Outsourcing has become very important to many companies due to its strategic implications and cost saving benefits, but many companies have not derived the most effective benefits from it. How can you ensure that if you outsource work, you stand the best chance of success?

Firstly, identify your company’s core and non-core activities. Your core activities are those items central to your successfully serving the needs of existing and potential customers in your markets. These are seen as adding value and giving you a distinct competitive advantage, and the process of identifying these activities should be carried out at a top management level. You should therefore build your capabilities around these core areas that are critical to your business success. All non-core business can then be outsourced.

Take a strategic view of your outsourcing decisions. You shouldn’t act on short-term factors like cost saving and capacity constraints without highlighting whether the outsourcing will affect your competitive advantage and abilities to serve customers.

You should outsource what makes sense for the long-term business.

Benchmark each activity you wish to outsource against the capability factors of all potential external providers.

Keep core activities internally only if you can achieve a competitive advantage by doing so.

Measure all the actual and potential costs of outsourcing the activity, not just the cost of purchase.

You can establish a collaborative relationship with a supplier so you can exploit their capabilities, and this will offer the best of both worlds. You’ll be able to concentrate on what’s important to you and your customers, and you’ll be able to outsource the fringe business that will support you in assisting your customer base.

Make sure you choose wisely, because outsourcing can create more problems than they solve, as you haven’t determined the precise reasons for doing it in the first place.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Email has completely changed the way we work. Most managers we talk to consider themselves to be enslaved by the keyboard, unable to accomplish their daily tasks because of the amount of electronic, as well as paper, mail they receive.

What’s the best way of dealing with this? How can you proactively manage your in-box so it serves you, rather than the other way round?

Firstly, does it matter how many emails are in your in-box? Well, yes it does. If you have dozens or hundreds of emails in your in-box, you run the risk of losing sight of the importance of some of the messages, and will find it difficult to find something at short notice. Yes, you can use the search box, but that only proves you have too much information there, because you can’t find it easily.

Also, by not pruning your in-box, and your colleagues contributing as well, you add pressure to your company servers,causing the well-known and ill-timed message from IT that the servers have crashed again. Don’t moan…you added to the problem!

So here are some tips to deal with this dilemma:

Prioritise your in-box. Check the sender’s names…how quickly do you need to deal with their email? Check the subject…is it urgent or just for information? Is it your responsibility or can it be delegated on? Check the priority given by the sender…do they really mean it’s urgent?

This initial scan can help you identify those emails that need immediate attention, and those that can wait until you have more time.

Reply in stages. You may wish to send a brief acknowledgment to the sender first, following up with more detail later. This means you take control of when you deal with it, and the sender isn’t wondering what’s going on. This is useful when you need to get more information before replying or when you’re angry, upset or confused about a message and you need time to compose yourself.

Set specific time for dealing with incoming mail. That way, you control it rather than the other way round. Resist the temptation to check every email the moment the tell-tale sound alerts you to a delivery. Most managers tell us that checking first thing in the morning, again around lunch and again later in the afternoon gives them time to deal with other stuff in their day, too.

Use a filing system to manage your messages. Check what the archiving policy is for storing emails, and if you have to keep them for a certain time period. If it’s a central facility, utilise that rather than filling up your own memory. Create your own filing system arranged by customer name, project name, date of receipt, research project, etc. Then use subtitles in the files to determine what still needs to be done.

For example, you might have a folder for ABC Ltd, then subtitles in the folder for invoices, projects, work in progress or items still to be done. The pending items can be marked ‘unread’ so they still stand out in the subfolder.

Many people find it useful to set up day-folders, just like a diary. Make five folders corresponding to days of the week, then when an email comes in and you want to deal with it on Wednesday, simply transfer it to the Wednesday folder. That way, you have your to-do list for next Wednesday.

You need to practice good housekeeping with your in-box. Set time limits for how long a message will stay in your in-box. (Take a look now and see how old is the oldest message in your in-box…surprised, huh?). Decide what you are going to do with any messages that are there…file it, delete it, delegate it, action it…do something with it! If a response was necessary, make sure you’ve done it. Send unwanted messages to your ‘deleted messages’ file, then cleanse that file regularly.

Offer alternatives to email. Remember, there are practical and effective alternatives to email, like instant messaging, text, voicemail, teleconferencing, and (a communication method that seems to have gone out of favour recently!) actually talking to someone in real-time!

Check who your mail is coming from. If you find that much of your overwhelming email is coming from old subscriptions to sites you no longer have any interest in, purge the lists so you only get stuff from people you are actually going to read. Ask yourself…how many emails do I get that I delete without reading? Maybe they are from senders you can unsubscribe from.

So, remember to avoid these common mistakes:

Don’t react immediately to every email that comes in
Don’t let your in-box become another storage folder
Don’t become overwhelmed with too much clutter

That way, you reduce the risk of being overwhelmed by your inbox, and you can spend time on more important things…like running your department!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

We’re going to continue our look at the different roles of managers by focusing today on a manager’s role when it comes to dealing with information. As we noted earlier this week, a manager is responsible for monitoring information, disseminating information, and acting as a spokesperson. Let’s take a closer look at what each of those tasks entails.

As a monitor it is your job to keep track of what information is coming in and going out of your organisation. In order to do this you must accept and review information that you receive (whether you asked for it or not) as well as ask the questions needed in order to obtain new information.

The disseminator is responsible for handling and distributing the information he or she has received. This means making sure that subordinates and, in some cases, higher ups receive the information you have gathered – especially if they would not otherwise know about it.

As a spokesperson you may be asked to share information that is pertinent to your particular work group with other work groups within your organisation. In some cases you may be asked to give reports to people who work outside of your organisation. Either way, you’re going to be responsible for the proper transmission of information.

The way you handle information is imperative to the success of not only your own career but your organisation as a whole. Take the time to look at every piece of information you receive and determine whether or not it is really critical and, if it is, make sure it gets shared with the right people as soon as possible!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

As a manager you’ll find you’re regularly subjected to a plethora of valuable information on a regular basis. What’s important to your company, however, is how that information is handled. Information goes through three main phases:

1. Information is gathered and enters the work environment
2. Information is reviewed and used
3. Information leaves the organisation

Let’s say, for example, you are developing a marketing plan for a new product. The first thing you need to do is gather information about the market, but you need to ensure that the information you are gathering is relevant to the project.

This information will then need to be sent to others within your organisation as they work to actually develop the product. You’ll have to make sure each piece of data remains accurate, updating it as often as necessary and making sure that the appropriate staff members have access.

Finally, information will begin to leave the organisation. You may begin developing tests for your products, leaking press releases, and advertising the product itself. The timing of this release is essential to ensure your competitors don’t have enough time to react before you make your product launch.

The way you control the information that is used in your workplace is essential to your success. This is another reason why you need to carefully screen new job applicants, as you need to be sure they will respect the privacy of your company as you develop new products, services, and marketing plans.

Do you have control of the information in your organisation? If not, what changes do you need to make?

Thanks again,

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Everyone within your organisation is responsible for effective information management, but it seems as though the higher up you are on the corporate ladder the more information you end up being responsible for. As a manager, it’s up to you to make sure that all of the information you receive is passed on to the appropriate parties in a timely manner.

At the lowest level, your employees, team members, or customer service personnel are most likely responsible for maintaining client or project files. The information they receive must be organised so that anyone who picks up the file can understand its contents and find the data he needs.

As a manager, you are responsible for receiving information from various sources. These may include upper management, human resources, accounting, or other departments that impact your work. You then have to sort through that information, organize it, and pass it on to the appropriate parties. Once a project is completed, you must take the information from your team members and create a final document to be presented to upper management or your clients. Information is constantly coming at you from all directions.

Thankfully, advancing technology has enabled us to move away from paper files and store all of our information electronically. This has allowed for increased process improvement but in the beginning most companies experienced quite a bit of resistance to change. Many employees were nervous about learning how to use the new software applications associated with better information management. Now that these programs have been around for some time, most people learn about them in high school and college courses designed to prepare them for the business world.

I urge you to take a few minutes out of your day to evaluate your information management skills. Are you an organized person or do you have to spend a considerable amount of time searching for the documents you need? You may need to simply spend a few hours organizing your information or you might need more training on the information management systems already in place. It’s up to you to identify your needs and take action to increase your effectiveness as an information manager.

Thanks again,

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”