Marketing teams across asset management, including the big ones, are caught in a double trap between resource tightening and the rapid expansion of digital tools that don’t always deliver on the original promise. The shift to outsourcing has become a necessity.
Outsourcing offers more output, with less input
The ‘daily business’ of many marketing teams is all about newsletter production, updating your shelf of standardised sales presentations, beautifying presentations, laying out invitations and emails, strategy updates, producing infographics, updating web pages… the list of work never gets shorter while team resources are often struggling to expand at the same pace or may even be reduced.
Combine that with the extra dimension of catering to the fragmented demands of international sales teams in a variety of locations. Sprinkle in a little pressure to find time to focus on key strategic initiatives that drive growth and client satisfaction and the result is that teams often end up with their focus on ‘delivery and execution’ rather than driving the key initiatives we all aspire to deliver.
Sadly, the slip towards prioritising on delivery often also results in the gradual demotivation and potential loss of valuable team members who are more driven by creative and high impact activities.
In simple terms, how do you make sure your team is focused on driving initiatives that contribute to growth and manage down operational work at the same time? And all this while maintaining high delivery standards.
The solution that many large firms have implemented is to create a split between execution and ‘direction’ and to establish an outsourcing service centre in a low-cost location. In real terms however, except for large organisations that already have an outsourcing strategy, such projects are time draining, complex and lack critical mass in order to be a realistic solution for most marketing teams.
Want to learn more about what we do?
Click below to set up a meeting with one of the team
to chat about how we can help!
Lets talkTap into a near-sourced, outsourcing talent pool!
Marketing near-sourcing, however, is a more viable option for many marketing teams working for small to mid-sized firms and provides a means to tap into a talent pool that, until now, has been difficult for marketing leaders to access.
Near-sourcing is a new form of marketing services that combines traditional services such as desk-top publishing, layouting, design, presentation services, web publishing and design, social media management and so on, all provided from a near-shore location that offer the skills, professionalism and quality equal to (or better than) those available on the ‘home’ market.
Balancing act: skills versus task complexity
Near-shoring helps to balance the equation between skills and complexity of task and availability of resources:
- Focus high cost and high skilled team members on high value-added tasks
- More repetitive tasks can be managed by outsourcing to remote team members in a near-shore location
- Alternatively, transfer work from external service providers based in high-cost locations to a near-shore provider with the same skills but significantly lower costs. According to Brandon Gaille, 46% of companies gave this as the reason for outsourcing, showing just how practical it is!
- Near-sourcing is also the perfect way of freeing up your people to focus on what really matters, which you can explore further in another of our blogs!
Put simply, tapping and outsourcing into new talent pools available in near-shore locations is all about allocating the right work to the right skills-set in the right location at the right price! The advantage is clear, this will ultimately increase the motivation of your team allowing them to focus on work that really has a high value impact on the business.