The IT industry changes every second of every day.
This can be scary for most businesses, people, and the general population as a whole. But it doesn’t have to be.
In fact, the IT industry has created endless opportunities for companies to thrive in the 21st-century.
Check out this staggering statistic: the global market for IT outsourcing is valued at over 280 billion US dollars.
What does this mean for our real estate investment industry?
It means that everyone else is doing it!
We need to jump onboard the digital wave of using IT outsourcing services to stay ahead of our competition.
How do we make that happen?
Simple. We begin a transitional and transformative experience within our businesses to cater to this growing market demand.
We begin a transitional and transformative experience within our businesses to cater to this growing market demand.
Many times, it’s helpful to seek some advice from an expert.
Let’s start with the basics.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing should be associated with the term delegated.
What Outsourcing IS
Many times we become overwhelmed with meeting all of our day-to-day business responsibilities. We get bogged down with having too much to get done in too little time.
Sound familiar?
This is where outsourcing can come in handy.
We don’t always need to send a project to another country, but we may decide to outsource a handful of our needs and responsibilities to another department, or in some cases, a capable third party.
An example.
A company launches a new marketing plan that has the phones ringing off the hook. The current team can’t keep up with the volume of calls, so they need to find a solution to quickly accommodate this rise in phone traffic.
Simple solution: outsource to a local call center that can take messages, answer questions, and book appointments.
Sure, some of the work may have been sent outside the company’s building, but the work wasn’t, necessarily, sent away to a far off land.
Outsourcing allows for strategic use of available resources in a way that can still maximize output and profits.
What Outsourcing is NOT
1)Outsourcing is NOT sending away our workload for it to be out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
2)Outsourcing is NOT casting our duties and responsibilities to some random person on the street.
3)Outsourcing IS delegating some of our responsibilities to a person or a team of professionals that can help us work more efficiently and effectively.
IT Outsourcing Services
IT stands for information technology, and ‘IT’ has the capacity to transform our entire company in an incredibly short amount of time.
The use of digital outsourcing, usually referred to as IT outsourcing services, has allowed companies to take full advantage of the Internet, as well as cloud-based technologies, to catapult their business into a global market.
In today’s market, the people or the companies that offer the best and most useful IT services are not always within our company’s immediate zip code.
So, the fix?
Find the best company that offers the specific IT outsourcing services that work best with our business needs.
Sometimes, these companies will be offshore or nearshore (meaning they may not be in our country). However, many of these IT outsourcing services employ a mostly remote staff that may not live in the city, state, or even country of the company we hired.
Translation: loads of talent from across the world available at our fingertips to help complete our business goals.
The purpose of IT outsourcing services is simple and direct.
Find the person or team with expert qualities and knowledge that will help our businesses stay competitive in this 21st century, tech-driven marketplace.
A common thought that many of us have: “How do we know if we need to utilize IT outsourcing services?”
That is a pretty easy answer when we ask ourselves these two questions:
- Are we easily available and visible online?
- Do we have technological services that increase our business efficiency and efficacy?
If the answer is ‘no’, then our company needs a digital transition and transformative experience ASAP.
Digital Transition
This phrase is pretty much what it implies: making the transition to digital.
For many of us, we already embrace this digital transition in our companies, businesses, and/or services.
- We use social media, update our websites.
- Interact with our customers and end-users by using blog-style writing on our sites.
- Also, we may conduct meetings using virtual platforms such as web conferencing.
But there is still a large number of us that are hesitant to allow the age of technology to find its home within our companies.
Don’t stress.
This is quite common, as technology is always evolving. This continuous tech evolution gives us little room to actually get used to its presence before it changes, yet again.
Change can be hard for all of us.
But, it doesn’t have to be.
Do I Need to Make This Transition?
The short and simple answer – yes.
To stay current in this tech-centric century, we will be passed by our competition if we don’t embrace a digital presence in the marketplace.
Does that mean that we need to begin interviewing avatars and robots to become the face of our company? Absolutely not.
We should just begin with small steps that allow our companies and businesses to transition easily and comfortably into a digital presence.
How Can I Begin to Make This Transition?
Baby steps.
A great idea is to make a list of any types of digital or tech strategies that we use, or would like to use, to market our businesses and companies.
Here are some of the top digital additions to consider:
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Start using social media(Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc)
- Send updates of current projects, or even links to our websites.
- Upload pictures to accommodate all of our visual clients. This is a stellar way to lure prospective next-Gen buyers or clients that utilize this form of social media on a near-continuous basis.
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Focus on the company/business website
- Make sure it’s comprehensive and easy to use and understand.
- Highlight our services.
- Include an easy method of contact.
- Consider using one of the many reputable IT outsourcing services that can offer web design at reasonable prices.
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Try using web conferencing platforms to conduct meetings
- These virtual meetings can save quite a bit of time.
- Skype, WebEx, Adobe Connect, and even apps like FaceTime are great options.
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Think about adding a Chat Now feature to the website
- This is a widely popular option due to the growing desire for clients to have an immediate response.
- This is, also, a great way to create a sale or entice a new client.
- Consider using one of the many IT outsourcing services that can make this feature available and functional on our sites.
Now that we have an idea of how to begin our transition, let’s look at how we can implement and begin a full digital transformation.
Digital Transformation
Let’s talk digital facelift.
We’ve worked on getting an idea of how to transition our business and/or services to a more digital platform. Our next step should be deciding how to begin our transformation to a largely digital presence.
Unless we have the hacker skills of a true diehard techie, chances are that we’ll want to use the expert skills from various IT outsourcing services to meet the evolving needs of a true digital transformation.
Ways that a digital transformation will benefit our company/business:
- Integrate our services, processes, and activities
- Mine and utilize important industry data to drive decisions and results
- Incorporate automation
- Provide real-time support and feedback for clients
- Utilize innovative technology to track potential clients
- Increase our digital traffic and visibility
If any or all of these benefits seem overwhelming or confusing, this is where IT outsourcing services could really help us to delegate our business plans.
Put Them Together and What Have We Got?
Becoming a company or business that offers true digital services to a growing demographic of tech-reliant clients and customers will immediately impact our bottom-line.
Meeting our clients and customers in a booming digital environment will ensure that we stay with or ahead of our competition, as well as cater to the tech-driven global marketplace that is conquering the world.
A strong digital transition and transformation experience will provide us the valuable niche needed to adapt to a truly digital generation.
What’s in It for Us?
Plain and simple: efficiency and effectivity.
Allowing a digital transition and transformation experience to broadly widen the scope of our company, business, and/or service will immediately enhance profits.
Just picture these situations:
- Virtual walkthroughs for potential home buyers
- Opportunities for potential clients to contact us immediately using a chat option on our website
- Ability to upload videos and pictures from our mobile devices to our website instantly
- Instant opportunities to update our current and/or potential clients about real estate opportunities using social media
Undergoing a digital transition and transformation experience within our business will have monumental impacts on the growth of our company.
Allowing IT outsourcing services to become a part of our business plan to get us into this digital age of commerce will be a decision we won’t ever regret.
Need a bit of guidance? Let me know how I can help.
