Can robots replace burger-flippers? How about lawyers? Tools have been around for thousands of years, making a human job faster and easier; try banging a nail in without a hammer. Machines, complex combinations of parts that are either human-operated or human-started, have existed for far less than that. With a Gutenberg press, you can print hundreds of copies of printing with just 1-2 people operating the machine. A washing machine will wash your clothes after you just press the right buttons.

In earlier articles, we discussed How to Outsource and When to Outsource. Today, we turn to when not to Outsource. At first blush, we expect not to outsource when our candidate does not meet at least one of the criteria for outsourcing listed in When to Outsource. Better Results: Your outsourcers can get you better results, improving any one or more of quality + time-to-deliver + cost without negatively impacting the others.

Knowing how to outsource a process is challenging enough, and requires serious operational management and help, but does not involve making strategic decisions. Conversely, knowing when to outsource is far more challenging, as it involves making decisions with imperfect information about the future. Caveat: Use this as a starting point, a framework, but do not use it as your sole decision-making process. Get serious help; we are here. The Why There are only two reasons why you should outsource something.

Over the last week, I have had several discussions about the challenges to successful outsourcing. One person was dealing with manufacturing products in China; another was managing outsourced server maintenance and operations; yet a third had a financial technology management service provider. In all the cases, the question was the same: how do you know when it is good to outsource, and how do you make it succeed? Successfully outsourcing anything is far beyond the scope of a single article.