources to complete the work
• Work isn’t mission critical, so it gets shelved for other more important work

We can all agree we’ve seen this first hand and very well may be living it now within our current companies. The key question then becomes, “How do we address the ‘too much work, not enough [blank]’ commonality we all share?”

First, we need to assess the work in question and is it mandatory to keep close to the chest?  Meaning, are we the only ones who can do the work?

If your answer is:
NO – “the work can be done by someone else”; we should begin looking for alternative means for getting the work done via our supply base or strategic partners.  First, review your existing base of suppliers and their capabilities to see where work can be sent out.  Second, identify firms which provide outsource services.  Many times the word ‘outsourcing’ is used as an all encompassing description for service providers that offer project or work package support, often which can be done onsite with the client just as easily as offsite – which would be the traditional method of outsourcing.

YES – “the work can only be done by our organization”; we should review the matrix of resources versus project loads.  Undoubtedly there are resources within the organization that aren’t working at full capacity and or are assigned to projects which aren’t immediate.  The trick with this approach is it may not satisfy the situation long term, often times when we try to keep things in house all we do is push off the situation to a later date.  If that doesn’t work, test your bias on ‘the work can only be done by us’. 

If you are in fact going to consider using an outsourcing or consulting firm to support you in your work projects be sure to follow this simple three step process to ensure you’re picking the right partners:

1. Location – it should never be understated, working with outsourcing firms which are local provides loads of advantages, cost being a major factor as you don’t have to pay for out-of-town travel expenses; this also helps ease potential communication issues or unnecessary time spent dealing with language barriers or fixing work after the fact due to said barriers
2. Flexibility – consulting firms that offer flexible services, tailored to your specific needs are always advisable to utilize; remember – it’s your work and your way, not vice versa; also, they should have a multitude of ways of approaching your projects, not a one size fits all approach
3. Understand Your Business – stay away from paying someone else to learn your business/ product or industry; consulting firms that have been there and done it before will know what’s needed and can step in quicker making measurable impacts faster

Key Take Away:
Sometimes the best business decision we can make is deciding what work we want to do [internally] to increase our capacity and efficiencies while outsourcing work to suppliers or service providers which specialize in project work.  In turn, this means we can focus on the mission critical work, that we enjoy and are great at doing while giving someone else the work and or projects we can’t handle or don’t want to deal with.
 
Action Item:
Utilize the below decision tree diagram (yes, it’s overly simplified) to help you determine if the work you have in question should stay internally versus would benefit from being handled by an outside source.

Are you looking for an outside services firm to help you with your projects? 

If so, our company Square-1 Engineering, would be happy to speak with you about your needs.  Check us out and let us know how we can help by clicking HERE.