How much of your time does an outsourced team need?

Key takeaways

Managing an outsourced team usually takes two to four hours a week per process in the first month and about one hour a week once it settles, for a weekly check, a decision list and a short review. Time stays high when the process is not written down, when several people give instructions, or when every exception needs your approval.

• First month: about 2 to 4 hours a week per process.
• After 90 days: about 1 hour a week per process.
• One named contact keeps instructions consistent.
• Written limits stop exceptions coming back to you.

What does managing an outsourced team involve?

Managing an outsourced team involves four regular tasks: answering questions and making decisions on exceptions, reviewing a sample of work, reading a weekly performance report, and holding a short review meeting. You manage the outcome and the process, while the provider manages its own people.

• How outsourcing can improve business efficiency
• Who should own the outsourcing relationship in a small firm?

How does the time change over 90 days?

In the first month most of the time goes on questions, because the team is learning your exceptions. Each answered question should become a written rule. By month two, sampling replaces checking everything. By month three, the routine is a short weekly report and a decision list, and questions are rare.

• Weeks 1 to 4: daily questions, most work checked.
• Weeks 5 to 8: fewer questions, one in five items sampled.
• Weeks 9 to 12: weekly report, short decision list.

• How long before outsourcing makes you more efficient?
• Quality assurance for outsourced teams

What keeps oversight time high?

Oversight time stays high when the process is undocumented, when different people in your business give different instructions, when the team must ask before finishing anything, and when performance is never reported, so you check by hand. Each of these is fixable in a week or two.

• The process owner: who keeps an outsourced process healthy
• RACI matrix for outsourcing: who does what, clearly
• Approval bottlenecks: when sign-off holds up the work

What does it look like in numbers?

In an illustrative handover of 40 hours a week of admin, the owner spends about 4 hours a week in month one and about 1 hour a week from month three. Over the first quarter that is about 25 hours of management time to return about 30 hours a week thereafter. Example figures to show the shape.

• How to measure the time outsourcing saves you
• The management time cost of an in-house team

How do you keep management time low?

Keep it low by writing the process and the top exceptions before day one, naming one internal contact, setting written approval limits, agreeing a single daily decision list and asking for a weekly report with lead time, volumes and errors. Then hold a 30-minute review each week and a longer one each quarter.

• Outsourcing performance report: what a good one shows
• The weekly operations review that keeps a lean team on track
• Escalation paths for outsourced teams: fast, not chaotic

When is the management time not worth it?

It is not worth it when the work handed over is only an hour or two a week, so oversight takes as long as doing it, or when the process changes so often that the team never stops asking questions. In those cases keep the work, or stabilise the process first.

• When not to outsource
• Should you fix a process before you outsource it?

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: an owner finds they spend more time managing the provider than they saved. The cause is usually that three people in the business send the team requests by email. Routing everything through one contact and one task list cuts the oversight time quickly.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Oversight checklist

Put these in place to keep your time low.

• One named internal contact.
• Written process and top ten exceptions.
• Approval limits the team can apply alone.
• One daily decision list.
• Weekly report and 30-minute review.

• Outsourcing efficiency checklist: 20 checks

Next step

Tell us what you plan to hand over. We will outline the oversight routine with you and estimate how much of your time it would need each week.