Latin America. Barbara Ferguson, Senior Manager – Product Marketing at BroadSoft, asserts that companies used to manage themselves in isolation, developing and producing everything in-house.
Today, this method is a sure route to failure, as companies that collaborate with external partners are more agile, efficient, and have greater chances of success. It is important to note that businesses cannot be good at everything, no matter their turn, budgets or size, why waste time trying? Any of them can acquire the talent and experience they need through external workers, this will benefit them by saving a lot of human and financial resources, since they will not need future training or investments in specialized personnel and will be able to focus on the central part of their business.
Before starting to look for external collaborators, it is important that companies, and all those who integrate them, understand the need to open borders and accept that a fundamental part will be to cede some control. It is advisable to start by examining the business and its processes. Which parts of the company are the slowest or least efficient? Where is the most money invested for a lower return on investment? These will be the areas that are likely to require specialized talent and external collaboration. From this, the main reasons why working with an external partner is important and the benefits offered should be identified.
Invest in the success of the company
According to a study by McKinsey & Company[1], globally 65% of companies hire external personnel specialized in different areas of the business. When a part of a company is outsourced, some management and control decisions naturally pass to the partner. While this may be difficult for some people to accept, they must make sure to overcome this obstacle. After all, the right partner will make better decisions than could have been made internally, faster, and based on their specific expertise.
Once companies identify what they need to outsource and employees adopt a collaborative mindset, partners can be sought to provide the necessary skills. Their task will be to find partners they can trust. It is important to identify partners who share the same business vision as the company to which they will join. In other words, partners should feel that they fit in as part of the organization.
External alliances and more open working relationships should be the goal of every company. By focusing on what is done best and outsourcing the parts in which others are specialists, you can make businesses more agile and able to thrive.
The benefits of collaboration
By working with external partners or workers, you discover a new way of looking at a business, helping to shape it for the future and even create new areas to expand it. With the right elements, success is magnified. For example, when working with BroadSoft's Team-One, any member of a work team can invite an external collaborator to a workspace by simply entering their email. This means customers and suppliers can easily join chat groups, live meetings, share files, and track tasks, all together in the same collaboration app. Customer IT managers may know that guest access is restricted to only those files, workspaces, and people who allow their invitations. Everything that is shared in a workspace is linked to third-party storage solutions, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. which preserves all the security parameters of the storage solution.
Also, at UC-One, external workers can easily be invited to participate in UC-One meetings. External guests have full access to the secure My Room meeting space they have been invited to, allowing them to join others on the team for scheduled or impromptu multimedia collaboration sessions including HD voice, video, screen sharing, and group chat.
