Imagine your business is in the following scenario:
You are a business owner, and you put your blood, sweat, and tears into running your company. It’s your baby, and you want to protect it, but you also want to see it grow up to be healthy and prosperous.
However, like all successful businesses, you’ll probably face some occasional roadblocks to maintaining growth. These barriers can include insufficient staffing for the huge project you just landed, staff that does not have the necessary experience for a new business venture, or cash flow problems.
You already know that you’d be completely lost without a project manager, but nobody at your company is truly qualified to do the job, and hiring someone full-time is not in your budget. So where do you go from here? Outsourcing might be just answer for you!
Greater skill level and competency
Some things are just better left to the experts. Project management is not an easy job that everyone can do! It involves constant juggling of shifting priorities, impeccable attention to detail, and the ability to not lose sight of the overarching project scope, all while meeting deadlines that can lead to expensive ramifications if they aren’t met. By outsourcing to an experienced project management firm, your existing employees will have the opportunity to continue to do what they do best.
Cost Effectiveness
Hiring a full-time, salaried project manager can be extremely costly, and often it’s not a good option for short-term projects and businesses that have cyclical work. Outsourcing will allow you to hire the right person when you need them, for exactly how long you need them without having to pay them during down time. In addition, hiring an experienced PM can lead to a significant reduction in cost leaks that may go unnoticed for long periods of time by someone less experienced.
Objectivity
As a business owner or a long-term employee, it can be challenging to separate your emotions from your work. You might avoid making difficult decisions for personal reasons, or take risks that someone with a more objective point of view might not take. Though a good project manager should be invested in the success of your business, they will also be able to make important decisions with greater clarity than someone that is deeply invested in the company on a more personal level. A seasoned PM will see your project in terms of cost and time; they were hired to do a job, and they want to get it done as efficiently as possible.
Flexibility
Hiring an outsourced PM means that your organization no longer has to be constrained by its own resources. Partnering with an outside company means gaining access to their expertise, talent, and connections, which will not only allow your company to focus on core competencies but to say yes to a larger, more diverse scope of projects.
A Fresh Pair of Eyes
Whether you’re a retail business looking to upgrade your POS system, or a financial company looking to implement systems to protect client data, having a fresh pair of eyes on your existing project can be invaluable. An outsourced PM will bring experience from past projects to the table, but they’ll also bring new ideas to your project that may result in significant improvement in cost and effectiveness. It’s easy to become deeply entrenched in an ongoing project and not be able to see the forest for the trees. An experienced PM might be the breath of fresh air that your company needs to jolt it out of stagnant, inefficient operational patterns.
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The trick to successfully hiring an outside PM is to find a company that will become a partner to your business and not just an independent contractor. A good PM will become familiar with the way that your organization works from the ground up, and should be able to seamlessly integrate with your existing team.
At Worldlink, our project managers will act as extension of your team. We’ve successfully helped countless businesses streamline their projects and save revenue by providing them with the talent and experience they need to get the job done.
Does your company currently have an in-house PM or do you outsource? What have been the pros and cons? Tell us in the comments below, or reach out to us on Facebook!