This document discusses outsourcing tasks for small businesses. It outlines why businesses outsource tasks like to gain competitive advantages and focus on core competencies. Specific tasks that can be outsourced are listed, from graphic design and web development to customer service and transcription. The document then provides tips on finding contractors through online marketplaces, managing projects, paying contractors, and potential follow-on work opportunities. Case studies of logo design and translation outsourcing are also mentioned.

1. Outsourcing for
small businesses
RISE Austin, May 2013
Dan Crean

2. Outsourcing
St Expeditus - Patron of
emergencies, expeditious
solutions, against
procrastination, merchants, navig
ators, programmers, people who
have to deliver work or products
on a tight schedule
…and victims of outsourcing.

3. Why Outsource?
Core competency
Competitive Advantage
Faster
Cheaper
Better!
Lower risk
More variety

4. Kinds of tasks to outsource
One-off projects vs
continuing
Expeditionary
marketing
Tapered backward
integration
Time-consuming
“drudge” work you
can’t get employees to
do.

5. Kinds of tasks to outsource -
specific
Logos, graphics, illustrations, background articles, data
entry, bookkeeping, transcription, website design, email
campaigns, market surveys?, marketing plans?, fashion and
interior design, architecture?, product design?, financial
plans, programming/code, research, fact checking, virtual
personal assistants, proofreading, video editing, event
planning?, tagging photos, cropping photos, customer
service?, translation, simple animation, payroll
processing, statistical analysis?, project
management?, shopping, mailmerge, transcription, website
maintenance and updating

6. How good does it
have to be?

7. How does skill level and
confidentiality affect choice?
Difficult
Easy
Proprietary
Generic More Likely to Outsource
Less LikelyLess Likely
More Likely to Outsource
Am I contradicting
What I said earlier?

8. Specifications
• Set out must-haves.
• Give contractor some
creative flexibility
• Do not impose overly
tight deadlines
Managing your project
• Break it up into small
projects
• Don’t necessarily get the
same contractor for all
phases.
• Minimize risk
• Derrick Sivers says “take
just the first milestone, and
treat it as a complete
project.”
http://sivers.org/how2hire

10. Choosing a bidder/contractor
Large marketplace platforms have rating systems
What is everybody is rated 5 stars?
What is the value of related experience or formal qualification?
Why are medical doctors better writers than people with
journalism degrees?
Leap of faith! Hire more than one contractor for same project.
Derrick Sivers recommends “hire at least two different people “
and “Some will definitely go bad. Just expect it and don't let it
upset you”

11. Local Services
Craigslist, TaskRabbit, Jellifi – for events,
Zaarly, more coming on line all the time

12. General Purpose Marketplaces
Elance, Odesk, Guru
Huge marketplaces. Thousands of contractors.
Great services for employer. Pay with credit card. Recourse if
contractor tries to cheat you. They handle all 1099 stuff. You
just show cost as an expense.
You can request bids from specific contractors or put project out
for competitive bid.

17. Other marketplaces or suppliers
(some)
• Textbroker (articles, 4
levels of price/service)
• Rev.com (transcription)
• Amazon mechanical
turk (many)
• Fiverr (wild!
Everything $5!)
• Logo marketplaces:
99designs, stocklogos.com
, brandcrowd.com…
• Design contests!
• Gets you a wide choice
of designs for
reasonable price
• Crowdspring.com, logoar
ena.com, forums.digitalp
oint.com/forums/contes
ts.94/

19. Project Management
• Dropbox
• Google docs
• GotoMeeting/WebEx
• Evernote
• Asana
• Zoho - $20/month
• Basecamp - $20/month and up
• Hipchat
• Trillian (IM)
• Email
• Hire contractor to manage project?

21. Paying Contractors
• Elance, Odesk, etc. allow credit card payment
• Paypal, Dwolla
• Bank wire transfers?
• 1099 – a headache?
• Contracts – another reason to not use craigslist.
• Copyright/IP – YOU OWN IT!

22. Follow-on work
Is this a good idea?
Pluses and minuses

23. Case Studies
• Translation – pro company vs odesk
• Logo design

24. This presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/dancrean/rise1
Resources: http://www.dancrean.com/rise