According to Statista, the size of the global outsourcing services marketing is a whopping 104.6 billion dollars and it’s not hard to see why.

The talent, hunger to work, and the propensity to deliver more than expected abound in countries like Taiwan, Philippines, and India. All of that for prices at 33% to 50% less, across the board.

But outsourcing might not work for everyone. In fact, not all businesses can claim to have made their outsourcing efforts pay off. Barring a few strategic and logistic issues as to why outsourcing might not work, it usually does.

Here’s how you make it happen:

Don the new leadership role
Throw what you know about leading people out of the window, in the traditional sense, and prepare for a new leadership role. The kind of leadership when delegation goes beyond sending memos and emails. It goes beyond your ability to inspire people just by your presence and the fact that you exude charm in meetings.

The new leadership much needed for outsourcing makes you a mere name or a handle (and rarely a face on Skype or video conference). Distances, lack of emotional handles, and tight deadlines are the monkey wrenches you’d now have to cope with.

Embrace the future of work
Resistance to outsourcing is detrimental to your entire plan to use outsourcing in the first place. You can’t do something right when you don’t believe in it. If you are half-minded about it, you’d get less of what you expect.

Outsourcing is the future of work. Telecommuting is the new normal. Competition for available jobs in your business isn’t from local or national candidates; it’s global. Either that or technology could soon replace entire industries.

Experiment little by little if you want to, but try it first on the path to be a believer.

Place emphasis on communication
By definition, outsourcing brings in remote work into consideration. That, in turn, brings in a whole new slew of challenges: the physical non-presence of employees, vendors, and even companies. Work happens elsewhere, management is done remotely, and you don’t have the luxury of long meetings coupled with human idiosyncrasies to deal with.

What you do have to do deal with is faceless communication (mostly email), anytime entries into project collaboration software, and crazy time zones.

Communication is already a critical requirement for how teams function. With outsourcing, it’s probably the most important, do-or-don’t-do-business requirement.

Set up expectations with your remote team about how and when this communication should happen.

Depend on Technology
Outsourcing happened because of the onslaught of technology, and it’s the technology that helps drive outsourcing to meet your business requirements. The “borderlessness” is possible because of the Internet, the VoIP systems, the networks, cloud computing, and more.

The Internet is the great connector that found the bridge for you to take outsourcing to walk along the path of prosperity.

Learn to depend on technology and use it, instead of shying away from it.

Own up to it for your competitive advantage.

Outsoucing is the 21st century’s Genghis Khan — it came and it conquered