A Downturn is No Time to Stop Delivering for Your Customers
Nearly every industry is feeling the effects of the looming global recession. In just the last few weeks we saw Meta, Salesforce, Stripe, Amazon and of course Twitter all announce thousands of employee layoffs and set hiring freezes for the foreseeable future.
It’s no surprise that companies respond to the pending downturn by rightsizing their workforce. It’s generally the most expensive and critical fixed cost they carry on their books and addresses the short term needs to meet financial targets and align to market conditions expected in the months and even years ahead.
But it also creates opportunity. Historically speaking, recessions separate the winners from the losers. Those that don’t lose focus on innovation, marketing and operational excellence tend to survive and often thrive as they come out the other side of a downturn. But perhaps the most critical thing that companies must do is STAY FOCUSED ON THEIR CUSTOMERS.
Remember, they are also going through this downturn and often need more, not less support. This is a time where customer intimacy and true human to human relationships can keep a customer for life.
But how do you address two seemingly competing strategies?
The answer for many forward-thinking companies is to explore ways to outsource their services. In some cases this is just an adjustment of the mix of outsourced/insourced resources. But for others it’s exploring for the first time how they can still deliver for customers without the fixed costs necessary.
OK, so cost is an easy one… still on the fence about outsourcing?
Here are three more reasons to consider…
Seize Top Talent Now!
Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but there really is no better time than today to find great talent. Between the Great Resignation and the recent spate of layoffs across all sectors, there is an opportunity to pick up the best and the brightest to serve your brand, and do so without the financial risk.
One of our clients has told us over and over again that he sees our team as a breeding ground for the talent he wants to bring in-house when the time is right. Think of it as a working interview. But this window of time is short. The best will go quickly where they can.
Flex Your Team
Outsourcing provides businesses with the agility they need to adapt to changing conditions. The length of recession and the recovery path vary greatly and that unpredictability requires a certain level of flexibility, enabling companies to scale down or up with speed that can’t be accomplished in-house. We have been through this before with our clients, not just in managing through recessions, but also as demand for products ebbs and flows, allowing them to keep costs down and make quick decisions to meet the demands of both their customers and their shareholders.
Experts At Your Fingertips
A great outsourcing partner gives you access to a talent pool that isn’t always available with full-time employees, even in the best of market conditions. Highly specialized and technical experts aren’t always located in the same city as a company’s headquarters or even looking for traditional full-time roles. Being able to hire subject matter experts for project-based roles anywhere in the world gives a huge competitive advantage over companies that are beholden to local talent that are only willing to work full-time roles.
That talent is also looking at work very different than they did before the recession. At JDA TSG we have focused our outsourcing capabilities on building remote teams and a distributed model which gets the best talent regardless of location.
Final Thoughts
No matter where you are in your response to the economic downturn, it’s worth the time to consider how to preserve the value you have for customers and finding the right outsourcing partner is a great first step.
Want to hear more? Please reach out to me at rsena@jdatsg.com. We have worked closely with companies of all sizes and understand that the first step could simply be a consultation to analyze the opportunity.