Outsourcing is considered one of the most effective operational practices in the business world today.

Considering the shortage of technological talent, outsourcing is becoming even more desirable, as it solves a number of problems ranging from reducing software development costs to the challenge of finding the necessary specialists. 

Nearly 75% of companies currently outsource IT services, while 87% are planning to outsource at the same or an increased pace. 

How does outsourcing or team augmentation work in a company?

Imagine you want to build a house. Even if you were the architect, your hand alone won’t be enough, you’ll need specialists in the electrical installation, in elaborating and assembling each one of the pieces or builders to help you.

As you can see, there are too many things you have to take care of to build the house of your dreams. For each of these tasks, the best thing you can do is to call the right person to do it, that is, a contractor who puts together a competent work team.

The same works in your business, sometimes your own team can't handle everything at once or you don’t have the expertise in a particular area and that's when outsourcing or team augmentation comes in.

But as in all business processes, risks exist. In the case of outsourcing, the advantages usually outweigh them, but it’s always necessary to make a study of the organization to decide whether outsourcing can be productive or not for your business development.

In today's post, we want to show you 5 success stories where a decision, to outsource part of their processes, completely change the course of their business. Well-known companies that wouldn't be here today without outsourcing.

1. PROCTER & GAMBLE  

Product companies like P&G have a big challenge performing in a very rapidly changing market, so it is vital to be the first to offer a new product to maintain that competitive edge.

After managing everything in-house for decades, P&G switched gears one day and decided to outsource some research and development activities to accelerate innovation.

The results far exceeded expectations as innovation and productivity were boosted by 60% and generated more than $10 billion in revenue from over 400 new products. Today about half of P&G’s innovation comes from outsourcing partners.

2. SLACK

Slack was literally the result of a good outsourcing relationship. Stewart Butterfield (Slack's founder) had a good idea in mind but knew he didn't have the necessary design skills needed to create the app, branding and marketing elements to achieve his vision. So, in 2012, Butterfield took his prototype to the user interface specialists at Metalab and together they designed the application from scratch.

Slack’s story is one of the best IT outsourcing examples. By relying on MetaLab, the Slack team was able to receive valuable feedback, which helped them create a tool that reached 15,000 users within 2 weeks of launching. Its success has been clear, currently more than 8 million people use the collaboration platform daily. ‍

3. WHATSAPP

Who doesn't know Whatsapp nowadays? Today it has become the quintessential fast messaging app, but would it have come this far without outsourcing

Before WhatsApp was bought by Facebook for $19 billion, it was a small operation with 35 employees. With little start-up capital, it was imperative for Whatsapp to keep costs down, so to build and launch the product, the company turned to Eastern Europe in an attempt to source the necessary tech talent. 

To build and launch the product, the company turned to Eastern Europe in an attempt to get the necessary tech talent, exactly in Russia where in the words of the company's co-founder Jan Koum: "There are excellent engineers there".

Most of the internal employees focused on customer service and operations, while development was done overseas. Although WhatsApp had initially hired most of its engineering staff overseas, it later moved some of the contractors to the United States.