What is Outsourcing

The term“outsourcing” is made up of the English words out and source, which when combined can be roughly understood as “receiving from outside,” exactly what it in fact is: a company outsources individual tasks, departments or business processes to a third party, thus obtaining outside support.

Services for which your company was previously responsible are now provided by a specialized service provider. These are often secondary functions: tasks that must be performed in order for an enterprise to carry out its main activity.

Definition

The term “outsourcing” refers to a strategy whereby business activities and facilities are outsourced to external service providers. These can be single tasks, tasks that cover multiple areas, or even complete business processes.

What are the reasons for outsourcing?

Besides savings, there are other reasons to implement outsourcing:

• 
  Increasing efficiency
  : companies can focus on their core competencies and thus work more efficiently.
• 
  Optimizing scalability.
  : outsourcing increases available manpower capacity. This means that maximum output can be achieved in production, guaranteeing production even during seasonal or unusual fluctuations.
• 
  Increase speed of response.
  : respond more quickly to changes as tasks can be outsourced to specialized third parties.
• 
  Improving quality
  : Outsourcing often leads to an increase in quality. More trained labor generally brings an increase in the Customer’s average receipt.
• 
  Cost savings
  : External companies have a high degree of specialization in their respective services. This allows them to work much more cost-effectively, making their services quite cost-effective.
• 
  Making up for specific knowledge gaps
  : If new work processes are needed in a company, there is often a lack of know-how or qualified personnel in the implementation. Here outsourcing is an alternative to hiring new specialists.

Examples of possible outsourcing strategies in the Ho.re.ca. sector:

• Customer Reception: the service of welcoming patrons, managing reservations and customer satisfaction.
• Room: Room service performed with competent staff, trained ad hoc on reselling at the table and increasing the average receipt.
• Bartending: the development of a drink list and creation of products in line with the needs of customers, combined with training in good communication with them for the retention of guests at the venue.

These are only selected and typical examples of outsourcing. In practice, nowadays a company can outsource almost any stage of its activities, whether in production or service provision, to an outside contractor.

The correct way to proceed

Have you determined that outsourcing is right for you and your company, but don’t know how to proceed? Basically, there is no single correct method of outsourcing a project. The outsourcing strategy varies as varied as companies are. However, wanting to outline a successful way to proceed, the following method can be deemed reliable:

Analyze the current state
: each venue has its own very personal modus operandi, the outsourcing partner must be knowledgeable about the industry and understand the Client’s true needs to suggest the most optimized proposal possible to get to the goal.

Selecting a service provider.
: The market generally offers several solutions. A venue owner needs to understand the most competent Partner to perform the services and with the mandatory requirements to be safe (e.g. application of the correct collective bargaining agreements for the activities, etc.).

A survey of the partner company’s customers can certainly be a good way to find the feedback needed for evaluation.

The mistakes to avoid at all costs

Outsourcing is an important process, which is why several errors can occur during its implementation. Even the best of planning does not exclude hiccups of various kinds. Below we present some of the most common mistakes so that you can avoid them:

Wrong choice of partner.
: There are companies that for a small fee for services promise the seas and mountains. Needless to say, as in all things, if you pay little, you are likely to get little or run into unscrupulous Companies that tend not to secure business by unscrupulous policies. Analyzing the partner’s life, active partnerships, and modus operandi is therefore crucial. ALWAYS.

Expired contracts.
: An outsourcing contract should document mutual tasks and obligations. Unresolved questions almost always lead to misunderstandings when in doubt.

Outsourcing abroad: what to pay attention to?

Do you wish to outsource part of your work processes to a company or service provider abroad? Then it is essential to take these three factors into account:

SC Management for the Ho.Re.Ca. sector.

SC Management specializes for the Ho.Re.Ca sector: this means that the Staff members come from this field and are familiar with the subject matter, the needs of Entrepreneurs and the problems related to services.

This constitutes an added value in the management of the services of the Partner Activities, which find in SC an interlocutor who speaks the same language as the Entrepreneur and who knows the actual specifics of action.

For more information, you can write to us at
info@sc-management.it
or contact us at 340 5249891, consulting and offering “tailor-made” services is totally free!