Remote Staffing vs. Outsourcing: What’s Best for Your Ecommerce Business?

The modern workplace has changed. We no longer require a physical office due to advancements in telecommunications technology. More workers require more space, which presents a difficulty for emerging businesses. There need to be copious amounts of deliberation over investing large amounts of capital in setting up a workplace when the same work could be done remotely.

Tapping into the ‘gig economy’ can help grow a business faster than before. Accessing a slew of freelance workers is convenient when setting up a workforce. But when you rely on freelancers, you can only go so far. The challenge is – how can you establish a remote working culture in your organization?

You have two options: utilize an outsourced agency or a team of individual remote workers. Each strategy has advantages and cons; your specific business demands determine the best way ahead.

What’s the Difference?

In remote staffing, a company hires employees who work from outside that company’s offices. Although these employees work remotely, there are still considered the company’s bonafide employees and are integrated into the company’s structure. Remote staffing is an excellent option for businesses that want to expand their workforce, avoid burdening their local workforce with too many recruiting and relocation expenses, or take advantage of talented employees in other parts of the world.

Outsourcing, on the other hand, is a much more straightforward concept. Outsourcing allows you to transfer specific tasks or functions to an external contractor or vendor. This can be a cost-effective way to increase efficiency within your business.

In ecommerce, outsourcing can take many forms, from catalog management to data billing and invoice management. By outsourcing such continuous and repetitive tasks, you can free up your time to focus on more critical aspects of your business. Additionally, outsourcing can improve the quality of your products and services and reduce costs.

Time and Resource Management

Outsourcing typically involves a single point of contact between your business and the outsourcing firm. You exchange control for efficient time management. Should you engage the services of an outsourcing film, you will be free of any obligations to manage the staff – optimizing your resources and time management.

In contrast, remote workers are often managed in-house, which means you are involved in the work process and thus have more control of the final product. This translates to time, energy, and other resources being spent on the project.

In ecommerce management, there is an advantage to using an outsourcing firm over remote workers for tasks such as catalog management because system checks are already in place. When employing a remote team, you must invest time and resources in establishing these protocols from scratch.

Picking Your Team

In contrast to outsourcing, remote staffing allows you to choose your employees. When you outsource, you employ the company and have little to no control over who works on your project. Outsourcing companies often have access to a diverse pool of personnel; this makes selecting the proper personnel for your project a simple and efficient procedure.
But when recruiting each remote worker individually, finding the right person for the job can be challenging.

Breaking Down International Barriers

One of the top drawcards of distance work culture is that you can hire people from all around the world. Outsourcing firms hold a definite upper hand in ecommerce solutions because they frequently have foreign branches, which allows access to employees in countries where the price of labor is lower than in your base countries. Of course, you can also do this when finding a remote worker group. However, outsourcing firms have pre-existing global relationships, making this procedure simple and quick.

Scalability

The work volume heavily influences the decision to outsource or use a remote team. If you have a large amount of work, employing an outsourcing agency may be easier than building a remote staff simply because outsourcing corporations already have access to many skilled people. Outsourcing is also a superior option for projects that must be swiftly upscaled and downscaled as it provides continuous ecommerce support. Both techniques of remote working increase scalability. You create space for endless expansion by removing the limits of actual office space.

Suitability of Roles

But perhaps the significant difference between remote staffing and outsourcing lies in what roles the employees must assume. Remote staffing is a perfect fit for foundational functions that assist the company in its growth, such as business development, marketing, or brand strategy.

Outsourcing, on the other hand, is best suited for maintenance and keeping the company running like a well-oiled machine. Non-core, essential tasks such as catalog management, billing, and invoice management are better delegated to outsourcing firms. A company cannot survive just on freelancers. When you burst out of your shell, you need a large group of individuals to support you. Adding more full-time employees is costly and necessitates increasing the physical workspace. 

247Digitize can help you optimize and manage all the necessary yet time-consuming tasks to run your ecommerce business. We will take these recurring duties off your hands so that you can focus more on growing your business and expanding your company.

Get in touch with us here if you wish to learn more about how we can help you.