10 Steps to establish effective communication with your Outsourcing team

Companies increasingly rely on outsourcing services to reduce costs, improve talent access, and enhance customer service capabilities. According to Deloitte's Global Outsourcing Survey, 65% of respondents believe outsourcing enables them to focus on their primary business activities.

Effective communication is the key to success in any outsourcing project. To ensure a smooth and productive collaboration with your outsourcing team, it's crucial to establish clear and open lines of communication. By taking the following steps, you can ensure that your outsourcing team feels valued, understood, and motivated to deliver their best solution.

Step 1: Build Trust with your partner

Building trust with your outsourcing partner is crucial for a successful and long-lasting relationship. It can be established through clear and open communication, setting expectations, and consistently delivering on promises. It's essential to foster clarity and accountability and develop transparent decision-making and problem-solving processes. Building a personal relationship with your outsourcing partner can also establish mutual respect.

Step 2: Avoid micromanaging

Micromanagement is a management style that involves managers closely controlling and monitoring their employees' work, down to minor details. It often results in decreased motivation, reduced autonomy, and diminished employee creativity. At its core, micromanagement is a negative point since it represents a lack of trust and flexibility in the workplace.

According to a survey conducted by Trinity Solutions, a leading IT management service provider to Fortune 1000 businesses, 79% of workers experienced micromanagement, which negatively affected their morale. Of those surveyed, 69% considered quitting their job due to micromanagement, and 36% did so.

Setting clear expectations, goals, and deadlines is essential to avoid micromanagement. Encouraging open communication, providing regular feedback, and allowing room for creativity and innovation can also help reduce the need for micromanagement.

Step 3: Explain your plans and needs directly and clearly

Being precise in your needs and goals and outlining your ideas as best as possible helps ensure everyone understands what is expected and what needs to be done.

Using visual aids such as flow charts, diagrams, and presentations can also be effective in conveying complex information. Furthermore, collaboration tools such as project management software and team communication platforms can ensure everyone is on the same page. By being transparent and direct, you can foster trust environment and ensure that your plans and needs are executed effectively.

Step 4: Taking notes during the call

Taking notes during the call helps to keep track of important details and ensures that everything is noticed. By jotting down key points, you can avoid confusion and ensure that follow-up actions are taken promptly. Furthermore, having a written record of the conversation can also serve as a reference for future discussions or decisions.

Step 5: Specify your requests

To ensure clear and effective communication with your outsourcing team, it's paramount to specify your requests clearly and concisely. Using Jira, a project management tool, you can create tasks to define your requests and keep track of their progress. It will help streamline communication and make it easier for your team to accomplish their jobs quickly and effectively.

Alternatively, emailing with clear instructions can also be an effective method of communicating your requests. When emailing, it's essential to use a subject line that accurately reflects the content of your email. In the body of your email, you should state your request clearly and provide any necessary details or instructions. If you are requesting a specific action, be sure to include a deadline for completion. Additionally, you can include any relevant attachments or links that can provide further information.

Step 6: Don't use hints - use tasks

It's critical to be specific about what you need and any other relevant information to help your outsourcing team deliver the results you're looking for. You can ensure that your outsourcing team can complete tasks accurately and efficiently by providing precise and concise instructions.

KITRUM has extensive experience for the last seven years and has faced various situations during software development. Here is an actual incident that took place at KITRUM.

At a planned meeting, our client offered to add a brand-new, minor feature to the project. The client was too excited about this improvement, and our developer created this functionality a few hours later, deciding it was a straightforward assignment. However, it was a slightly unclear suggestion from the client´s side, and provided feature wasn’t approved yet.

So, this situation shows how important it is to be clear and precise in giving instructions and outlining tasks. It helps the outsourcing team save time and effectively develop a business solution for your project.

Step 7: Plan every step

By planning every step of the outsourcing process, you can ensure that your project stays on track and that all your requirements are met. Planning helps you define your project's scope, set clear expectations, allocate resources, and establish timelines. It also allows you to identify potential challenges and implement mitigation strategies.

Step 8: Establish the meeting frequency

Establishing frequent meetings allow you to stay up-to-date on the progress of your project, provide feedback, and address any issues that may arise. They also allow sharing ideas, discussing new developments, and making decisions together.
Frequent meetings ensure everyone is on the same page and that expectations are aligned. Additionally, regular meetings provide a structure for problem-solving, allowing you to address any challenges that may arise quickly.

Step 9: Set KPIs according to the SMART method

SMART is a widely used method for setting and evaluating goals. The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The SMART approach ensures that goals are well-defined and attainable and that progress can be tracked and evaluated.

Each aspect of the SMART method serves a specific purpose:

Specific: Goals should be clear and well-defined.
Measurable: Goals should have quantifiable measures of success so that progress can be tracked and evaluated.
Achievable: Goals should be realistic and attainable, considering available resources and constraints.
Relevant: Goals should align with overall objectives and priorities and be appropriate to the task.
Time-bound: Goals should have a specific deadline, providing a clear timeline for completion.

Step 10: Stay tuned

Staying tuned involves keeping a close eye on the progress of your outsourcing partnership and regularly checking in with your outsourcing team to ensure everything is on track.

Someunpredictable things can happen at any time, and you may need to discuss it in real-time to avoid additional spending for developers' hours. By staying tuned, you can quickly identify and resolve any issues that may arise and ensure that your project stays on course.

Final thoughts

Effective communication is a critical component of any successful outsourcing partnership. By following the steps outlined in this article, from establishing clear expectations and fostering open and transparent communication to using specific tools, organizations can ensure that their outsourcing teams have the information and support they need to deliver high-quality results.

Whether through regular check-ins, well-defined processes, or collaboration tools, companies can facilitate smooth and effective communication with their outsourcing teams, ultimately leading to tremendous success in outsourcing.