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"Training" can relate to a wide range of needs, depending on your company's type & size, product knowledge, company processes, customer service, and technical or other job-specific skills.

Outsourcing also comes in many forms. You can outsource thousands of production jobs or a hundred call center jobs. You can outsource departmental activities such as legal, accounting, sales, marketing, payroll, PR, HR, distribution or IT. Or you can bring in a consultant to conduct training onsite. That's outsourcing, too.

Companies have discovered the hard way that hidden costs such as a language barrier can outweigh other benefits and even cause costly customer/client backlash. Your customers have very high expectations these days, so this question becomes paramount: "How will outsourcing affect our customers? And do I onshore or offshore to a company that provides a fully trained staff?"

Outsourcing can save money, but there are other efficiencies, as well.

You can:
• Gain access to top-level training professionals who can apply skills and resources to your work right now. They can train more people, faster and more cost-effectively.
• Broaden geographical reach so you don't have to send or bring people long distances for training.
• Reduce product-to-market time, especially if you're training a sales force or resellers.
• Save time on hiring and personnel costs.
• Save money on overhead or capital expenditures, and leverage the cost of rapidly-changing technology.
• Mitigate the risk of potentially expensive legal or customer-relationship missteps.
• Leverage channel relationships by partnering with vendors.
• Match costs to workload, because an as-needed partnership provides scalability and flexibility. And you remain in control.
• Generate new revenue, if you have intellectual property that could be taught to other companies or customers.
Training is not your core business. Just because your people can do the work doesn't mean that's what they should be doing. Especially in today's tough economy, profitability depends on efficient use of resources.

Once you decide to outsource, make sure your new working relationship gets off to the best start to ensure a smooth transition.