When you outsource your work to someone else it carries a lot of reason behind. If you are in a country that has a higher wage rate it is preferable to outsource the job to other countries with comparatively low wage rates to make it cost-competitive. Moreover, if you find a good outsourcing service provider who could provide you with quality service within your time limit, there is no reason for not outsourcing the job. While finding outsourcing partners, you may get several options for working with many available freelancers and agencies. The judgment of choosing the right partner is surely your decision. We have seen many people facing embarrassing situations while working with freelancers. Let us discuss a few points on why it will be wiser to work with an agency and not a freelancer.
Lack of commitment:
Freelancers lack commitment. Firstly, they do not work under a corporate work culture to realize the responsibility. Secondly, most freelancers are part-timers and like students, they run under bad time management. Also, lack of experience, lack of infrastructure and lack of team expertise prevents them to finish the work in time with accuracy. An agency hardly fails at this point being well equipped.
Combination of expertise matters:
When a freelancer works alone for a project lacking supportive help from experts. In a company, a team works together, there exists a good combination of expertise skill set and experience. A supportive help, technical assistance is always available from within the team and from the supervisors. An agency always has a backup ready for your service, a freelancer works alone and has no backup.
Less variation:
As we discussed above, due to the lack of a variety of skill sets, a freelancer often fails to understand and work on a project if it is varied to parameters. Sometimes you may have to hire more than one freelancer to get your project done. In an agency, people with experience in various projects work together to complete the whole staff in a single assignment.
Shortage of Infra-structure:
When a freelancer works you are not even sure with the configuration of the machine and the bandwidth of his/her internet connection. He/she is not equipped with the technical support they lack back-up, which is available in an agency. They have a tech team that always works with supports of system replacement, alternative internet connections, and power back-ups to defend any technical obstacle in the workflow.
Stressful communication:
As we discussed before most of them are a part-timer, they are not always available for communication. In a company, there are teams with different portfolios as Business Development Manager, Process Manager or Team leader to communicate successfully from both the ways. They are ready to clarify anything unexpected on delivery as well as ask questions on different matters.
Lack of Quality:
Job perfection and quality matters. If a job is delivered without reaching an expected quality level, it will hamper your purpose. Freelancers, start freelancing at a minimum wage without any sound technical background. In the case of web development, problems relating to features, menus, database connectivity, hosting properties may arise. Whereas in a company a web product is delivered only after successful testing by expert technicians providing client satisfaction.
Time zone factor:
You may hire a freelancer from other countries having a different time zone, but a convenient communication won’t be possible as they run on a very clumsy schedule. Being a part-timer, they have their own schedule and could get unavailable when you want him/her to work. In a company, this risk is too minimum as there is always a team working on different shifts and they will engage a dedicated service for you to get people always available in need.
Apart from the aforesaid factors, there may be many other disturbing elements that you may have faced working with freelancers. The only advantage is that they work at a lower cost rate than agencies but has bad service. I must say that all freelancers are not unprofessional as discussed and there are a few who are working well maintaining their reputation. It is not easy to find people like that always without burning fingers in the flame. Although a bit expensive it is always safe and secure to work with an agency to get professional results while outsourcing.
