Micro outsourcing has the potential to transform how SMBs operate. But what is micro outsourcing and how can SMBs gain from it?

What is micro outsourcing?

Unlike traditional outsourcing, which involves mega deals and mega players, micro outsourcing (or micro sourcing) allows small and medium businesses (SMBs) to outsource their work to highly skilled freelance workers or independent businesses (service providers) based locally, nationally or anywhere across the globe.

What are the benefits for your business?

Micro outsourcing potentially allows SMBs to gain process efficiencies, and cost savings of 50 to 70%, which is far higher than the 20 to 30% typically demonstrated by national and global outsourcers.

Other benefits include:

• Ensures the deployment of competitively priced resources

• Allows "on demand" access to skilled resources

• Allows greater focus on core operations

Thus micro outsourcing shares some of the key benefits of outsourcing.

What can be outsourced?

Activities include technical writing, copy writing, logo design, virtual assistance, document translation, product design, SEO, scientific research, data entry, web site design, bookkeeping, tax preparation, report writing, market research, event management and mobile app development. As can be seen, micro outsourced jobs can cover a wide range of business activities.

Moreover, it allows jobs of relatively small duration or cost to be outsourced, which is of enormous value to SMBs, as such jobs do not meet the consideration criteria normally set out by the national and global outsourcers.

How to get started?

Popular job boards include monster, hotjobs, careerbuilder, craigslist and indeed. And jobs can also be placed on social networking sites like twitter and Facebook. However, these sites are not optimised for micro outsourced job ads or those of freelancers.

There are, however, specialised sites for micro outsourced jobs and freelanced services. On these sites, you’ll specify your requirements but you’ll receive real-time bids unlike with job boards. And with some sites, you’ll also be able to invite service providers to bid on your jobs, and submit jobs so that only invited ones can bid. And with these sites, freelancers present their services not their CVs, which may contain job experiences and skills irrelevant to your particular needs.

Summary

Unlike outsourcing, which can involve mega deals and mega players, micro outsourcing allows small and medium businesses to gain process efficiencies by outsourcing to highly skilled service providers based locally, nationally or across the globe. This transformative effect ensures that it delivers cost savings at least as high as outsourcing and potentially as high as 50 to 70%.

Copyright © 2011 by Peter Louis. All rights reserved