At some point a successful company will have to hire or outsource employees to meet the growing demands of its company. Choosing the right people becomes important in building your team. But what if one of your partners outsources the work you gave them to another? Is it really that bad?
In a growing ecommerce business, the practice of drop service can be a lifesaver or get you in real trouble. Let’s take a closer look at that.
What is drop service?
Let’s say you need graphic design for a new social media campaign. You pay a marketing agency a commission of $ 5,000 per month to provide this service. The agency then turns around and hires a $ 600 a month freelancer to create the art. The agency never tells you that they have outsourced your work. Once all is said and done the agency will record the difference and you won’t be the smarter. This is known as a drop service.
Drop service is not a new concept. Companies have been subcontracting for ages. But with the advent of freelance platforms like Fiver, it has become easy to hire incredibly talented content producers such as graphic design, web design, audio / video production, and more. The difference between drop services and other types of outsourcing is that the original agent hired to do the work passes that work off as their own.
Choosing a trusted outsourcing partner can be a difficult process. Building trust and relationships takes time and a lot of effort. Finding someone to get you is not an easy task! Sometimes it makes sense to outsource to a provider and ask them to outsource work to others. They gain their expertise in overseeing your projects and they expand their business and profitability. In this sense, drop service or subcontracting is a win-win situation for everyone: a freelancer is paid for his work, the work is supervised by a subject matter expert, and the company receives the promised delivery of its service / product.
How can a service failure harm your company?
Drop service can backfire in a number of ways, from leaving the freelancer during the project to having copyrighted material passed on as the original. With the drop service, the existence of a subcontractor is kept secret. This increases the incentive to compromise. Devil! Why not? Your name is not on the deliveries.
Imagine a software engineer using drop services to do coding tasks that they cannot do on their own. If they lose the talent behind their brilliance, your business could be a world of damage. Who will fix your code now? Or what if that code is part of another company’s trade secret?
The direction of work can also be a problem. The client may have shared specific requirements, but this information can be lost when communicated with the freelancer. Do you remember the phone game we played as kids? The message becomes a mess later in the chain. And how much more difficult can it be if the freelancer also supervises his work on site ?!
Then there is the question of cost. Drop service can affect your company’s bottom line. Eliminate the middleman and you may save money on your services, but it costs your time overseeing the work. If you are a do-it-yourself entrepreneur, look for ways to cut costs and work directly with vendors when it makes sense.
What questions should you ask your service provider to avoid a drop service nightmare?
When choosing a partner to outsource some or all of your operations, it is important to inquire about the worker behind their operations. Outsourcing or Subcontracting? If so, which services? Who oversees the work of the subcontractors? What if there is a quality of work problem how is it resolved? Can you hire a specific subcontractor to provide the services? What working conditions are subcontractors subject to?
These are all important questions to help you avoid drop maintenance nightmares.
Disclaimer of liability
Speed Commerce Corp. published this content on April 12, 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by public, unedited and unchanged, on April 12, 2021 19:04:00 UTC.
