GetFriday

Debunking Common Outsourcing Myths

When you consider outsourcing, it means that you ideally want to avoid undertaking peripheral company functions on your own. Outsourcing has long been a strategic business practice and is a way of reorganizing or relocating a part of a company’s functions to a 3rd party, to boost productivity and improve business functions. Despite the numerous benefits that outsourcing can bring to the table, many first-timers or companies remain oblivious to the obvious and prefer handling all functions in-house due to the many myths and misconceptions associated with outsourcing. Through this post, we aim to debunk the 6 most prevalent outsourcing myths and unveil the realities.   Myth #1 – The Main Incentive For Companies To Outsource Are Reduced Costs Fact #1 – Companies Outsource For Other Reasons Than reducing Costs   For a very long time, companies outsourced because they believed that it would help reduce costs. Due to the mismatch in expectations and reality, the motives behind outsourcing has also evolved over time. Reduced costs may be ‘one’ of the incentives to outsource a function but definitely not the main reason anymore. Rather, the quality of the services provided and the quick access to specialist service providers who can complete a job in a much more efficient manner than an in-house employee, have become some of the major impetuses to outsource. Let’s face it. If your company is not very proficient with SEO, chances are that an outsourcing partner that has a specialist team for SEO, can generate quicker results for your company and work more efficiently.   Myth #2 – There Will Be Cultural & Language Disparities Fact #2 – Outsourcing Companies Are Trained To Handle Cross-Cultural Exchange   Apart from being just a myth, cultural and language disparities are also some of the greatest fears for first-time outsourcers. The fear being, that cultural and language barriers can pose obstacles during the process of exchanging vital information. However, it is safe to say that this is just a misconception. Most outsourcing companies hire qualified professionals that are experienced in cross-cultural exchange and are proficient with multiple languages, including English. India, Russia and Philippines are at the top of the league when it comes to deploying professional customer support teams who are both, fluent and familiar with multiple cultures and the English language.   Myth #3 – Clients Have No Control Once The Job Is Outsourced Fact #3 – You Have As Much Control As You Would With An In-House Team! This is one of the most prevalent outsourcing myths and is not as difficult to manage as most companies or people would like to believe. With check-points and methodologies established with the outsourcer, you can offer your suggestions, tested practices, sample frameworks and carry out regular checks on the progress of the job being done once you have outsourced a task. Frequent information-exchange and communication is a necessity and the more you exert control over an outsourcing company, the better your results and your personal virtual assistants‘ efficiency. By providing feedback, you will not only be encouraging your virtual assistant to do better, but you will also be establishing a great working relationship.   Myth #4 – Outsourcing Is For The Big Companies Fact #4 – Small Business Enterprises Have Benefited More With Outsourcing In The Recent Past   No one can take away the fact that large enterprises have made the best use of outsourcing in the past, but let’s not forget the scale on which these big companies outsourced. The decision to outsource nowadays is supported by different reasons for different companies and in the case of start-ups, they are driven to outsource because of the countless benefits. More small businesses are taking to outsourcing today to add value, know-how and experience to their business functions. It is all the more important for small businesses to focus on their core functions and grow their business rather than spend all their valuable time on laborious jobs that can be handled by professionals. An advantage in today’s time and age is that many outsourcers offer customized packages or prefer working for small business enterprises. Look out for these specific outsourcing companies or virtual assistance companies if you run a small business enterprise. 6 ACTIVITIES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS   Myth #5 – Outsourcing Is Risky Fact #5 – Your Thinking Is Risky   Sometimes it’s your thinking that can be risky and can stop you from taking the right step for your business. You may believe that handling all the functions in-house will save your company from a number of risks. Though this may be true to a marginal degree, there are a number of companies who were responsible for their own downfall due to colossal data exposure and inadequate, in-house security measures in the past. Outsourcing companies on the other hand, have only grown and made their security policies more stringent. Experienced outsourcing providers and virtual assistant companies have always understood the importance of data security and these practices have always been treated with the highest priority. Routine measures such as encrypted data, superior firewalls, stringent work policies and NDA’s are some of the many measures that are given precedence when dealing with clients, sensitive data and their tasks. Outsourcing is an extremely safe practice provided you do your homework and choose the right company to work with.   Myth #6 – Outsourcing And Offshoring Are The Same Fact #6 – No, They Are NOT! You may have noticed that ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring’ are interchangeably used, but they are definitely not the same. Outsourcing involves paying a 3rd party or a virtual assistance company to complete your work for you. Offshoring on the other hand, means relocating or moving your business efforts wholly to another country, instead of just hiring a company to handle key components of your business. Though the differences may seem negligible, there is in fact, a huge difference between the two terminologies.

Debunking Common Outsourcing Myths Read More »

When you consider outsourcing, it means that you ideally want to avoid undertaking peripheral company functions on your own. Outsourcing has long been a strategic business practice and is a way of reorganizing or relocating a part of a company’s functions to a 3rd party, to boost productivity and improve business functions. Despite the numerous benefits that outsourcing can bring to the table, many first-timers or companies remain oblivious to the obvious and prefer handling all functions in-house due to the many myths and misconceptions associated with outsourcing. Through this post, we aim to debunk the 6 most prevalent outsourcing myths and unveil the realities.   Myth #1 – The Main Incentive For Companies To Outsource Are Reduced Costs Fact #1 – Companies Outsource For Other Reasons Than reducing Costs   For a very long time, companies outsourced because they believed that it would help reduce costs. Due to the mismatch in expectations and reality, the motives behind outsourcing has also evolved over time. Reduced costs may be ‘one’ of the incentives to outsource a function but definitely not the main reason anymore. Rather, the quality of the services provided and the quick access to specialist service providers who can complete a job in a much more efficient manner than an in-house employee, have become some of the major impetuses to outsource. Let’s face it. If your company is not very proficient with SEO, chances are that an outsourcing partner that has a specialist team for SEO, can generate quicker results for your company and work more efficiently.   Myth #2 – There Will Be Cultural & Language Disparities Fact #2 – Outsourcing Companies Are Trained To Handle Cross-Cultural Exchange   Apart from being just a myth, cultural and language disparities are also some of the greatest fears for first-time outsourcers. The fear being, that cultural and language barriers can pose obstacles during the process of exchanging vital information. However, it is safe to say that this is just a misconception. Most outsourcing companies hire qualified professionals that are experienced in cross-cultural exchange and are proficient with multiple languages, including English. India, Russia and Philippines are at the top of the league when it comes to deploying professional customer support teams who are both, fluent and familiar with multiple cultures and the English language.   Myth #3 – Clients Have No Control Once The Job Is Outsourced Fact #3 – You Have As Much Control As You Would With An In-House Team! This is one of the most prevalent outsourcing myths and is not as difficult to manage as most companies or people would like to believe. With check-points and methodologies established with the outsourcer, you can offer your suggestions, tested practices, sample frameworks and carry out regular checks on the progress of the job being done once you have outsourced a task. Frequent information-exchange and communication is a necessity and the more you exert control over an outsourcing company, the better your results and your personal virtual assistants‘ efficiency. By providing feedback, you will not only be encouraging your virtual assistant to do better, but you will also be establishing a great working relationship.   Myth #4 – Outsourcing Is For The Big Companies Fact #4 – Small Business Enterprises Have Benefited More With Outsourcing In The Recent Past   No one can take away the fact that large enterprises have made the best use of outsourcing in the past, but let’s not forget the scale on which these big companies outsourced. The decision to outsource nowadays is supported by different reasons for different companies and in the case of start-ups, they are driven to outsource because of the countless benefits. More small businesses are taking to outsourcing today to add value, know-how and experience to their business functions. It is all the more important for small businesses to focus on their core functions and grow their business rather than spend all their valuable time on laborious jobs that can be handled by professionals. An advantage in today’s time and age is that many outsourcers offer customized packages or prefer working for small business enterprises. Look out for these specific outsourcing companies or virtual assistance companies if you run a small business enterprise. 6 ACTIVITIES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS   Myth #5 – Outsourcing Is Risky Fact #5 – Your Thinking Is Risky   Sometimes it’s your thinking that can be risky and can stop you from taking the right step for your business. You may believe that handling all the functions in-house will save your company from a number of risks. Though this may be true to a marginal degree, there are a number of companies who were responsible for their own downfall due to colossal data exposure and inadequate, in-house security measures in the past. Outsourcing companies on the other hand, have only grown and made their security policies more stringent. Experienced outsourcing providers and virtual assistant companies have always understood the importance of data security and these practices have always been treated with the highest priority. Routine measures such as encrypted data, superior firewalls, stringent work policies and NDA’s are some of the many measures that are given precedence when dealing with clients, sensitive data and their tasks. Outsourcing is an extremely safe practice provided you do your homework and choose the right company to work with.   Myth #6 – Outsourcing And Offshoring Are The Same Fact #6 – No, They Are NOT! You may have noticed that ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring’ are interchangeably used, but they are definitely not the same. Outsourcing involves paying a 3rd party or a virtual assistance company to complete your work for you. Offshoring on the other hand, means relocating or moving your business efforts wholly to another country, instead of just hiring a company to handle key components of your business. Though the differences may seem negligible, there is in fact, a huge difference between the two terminologies.

Six Ways To Use Your Newly-Gained Time Post Outsourcing

So, you decided to take the big step and hired a Virtual Assistant to help you get through life’s challenges. Outsourcing was never your top choice, but you had to, owing to the increasing work pressures, the costs of keeping an in-house assistant and the growing responsibilities you had to shoulder at home. Now you’re glad you hired a VA, but what next? What does one do with the free time and how does one transition into the new life with the newly-gained time, effortlessly? Consider why you chose to outsource in the first place. Either you believed that a professional would do a better job than you would at a particular job, the costs of outsourcing were a lot cheaper than if you were to hire an in-house assistant or also because you realized that your children and wife were beginning to forget what you looked like. With outsourcing, you finally got those laborious tasks out of the way and earned yourself a minimum of 2-4 hours for yourself everyday. There’s so much you can do! If you are unsure of how you can use this time productively, take a look at a few of these suggestions- 1) Read A Book Keep yourself abreast with all the reading that you’ve missed out on all these years. Download an e-book if you’re running out of time or walk to the local bookstore to pick out a book you like. If you are a bookworm, there is no better way to spend your time productively than by reading. Reading can help you de-stress and can transport your mind into another world altogether, whilst also helping you sharpen your mind. 2) Prioritize Your ‘Bucket-List’ Activities 2-4 hours is a lot of time to tick at least one of the activities off your bucket-list everyday. Always wanted to sign up for a dance class? Go paragliding or volunteer at a local NGO? With the time you’ve earned from the outsourcing, you could try your hand at the activities that interest you. Finding a hobby or working on one, can help you put your job and/or life in perspective and can help you develop a new set of skills. It will also give you the chance to expand your networking opportunities and is a breath of fresh air when you feel like you’re on the verge of a total burnout. 3) Build A Better Business Ever heard of the adage, ‘Do what you do best and outsource the rest’? Now that you have outsourced all the back-end work to your Virtual Assistant, you will find more time to focus on the core competencies of your business and set better goals. If you have had to manage all the aspects of the business yourself, you will know that your life was nothing short of a nightmare! With outsourcing however, you will find that you have more time to strategize, de-clutter your mind, reorganize your business and govern its primary activities to help it grow and sustain. 4) A Healthy You, Is A Happy You Exercise well, eat healthy and meditate in your spare time. Rather than sitting at home and lazing around, go for a light jog or a long walk. Doing things that keep you feeling fit, physically or mentally can help you lose the stress you’ve been carrying around on your shoulders and will also give you the time to gather your thoughts. Furthermore, exercising regularly can help you discipline your mind, get your endorphins flowing and make you look and feel better. Need more reasons? 5) Spend Time With The Ones You Love If you live with friends or family, spending your free time with them makes absolute sense. Make some time for your children and spouse. Attend your girl’s ballet performance or your son’s big game. Imagine the joy on their faces when they find that both their parents are in attendance. If you’ve missed out on those dinners with your friends or your partner in the last couple of months, make it a point to catch up with them during your free time and show them that you care and you are not anti-social. There is nothing more relaxing than to surround yourself with the people you love and who love you during your free time. 6) Invest Some Time In Personal Care Once you find that you’ve got a flow going with outsourcing and your VA is handling all the work for you, don’t burden yourself with more work during your free time. Instead, invest this time for some personal care. Whether it is something as small as filing your nails, getting some sleep or hitting the spa, ensure that you make time for your personal needs everyday to shed those layers of stress. Though making money is important to make ends meet in today’s time and age, spending time for yourself can make you look and feel like a million bucks. Life after outsourcing can be rewarding if you choose to make it so. The time you’ve earned is precious and limited. Make use of it productively and you’ll automatically find success and will be able to strike the perfect work-life balance in the process.

Six Ways To Use Your Newly-Gained Time Post Outsourcing Read More »

So, you decided to take the big step and hired a Virtual Assistant to help you get through life’s challenges. Outsourcing was never your top choice, but you had to, owing to the increasing work pressures, the costs of keeping an in-house assistant and the growing responsibilities you had to shoulder at home. Now you’re glad you hired a VA, but what next? What does one do with the free time and how does one transition into the new life with the newly-gained time, effortlessly? Consider why you chose to outsource in the first place. Either you believed that a professional would do a better job than you would at a particular job, the costs of outsourcing were a lot cheaper than if you were to hire an in-house assistant or also because you realized that your children and wife were beginning to forget what you looked like. With outsourcing, you finally got those laborious tasks out of the way and earned yourself a minimum of 2-4 hours for yourself everyday. There’s so much you can do! If you are unsure of how you can use this time productively, take a look at a few of these suggestions- 1) Read A Book Keep yourself abreast with all the reading that you’ve missed out on all these years. Download an e-book if you’re running out of time or walk to the local bookstore to pick out a book you like. If you are a bookworm, there is no better way to spend your time productively than by reading. Reading can help you de-stress and can transport your mind into another world altogether, whilst also helping you sharpen your mind. 2) Prioritize Your ‘Bucket-List’ Activities 2-4 hours is a lot of time to tick at least one of the activities off your bucket-list everyday. Always wanted to sign up for a dance class? Go paragliding or volunteer at a local NGO? With the time you’ve earned from the outsourcing, you could try your hand at the activities that interest you. Finding a hobby or working on one, can help you put your job and/or life in perspective and can help you develop a new set of skills. It will also give you the chance to expand your networking opportunities and is a breath of fresh air when you feel like you’re on the verge of a total burnout. 3) Build A Better Business Ever heard of the adage, ‘Do what you do best and outsource the rest’? Now that you have outsourced all the back-end work to your Virtual Assistant, you will find more time to focus on the core competencies of your business and set better goals. If you have had to manage all the aspects of the business yourself, you will know that your life was nothing short of a nightmare! With outsourcing however, you will find that you have more time to strategize, de-clutter your mind, reorganize your business and govern its primary activities to help it grow and sustain. 4) A Healthy You, Is A Happy You Exercise well, eat healthy and meditate in your spare time. Rather than sitting at home and lazing around, go for a light jog or a long walk. Doing things that keep you feeling fit, physically or mentally can help you lose the stress you’ve been carrying around on your shoulders and will also give you the time to gather your thoughts. Furthermore, exercising regularly can help you discipline your mind, get your endorphins flowing and make you look and feel better. Need more reasons? 5) Spend Time With The Ones You Love If you live with friends or family, spending your free time with them makes absolute sense. Make some time for your children and spouse. Attend your girl’s ballet performance or your son’s big game. Imagine the joy on their faces when they find that both their parents are in attendance. If you’ve missed out on those dinners with your friends or your partner in the last couple of months, make it a point to catch up with them during your free time and show them that you care and you are not anti-social. There is nothing more relaxing than to surround yourself with the people you love and who love you during your free time. 6) Invest Some Time In Personal Care Once you find that you’ve got a flow going with outsourcing and your VA is handling all the work for you, don’t burden yourself with more work during your free time. Instead, invest this time for some personal care. Whether it is something as small as filing your nails, getting some sleep or hitting the spa, ensure that you make time for your personal needs everyday to shed those layers of stress. Though making money is important to make ends meet in today’s time and age, spending time for yourself can make you look and feel like a million bucks. Life after outsourcing can be rewarding if you choose to make it so. The time you’ve earned is precious and limited. Make use of it productively and you’ll automatically find success and will be able to strike the perfect work-life balance in the process.

Save 60 Minutes A Day – ‘Hi, I’m Richard!’

Don’t you wish you had the time to fly back home to be with your wife and kids this holiday season? Don’t you yearn to give your loved ones some of your time? Let’s face it. With so many people working 9-5 jobs everyday and managing whole businesses, it becomes almost impossible to make some time for yourself and also, your loved ones. Giving someone your time is intangible and the most irreplaceable feeling in the world. At GetFriday, we understand that ‘time’ is precious and creating fond memories with loved ones is crucial – one that can even beat the joys of winning a lottery or even bringing home fat pay checks!

Save 60 Minutes A Day – ‘Hi, I’m Richard!’ Read More »

Don’t you wish you had the time to fly back home to be with your wife and kids this holiday season? Don’t you yearn to give your loved ones some of your time? Let’s face it. With so many people working 9-5 jobs everyday and managing whole businesses, it becomes almost impossible to make some time for yourself and also, your loved ones. Giving someone your time is intangible and the most irreplaceable feeling in the world. At GetFriday, we understand that ‘time’ is precious and creating fond memories with loved ones is crucial – one that can even beat the joys of winning a lottery or even bringing home fat pay checks!

GetFriday Celebrated DIWALI With Pomp And Style

November 9, 2015 was the start of another power-packed, exciting week at the GetFriday office and it also happened to be a propitious day, as it welcomed one of India’s feted festivals – Diwali!   A Brief Background Diwali is celebrated across the 28 states of India because it marks the end of the vile, ‘Asura-King’ Ravana (‘Asura’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Evil Soul’) and the glorious homecoming of Ayodhya’s most adored king, Lord Ram (‘Ayodhya’ is a birth place of Hindu Mythological God ‘Ram’). In a turn of unprecedented, hostile events, Lord Ram was banished to the forest for 14 years, where he, along with his brother, Lakshman and Ram’s devoted wife, Sita, spent their lives as hermits in solitude. It wasn’t long before Sita was abducted by the Asura-King. A fierce battle ensued between Ram and Ravana in the kingdom of Lanka (Now known as the country Sri Lanka), and Ram came out victorious, rescuing his wife, defeating the king and returning to his kingdom. This glorious return gave birth to the festival of Diwali and is now, celebrated around the world by Hindu communities. On this auspicious day, houses are decorated with ‘diyas’ (earthen fire lamps), embroidered with colorful floor designs, commonly known as ‘Rangoli’, with communities getting together to burst crackers, eat sweets and indulge in merrymaking. How GetFriday Celebrated ‘Diwali’ When the whole of India was gearing up for this auspicious, colorful festival and offices in Bangalore were festooned in lights, how could GetFriday be far behind? The GetFriday office celebrated the festival in pomp and style. Employees were dressed in their ethnic best on this day and the workstations were bedecked in lights, earthen lamps and floral decorations. The office was buzzing with excited employees walking into office in their new, colorful traditional wear and distributing sweets among each other. Wearing new clothes for Diwali is customary and the women employees of GetFriday engaged in excited banter and displayed their new jewelry sets and saris, among other carousing. The celebrations at GetFriday continued through the day, with a special lunch organized for the employees. This lunch consisted of all the popular delicacies from around India and a whole variety of lip-smacking sweetmeats. As twilight approached, GetFriday witnessed a dynamic “Rangoli-making” competition between the teams present. Each team was given standard pack of powdered colors and the idea was to come up with the most visually appealing, innovative Rangoli design using only those colors and nothing else! Revelry prevailed and every employee who participated in this event made sure that they put their best foot forward to make sure their Rangoli design was the best! The festivities continued well into the night-shift and these teams also competed to earn the coveted spot among the winners of the “Rangoli” competition. All in all, the day was a grand success and every employee who was present in office on this day can only agree that the Diwali celebrations uplifted their spirits and set the tone for the rest of the work week! As GetFriday employees work incessantly through the year, it is festivals such as these that give them a chance to celebrate their hard-work and efforts and offers them a well-deserved break! GetFriday is now gearing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with double the fun and festivities! Stay tuned to this festive feed for more fun, GetFriday updates! Cheers!

GetFriday Celebrated DIWALI With Pomp And Style Read More »

November 9, 2015 was the start of another power-packed, exciting week at the GetFriday office and it also happened to be a propitious day, as it welcomed one of India’s feted festivals – Diwali!   A Brief Background Diwali is celebrated across the 28 states of India because it marks the end of the vile, ‘Asura-King’ Ravana (‘Asura’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Evil Soul’) and the glorious homecoming of Ayodhya’s most adored king, Lord Ram (‘Ayodhya’ is a birth place of Hindu Mythological God ‘Ram’). In a turn of unprecedented, hostile events, Lord Ram was banished to the forest for 14 years, where he, along with his brother, Lakshman and Ram’s devoted wife, Sita, spent their lives as hermits in solitude. It wasn’t long before Sita was abducted by the Asura-King. A fierce battle ensued between Ram and Ravana in the kingdom of Lanka (Now known as the country Sri Lanka), and Ram came out victorious, rescuing his wife, defeating the king and returning to his kingdom. This glorious return gave birth to the festival of Diwali and is now, celebrated around the world by Hindu communities. On this auspicious day, houses are decorated with ‘diyas’ (earthen fire lamps), embroidered with colorful floor designs, commonly known as ‘Rangoli’, with communities getting together to burst crackers, eat sweets and indulge in merrymaking. How GetFriday Celebrated ‘Diwali’ When the whole of India was gearing up for this auspicious, colorful festival and offices in Bangalore were festooned in lights, how could GetFriday be far behind? The GetFriday office celebrated the festival in pomp and style. Employees were dressed in their ethnic best on this day and the workstations were bedecked in lights, earthen lamps and floral decorations. The office was buzzing with excited employees walking into office in their new, colorful traditional wear and distributing sweets among each other. Wearing new clothes for Diwali is customary and the women employees of GetFriday engaged in excited banter and displayed their new jewelry sets and saris, among other carousing. The celebrations at GetFriday continued through the day, with a special lunch organized for the employees. This lunch consisted of all the popular delicacies from around India and a whole variety of lip-smacking sweetmeats. As twilight approached, GetFriday witnessed a dynamic “Rangoli-making” competition between the teams present. Each team was given standard pack of powdered colors and the idea was to come up with the most visually appealing, innovative Rangoli design using only those colors and nothing else! Revelry prevailed and every employee who participated in this event made sure that they put their best foot forward to make sure their Rangoli design was the best! The festivities continued well into the night-shift and these teams also competed to earn the coveted spot among the winners of the “Rangoli” competition. All in all, the day was a grand success and every employee who was present in office on this day can only agree that the Diwali celebrations uplifted their spirits and set the tone for the rest of the work week! As GetFriday employees work incessantly through the year, it is festivals such as these that give them a chance to celebrate their hard-work and efforts and offers them a well-deserved break! GetFriday is now gearing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with double the fun and festivities! Stay tuned to this festive feed for more fun, GetFriday updates! Cheers!

Understanding When To Outsource

Knowing when to outsource your work for better productivity and control is very important, and it is fairly simple too. You need to watch out for a few tell-tale signs that will give you enough and more reason for you to outsource the work that you don’t necessarily need to do yourself. For instance, you may suddenly feel a swell in work pressures or you might realize that you are spending a lot more time at the work place than you should be. Your regular 9 hour job has now turned into a 13 hour job and to make matters worse, you are spending all your time thinking about work or doing work, including the weekends! That leaves you with no time to focus on your personal life or even, have a life! Sometimes, a recurrent, onerous task, that is handled internally and is draining a company’s resources can be handled better externally and for cheap! Or if you feel that your business is saturating at the peak with no further growth or profits, you could outsource certain functions of your business to virtual assistance providers and see how your business fares. If you have crossed the threshold, then it is probably a wise time to outsource. This blog post highlights 4 instances where you should consider outsourcing! 1. You Are Compromising With Your Work-Life Balance When you start outsourcing your lives, you will be able to strike that perfect balance with your job, children and your family. To make room for things that really matter, you can begin by outsourcing routine jobs that either take too much of time, are too mundane to carry out everyday, or tasks that can easily be handled by someone else.This way, outsourcing will give you the freedom to use your time the way you want to spend it and can finally help you leave for home earlier from work and give you your weekends back. Striking the perfect work-life balance is paramount and when you think you are giving away too much; far more than what you are receiving, that’s where you draw the line and make the decision to ‘outsource’! 2.Your Business Is Stagnating Intermittent outsourcing can work wonders for your business – if you know when to take advantage of it! With outsourcing, your business will be able to grow at a healthy pace, talent and expertise are available at your fingertips and you don’t need to provide for an office space, or a phone or a computer for the person working for you. If you find that your strategies are failing, your employees are not motivated to work because they are overburdened with too many arduous tasks or you aren’t generating the revenue you have been expecting for a while, these are sure-shot signs of your business stagnating. In such a situation, a complete turnaround needs to be made. You need time to understand what has gone wrong with the business and what areas need focus and improvement. If you think you have hit this point in the cycle, it would be a wise-time to outsource works that take up your time. By freeing yourself and your employees of tasks they don’t necessarily have to handle, or delegating onerous work to your Virtual Assistants, you will be able to make some time to re-strategize and re-structure your business before it spirals out of control. 3.You Juggle Multiple Hats At Work Years ago, outsourcing wasn’t very accessible to SME’s. This was a luxury that was once limited only to the Fortune 500s. Today however, it is advisable for small business owners to outsource as much as they can from the get-go, because time is the greatest asset for small businesses. Though cash flow for SMEs are not as sturdy or secure as large businesses, outsourcing the work to cost-effective remote assistant companies might just be feasible and can let SMEs focus on growing their businesses. According to a study conducted by Constant Contact, 56% of small business owners feel like they can never leave their businesses to do anything else and need to be constantly around to save the day. Consider the situation – if small business owners don’t delegate the work to the right persons at the right time, they would have to juggle between different responsibilities, including managerial roles, marketing, accounting, customer support and other administrative aspects of business. To handle so much at the same time, could result in the lack of quality, stress, loss of time to focus on other aspects of life, and the company and can slow down the process of scaling the business considerably. Conversely, by outsourcing specific functions of the business to reliable Virtual Assistants, it is possible to maintain the highest level of operations, in a manner that doesn’t break the bank and your back, and also promote the growth of your business by giving you more to time to cater to existing customer and new ones. At the end of the day, being a small business owner will require you don many hats, but effective outsourcing from the start could help you laser your focus to what really needs to be accomplished and can also give small business owners the benefit of taking periodical breaks to reboot and plan ahead. 4. It Is Expensive To Get Work Done Internally The battle between outsourcing vs. insourcing is incessant. However, when you find that a job can be handled externally for lesser costs, than internally, it would be better to outsource – especially because labor is a lot cheaper overseas and you also get more bang for your buck! Sometimes, in-house employees need time and training to handle specialist tasks. This requires money and can take a number of sessions before an employee is completely adept with the software or the tool. For instance, it could be cheaper for companies to outsource their payroll work to companies like Sage Payroll rather than hire in-house payroll specialists, train them, pay them salaries and

Understanding When To Outsource Read More »

Knowing when to outsource your work for better productivity and control is very important, and it is fairly simple too. You need to watch out for a few tell-tale signs that will give you enough and more reason for you to outsource the work that you don’t necessarily need to do yourself. For instance, you may suddenly feel a swell in work pressures or you might realize that you are spending a lot more time at the work place than you should be. Your regular 9 hour job has now turned into a 13 hour job and to make matters worse, you are spending all your time thinking about work or doing work, including the weekends! That leaves you with no time to focus on your personal life or even, have a life! Sometimes, a recurrent, onerous task, that is handled internally and is draining a company’s resources can be handled better externally and for cheap! Or if you feel that your business is saturating at the peak with no further growth or profits, you could outsource certain functions of your business to virtual assistance providers and see how your business fares. If you have crossed the threshold, then it is probably a wise time to outsource. This blog post highlights 4 instances where you should consider outsourcing! 1. You Are Compromising With Your Work-Life Balance When you start outsourcing your lives, you will be able to strike that perfect balance with your job, children and your family. To make room for things that really matter, you can begin by outsourcing routine jobs that either take too much of time, are too mundane to carry out everyday, or tasks that can easily be handled by someone else.This way, outsourcing will give you the freedom to use your time the way you want to spend it and can finally help you leave for home earlier from work and give you your weekends back. Striking the perfect work-life balance is paramount and when you think you are giving away too much; far more than what you are receiving, that’s where you draw the line and make the decision to ‘outsource’! 2.Your Business Is Stagnating Intermittent outsourcing can work wonders for your business – if you know when to take advantage of it! With outsourcing, your business will be able to grow at a healthy pace, talent and expertise are available at your fingertips and you don’t need to provide for an office space, or a phone or a computer for the person working for you. If you find that your strategies are failing, your employees are not motivated to work because they are overburdened with too many arduous tasks or you aren’t generating the revenue you have been expecting for a while, these are sure-shot signs of your business stagnating. In such a situation, a complete turnaround needs to be made. You need time to understand what has gone wrong with the business and what areas need focus and improvement. If you think you have hit this point in the cycle, it would be a wise-time to outsource works that take up your time. By freeing yourself and your employees of tasks they don’t necessarily have to handle, or delegating onerous work to your Virtual Assistants, you will be able to make some time to re-strategize and re-structure your business before it spirals out of control. 3.You Juggle Multiple Hats At Work Years ago, outsourcing wasn’t very accessible to SME’s. This was a luxury that was once limited only to the Fortune 500s. Today however, it is advisable for small business owners to outsource as much as they can from the get-go, because time is the greatest asset for small businesses. Though cash flow for SMEs are not as sturdy or secure as large businesses, outsourcing the work to cost-effective remote assistant companies might just be feasible and can let SMEs focus on growing their businesses. According to a study conducted by Constant Contact, 56% of small business owners feel like they can never leave their businesses to do anything else and need to be constantly around to save the day. Consider the situation – if small business owners don’t delegate the work to the right persons at the right time, they would have to juggle between different responsibilities, including managerial roles, marketing, accounting, customer support and other administrative aspects of business. To handle so much at the same time, could result in the lack of quality, stress, loss of time to focus on other aspects of life, and the company and can slow down the process of scaling the business considerably. Conversely, by outsourcing specific functions of the business to reliable Virtual Assistants, it is possible to maintain the highest level of operations, in a manner that doesn’t break the bank and your back, and also promote the growth of your business by giving you more to time to cater to existing customer and new ones. At the end of the day, being a small business owner will require you don many hats, but effective outsourcing from the start could help you laser your focus to what really needs to be accomplished and can also give small business owners the benefit of taking periodical breaks to reboot and plan ahead. 4. It Is Expensive To Get Work Done Internally The battle between outsourcing vs. insourcing is incessant. However, when you find that a job can be handled externally for lesser costs, than internally, it would be better to outsource – especially because labor is a lot cheaper overseas and you also get more bang for your buck! Sometimes, in-house employees need time and training to handle specialist tasks. This requires money and can take a number of sessions before an employee is completely adept with the software or the tool. For instance, it could be cheaper for companies to outsource their payroll work to companies like Sage Payroll rather than hire in-house payroll specialists, train them, pay them salaries and

Is Your Work-Life Balanced?

Do you feel like there is an imbalance in your personal and professional life? Are you not able to find time for yourself, let alone find time for your family and friends? It is easy to let our lives become overwhelmed by work and once that happens, it almost seems impossible to find the right balance and you’ll find that your productivity levels would have dropped considerably at work. Here’s how you can recognize if there’s an imbalance in your work-life and what you can do to bring yourself back in the game. Symptoms To Look Out For The first step is to take a look at the symptoms of an “imbalance” in work-life and then tally your own symptoms/experiences with this check-list. Here you go- You find that you work longer hours than most of your colleagues. You spend more time in the office than you do at home and you always come back stressed, tired and anxious. To top it all, you have to commute in traffic!

Is Your Work-Life Balanced? Read More »

Do you feel like there is an imbalance in your personal and professional life? Are you not able to find time for yourself, let alone find time for your family and friends? It is easy to let our lives become overwhelmed by work and once that happens, it almost seems impossible to find the right balance and you’ll find that your productivity levels would have dropped considerably at work. Here’s how you can recognize if there’s an imbalance in your work-life and what you can do to bring yourself back in the game. Symptoms To Look Out For The first step is to take a look at the symptoms of an “imbalance” in work-life and then tally your own symptoms/experiences with this check-list. Here you go- You find that you work longer hours than most of your colleagues. You spend more time in the office than you do at home and you always come back stressed, tired and anxious. To top it all, you have to commute in traffic!

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages Read More »

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

Steps For Effective Lead Generation For Business Development

At GetFriday, one in five inquiries is about lead generation. Entrepreneurs and business owners are always seeking ways to generate leads. It could be perplexing to go through this phase of marketing operations. Though this sounds like the simplest of things in a business, this could in fact, be tricky to handle. A constant doubt lingers about the success of efforts and money being spent on lead generation activities. Click on the image below to see this blog in SlideShare presentation format. GetFriday has been assisting businesses for over 10 years now and we have seen our fair share of lead generation tasks that we have done for our clients – mostly small business owners. From our experiences with lead generation, here we list a few facts – Define Your Target Customers To begin with, you may ask is this not common sense? How is it even possible to generate a list without defining your target customers? Well yes, it is true most business owners define their target customers at the outset, but there are some who don’t. For instance, the common mistakes that could take place are – you may have asked for business development manager but instead, received an application from a marketing manager. The list may not distinguish the difference. Or instead of listing all dental surgeons in your area, you may have listed all the general surgeons in your area. Defining the target customer while generating leads must include a clear point-wise description of leads required and a list of points that state “don’ts”. A list with email address generic to firms eg: info@useless.com will not serve any purpose for you. Ensure you give clear instructions to search for alternate contact points. A good and clear definition of leads would look something like this – 1. Law firms within radius of 100 km of Greenville 2. Law firms must have employee strength of 10 – 15 people. 3. 1st preferred contact point is senior attorney. 4. 2nd preferred contact is junior attorney. 5. 3rd preferred contact is procurement officer. It Is A Hard-Work To Collect These Lists – Gather The Right Tools GetFriday has been in this business for 10 years now. And we can vouch that lead generation is hard work. But there are smart ways to handle this. There are ways through which, one can verify email addresses collected and tools that can help verify zip code authenticity. Databases could also be carefully mined for lists and tools like MS Excel can be employed to predict and source the most probable email ids. In case you delve into this without experience, you will surely learn it over time. But the cost of expensive time spent on this activity will not be worthwhile for your business. Instead, you would be doing a better job designing the marketing campaign details and fixing the operations for new customers that could be acquired through these lists. Is It Possible To Buy Your Way Through? Yes, you could buy your way through. If your business is a B2B, then you are lucky. The list may after all work. But if your list is B2C then you could end up annoying a lot of unknown people. All it does is exasperate people for having received one more mail from you, trying to sell something. If you are a business owner, you might relate to the analogy we have used here. How do you feel when you receive another mail about “best SEO service” or to source your products from some rural province in China? You would probably hire a virtual assistant right away to delete those e-mails even before you see them. Some GetFriday clients actually hire us for this! To delete those annoying, spam mails. So, why would the recipients of your mailing list feel any different? It fits Albert Einstein’s definition for insanity “doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result”. Generate A Long List It is mandatory that you generate a long list. The longer the prospect client’s list, the better the chances of success. Let us explain. Email campaigns and social media campaigns are about reaching your target audience at the right moment with the right offer. You can get your product offering right, but cannot predict the right moment. For example how do you predict the need for “buying shoes” or “buying handbags”? It is true there are seasonal increases in the sales of products. An example would be table ware sales before thanksgiving as people prepare to entertain family and friends. But the right moment cannot be predicted for most products and services. A larger leads/email list could increase chances of success by increasing the probability of reaching the right people at the right moment. Hire Virtual Assistants To Do The Work If you are a business owner or entrepreneur attempting to research and generate leads, the cost of lost time will be much higher for you. It is better to hire professionals to do this work. In case you still feel you must do it yourself, spend at least 10 minutes listening to this podcast “9 habits to stop now”, by Tim Ferris –http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/06/16/not-to-do-lists-drugs-and-other-productivity-tricks/ .

Steps For Effective Lead Generation For Business Development Read More »

At GetFriday, one in five inquiries is about lead generation. Entrepreneurs and business owners are always seeking ways to generate leads. It could be perplexing to go through this phase of marketing operations. Though this sounds like the simplest of things in a business, this could in fact, be tricky to handle. A constant doubt lingers about the success of efforts and money being spent on lead generation activities. Click on the image below to see this blog in SlideShare presentation format. GetFriday has been assisting businesses for over 10 years now and we have seen our fair share of lead generation tasks that we have done for our clients – mostly small business owners. From our experiences with lead generation, here we list a few facts – Define Your Target Customers To begin with, you may ask is this not common sense? How is it even possible to generate a list without defining your target customers? Well yes, it is true most business owners define their target customers at the outset, but there are some who don’t. For instance, the common mistakes that could take place are – you may have asked for business development manager but instead, received an application from a marketing manager. The list may not distinguish the difference. Or instead of listing all dental surgeons in your area, you may have listed all the general surgeons in your area. Defining the target customer while generating leads must include a clear point-wise description of leads required and a list of points that state “don’ts”. A list with email address generic to firms eg: info@useless.com will not serve any purpose for you. Ensure you give clear instructions to search for alternate contact points. A good and clear definition of leads would look something like this – 1. Law firms within radius of 100 km of Greenville 2. Law firms must have employee strength of 10 – 15 people. 3. 1st preferred contact point is senior attorney. 4. 2nd preferred contact is junior attorney. 5. 3rd preferred contact is procurement officer. It Is A Hard-Work To Collect These Lists – Gather The Right Tools GetFriday has been in this business for 10 years now. And we can vouch that lead generation is hard work. But there are smart ways to handle this. There are ways through which, one can verify email addresses collected and tools that can help verify zip code authenticity. Databases could also be carefully mined for lists and tools like MS Excel can be employed to predict and source the most probable email ids. In case you delve into this without experience, you will surely learn it over time. But the cost of expensive time spent on this activity will not be worthwhile for your business. Instead, you would be doing a better job designing the marketing campaign details and fixing the operations for new customers that could be acquired through these lists. Is It Possible To Buy Your Way Through? Yes, you could buy your way through. If your business is a B2B, then you are lucky. The list may after all work. But if your list is B2C then you could end up annoying a lot of unknown people. All it does is exasperate people for having received one more mail from you, trying to sell something. If you are a business owner, you might relate to the analogy we have used here. How do you feel when you receive another mail about “best SEO service” or to source your products from some rural province in China? You would probably hire a virtual assistant right away to delete those e-mails even before you see them. Some GetFriday clients actually hire us for this! To delete those annoying, spam mails. So, why would the recipients of your mailing list feel any different? It fits Albert Einstein’s definition for insanity “doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result”. Generate A Long List It is mandatory that you generate a long list. The longer the prospect client’s list, the better the chances of success. Let us explain. Email campaigns and social media campaigns are about reaching your target audience at the right moment with the right offer. You can get your product offering right, but cannot predict the right moment. For example how do you predict the need for “buying shoes” or “buying handbags”? It is true there are seasonal increases in the sales of products. An example would be table ware sales before thanksgiving as people prepare to entertain family and friends. But the right moment cannot be predicted for most products and services. A larger leads/email list could increase chances of success by increasing the probability of reaching the right people at the right moment. Hire Virtual Assistants To Do The Work If you are a business owner or entrepreneur attempting to research and generate leads, the cost of lost time will be much higher for you. It is better to hire professionals to do this work. In case you still feel you must do it yourself, spend at least 10 minutes listening to this podcast “9 habits to stop now”, by Tim Ferris –http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/06/16/not-to-do-lists-drugs-and-other-productivity-tricks/ .

Categories