Outsourcing eCommerce and related tasks are a sophisticated business technique with many definitions and manifestations.
One thing is sure: it’s one of the most efficient and cost-effective solutions for small eCommerce firms to minimize costs and increase efficiency, all of which are essential if you want to stay competitive.
This article will explain the advantages of outsourcing, what it can do for your company’s finances, income, and workflow, and its drawbacks. You will learn why outsourcing helps eCommerce organizations succeed in the face of high workloads and how to do it correctly — eCommerce outsourcing.
What is eCommerce Outsourcing?
Outsourcing entails hiring someone from outside your organization to provide services or make things previously performed in-house by your company’s employees. Throughout the 1990s, this commercial technique became an essential aspect of business economics. An increasing number of eCommerce businesses are now using outsourcing to save costs, reduce workloads, and improve scalability.
 \The technique of leveraging third-party companies, products, and services to make items and provide services is known as eCommerce outsourcing. When they can’t afford or don’t want to hire dedicated personnel, many e-commerce enterprises outsource to decrease current costs or save on additional resources they want to add to their workflows. Outsourced labor might be domestic or international, and both techniques have sparked debates over outsourcing ethics.
Everyday eCommerce Tasks to Outsource
Marketing
ECommerce marketing tasks are critical to the success of your company. However, it is possible that you will not always perform these tasks. Outsourcing to individuals with experience in each area, such as content marketing, will produce a better result, especially if you lack the necessary skills and confidence. A professional may devise the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies for your products.
Outsource the following eCommerce marketing tasks:
- Products photography
- Copywriting
- Content writing
- Social media posting
- Email marketing
Website Design and Development
If you are not skilled in web design or development, it is best to delegate to professionals. Concentrate on expanding your business and core competencies rather than the time-consuming task of developing an effective eCommerce website.
Customer Service
Outsourcing customer service is an excellent way to ensure a team with professional skills and expertise gets everything done smoothly. You will save considerable time training your resources and searching for qualified candidates. Instead, you can concentrate your resources on expanding your scalability in the most cost-effective way possible.
Accounting and Bookkeeping
One of the most notable benefits of outsourcing bookkeeping and financials is cost-effectiveness. It saves you much money when setting up your company’s accounting process. You no longer need to rent office space and hire employees to complete these tasks. Outsourcing is not only less expensive, but it is also more practical.
Graphic Design & Video
Unless your company specializes in design or visual content, consider outsourcing these tasks to get the best results. Customers who visit your store will be first impressed by the visual materials such as your logo, banner, product images, or video, which are all part of your branding.
Inventory Management
When your company grows and your marketing efforts pay off, the number of products in your warehouse grows. You have more orders to ship and products to store. A large inventory will be complex for you to manage. Thus, delegating inventory management is a must. A third-party logistics provider will assist you in dealing with the challenge of meeting delivery demands due to overstock inventory.
Data Entry
You can engage a person specializing in this field to do it manually if your firm is small and the amount of product data and inventory isn’t too vast. It would be best to outsource more prominent and complicated data entry to a firm that provides a wide range of product data entry services.
Outsourcing vs. Insourcing
While outsourcing refers to hiring third-party labor, “insourcing” refers to utilizing in-house staff to complete tasks.
Take, for example, an eCommerce company that only runs online. This type of business typically has administration, web development, product management, inventory, shipping, marketing, sales, and customer service.
When one of these departments, say administration, is broken down, it is responsible for everything from staff management and payroll to accounting and human resources. Smaller businesses may transfer these responsibilities to the owner and another employee. Even yet, all firms will eventually need to pay someone or an entire department to perform each duty.
The eCommerce business owner must select whether to outsource or insource the task at this point. If the work has gotten too harsh for the business owner to undertake, they can hire an accountant to help them. In-house staff is more expensive, but they are much easier to manage, and their services will never be unavailable unless they are sick.
However, outsourcing this activity may be better if the organization does not create enough accounting data to justify hiring a full-time person.
Outsourcing vs. Offshoring
Businesses also use a different cost-cutting strategy. Offshoring is relocating a department or your entire business operations to another country. Many consumers and business owners mistake it for outsourcing. If companies outsource jobs to other countries, only outsource jobs to other countries. Outsourcing and offshore are two distinct business models, but they can and should be combined.
Offshoring is frequently used by businesses that market their products. In many Western countries, manufacturing and related costs are relatively high, prompting many companies to relocate operations to lower labor costs, such as Mexico, China, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
Businesses can combine the two strategies by outsourcing specific tasks to third-party companies outside their home countries, such as manufacturing and customer service. Both are done to save money but combining the two is often much less expensive.
Advantages and Disadvantages of eCommerce Outsourcing
Outsourcing, like anything else, has advantages and disadvantages. However, it can be a beneficial technique for eCommerce organizations to cut costs and gain a competitive edge when implemented correctly.
Advantages of eCommerce Outsourcing
Reduce your expenses.
It is the most compelling reason for delegating tasks to companies and contractors rather than an in-house workforce. In-house employees require full salaries, benefits, taxes, and adequate training time. Depending on the job that needs to be outsourced, you may also need to establish a new office or an entirely new department.
Without outsourcing, your situation is to continue handling even the mundane tasks, delegate them to an employee, which will only increase their workload and reduce their efficiency or hire a new employee.
You may find yourself cutting costs in other areas with the latter option. It may imply reducing hours for current employees or spending less on website resources and items such as shipping materials. Employee morale will deteriorate over time, and the small things you do to save money will most likely impact customers later.
You can outsource specific tasks that you and your employees don’t have the time or skill for right now without cutting costs in other areas of your business.
Make use of cutting-edge technology, like the cloud.
Outsourcing IT solutions such as user interface design, web development, or management are wise if your company does not specialize in technology or product.
You do not need to hire an in-house web designer/developer to perform those tasks; however, you can access cutting-edge technology and subject matter experts by outsourcing.
Outsourcing firms are now aware of the trends and eager to bring together the most advanced technologies and professionals from around the world to assist you in achieving your goals.
You are an eCommerce company that serves people worldwide, so don’t limit yourself to those who work in your industry. Find skilled people who can make your ideas a reality and even provide you with the best solutions for your projects.
Furthermore, cloud computing is a new type of outsourcing that provides you with dependable, adaptable, and scalable infrastructure. No worries about servers or digital management; outsourcing cloud computing allows tasks to be completed quickly and cost-effectively.
Save more time.
As previously stated, outsourcing eCommerce tasks saves you and your employees time. When you, as a business owner, can outsource jobs, you can devote more of your time to customer research, development, outreach, and other activities that will help your brand’s influence grow.
When your employees save time, they will be much more efficient with their initially hired tasks. There will be an increase in productivity and morale throughout the organization, eventually leading to increased sales and satisfied customers. Employees will be less likely to cut corners, resulting in fewer urgent support tickets and fewer support requests overall.
Take advantage of a more versatile hiring process.
You will find yourself outsourcing tasks that need to be done all year but not frequently enough to justify hiring new employees. However, there will be times when you require immediate assistance. It is true for projects with expiration dates as well as seasonal work.
For instance, if you want to add 500 new products to your store, you’ll need someone to write optimized product descriptions for each of them. If you don’t usually add that many new products to the store at once, you’ll need to ask a few employees to handle it on top of their regular duties, or you’ll have to do it yourself.
In contrast, outsourcing allows you to hire a freelance copywriter or a copywriting agency to handle the task as a one-time project.
Complete tasks promptly.
When your staff performs tasks, it may result in some risks. For example, suppose you’re working on rebranding your company, but the designer becomes ill and has to stop working one week before the deadline.
The launch date is canceled, and you must find another designer to fill the void. It is not your concern when outsourcing if someone leaves the outsourcing team with half-finished work.
Finally, the job of outsourcing agencies or freelancers is to ensure that your project runs smoothly.
Maintain your competitive-winning streak.
The free market craves and breeds competition, and the internet has only fueled this trend. You and your team can work around the clock all you want, but you’ll fall behind if you only meet the bare minimum of your quota every quarter without expanding.
Outsourcing enables you to complete tasks more quickly and take on new projects while spending less money. It will allow you to stay competitive without having to hire new employees.
Disadvantages of eCommerce Outsourcing
Control Issues.
One of the most significant disadvantages of outsourcing eCommerce jobs is a lack of control over the tasks you assign to third parties. They are not your workers. Instead, you’ll be working on a business-to-business basis, so while you can undoubtedly provide descriptions and feedback on how you want things done, you won’t be able to manage these types of projects the same way you would if in-house employees did them.
Communication issues may also get in the way. You can speak with in-house employees directly or call them on work phones if necessary. During working hours, they are required to give you their undivided attention.
When you outsource, everything changes. Other clients and daily tasks of a company or contractor, internet connectivity issues, and even time zone differences can interfere with your ability to communicate with them when necessary.
Privacy concerns.
Privacy is a significant concern for businesses and consumers, particularly regarding GDPR and increased government regulation. When you outsource areas like payments, data storage, and customer service, you give third parties access to your customer’s personal information.
You must ensure that the company you hire to outsource is reliable, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant, and takes security seriously.
When you outsource research and development and manufacturing to foreign companies, you risk having your product ideas and strategies stolen. Again, selecting the right e-commerce to outsource partner is critical.
Takeaway
Most organizations participate in some outsourcing without even realizing it, and the benefits of outsourcing eCommerce jobs far exceed the drawbacks for most small to medium firms. Nonetheless, you must carefully assess your company and determine whether this is your best course of action.
To understand its worth, consider all the many duties you might already be outsourcing. You should also carefully pick your outsourcing partner, focusing on employing reputable outsourcers.