Tag: Outsource

Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. While a business may be started with specific products and services in mind, seldom is it equipped to have everything it needs to complete its mission, hence the need for outsourcing. The following contributed post is entitled, Should Your Small Business Look To Outsource?

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When it comes to setting up a business and ensuring success, then there will be a time when hiring really is critical. Even if you start small, as a one-person operation, hiring is inevitable. To do well in business, you need to have teams that are going to help and support. The whole hiring process, no matter if you choose full-time or part-time employees is really important, as you want to have the right person for the job.

Although the process is important, it is not something that is easy. If you want to expand and grow what you do, then you will need to have more and more people on-board. Of course, this can help to grow the business, but it also means more costs for wages, as well as additional things like insurance for employees and sick pay, and so on. As this is a consideration, you could also look to hire people to do work for you that are not part of an in-house team. When you outsource to a company or an individual, you just pay for the task that is required, and there is no more commitment. If they do a good job, then you know who to use again. If they don’t, then you know to not hire them again, making it much simpler in many ways than having a full-time employee.

If your business has not thought about outsourcing before, then here are some of the things that you could outsource for, and when you should outsource. Getting it right will help to save the business money in the long-term, as well as help to keep the business thriving.

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Tasks where you lack expertise

Businesses can vary so much, and as a small business owner, you might not have any previous experience in this area. So there may be some aspects of business that you have no idea about. Areas like social media are a good idea for small business, especially from a digital marketing point of view. However, if you have a small team, then you’re likely to not have the time or expertise to run it successfully, as an example. In the same way, you will need bookkeeping and accounts for your business, but if no one is experienced in this, then outsourcing this will help massively, and be something that you no longer need to think about. If you hired a full-time accountant to do this for you, there wouldn’t be enough work to fill a full-time role, and it would cost a lot more than using a separate company or person to do this for you.

Time consuming tasks

Likewise, outsourcing tasks to someone else can be a good idea, especially for any tasks that are time consuming. There are a number of tasks in business that can take up a lot of time, but that aren’t too taxing or vital to business, they just need to be done. Your expertise should be doing the tasks that are the things helping to grow the business, rather than the smaller and more time consuming tasks. For example, you might take a lot of phone orders or customer service calls. These calls could be taken by a business answering service, rather than paying for a full-time employee to do it all. There are a range of tasks, and it will vary from business to business, but it is worth looking into if you are hoping to propel your business forward.

If you are deciding whether or not to outsource or to hire someone to your team, then there are a number of things to think about. It starts by taking a look at your business needs, as there are a number of advantages to both options, as well as disadvantages of both options. It is important to not get too caught up in the different activities that could happen, and which of those you should or shouldn’t hire or outsource too. You could have some expertise in a particular area, such as accounting, for example. But if you take on a lot of other roles, being the accountant as well might be too much. So even if you have a team of people with experience in something in particular, you might still choose to outsource.

Look at your business and the people in it specifically. Look at the needs and then decide what areas will be a benefit to you if you outsource, or which really do need to have an in-house team member. Assess the tasks, weigh up the costs, and your options, and then go from there.

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. The decision to start outsourcing is a critical strategic move for any business. Successfully outsourcing can propel your business to the next level if it is done correctly. The following contributed post is entitled, Which Areas Should Your SMB Outsource?

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Outsourcing is something that many startups don’t consider for themselves. They wrongly believe that it’s something that comes much later down the line, that it’s something that only much larger companies and corporations can benefit from. Outsourcing is where you hire a third party to tackle a designated area of your business. It could be a one- off job or it could be ongoing such as managing an entire department. It’s something that any company can utilise, but is especially ideal when first starting out, as instead of spending money on larger premises, more equipment, hiring and training staff and more, you can pay a company to tackle that area.

Manufacturing
This is something that most smaller and medium sized businesses choose to outsource, and for good reason. Manufacturing yourself requires a lot of money and materials upfront to get started, from steel watertanks to machinery, power tools, vehicles- not to mention warehousing space and qualified staff to run everything. Outsourcing your manufacturing is usually the best option until you’re a much larger company.

IT
Your website, social media and all elements of your business online are some of the most important. When you outsource your IT department you can be sure you’ll never be left with a website that’s not loading properly, or issues online that could be costing you money. Research shows that online customers are impatient, if someone clicks on your site and it doesn’t work they’ll click off within three seconds and may never return.

Blog Writing
Blogging is great for business, it makes your site look professional and helps you to gain followers and more interest in what you sell. However, writing high quality content on a regular basis is time consuming. Outsourcing the work for freelance bloggers means your blog will stay updated, and you won’t have to find the time or man power within your own team to do this.

Video Editing
Along with a well written blog, high quality videos on your website or on a Youtube channel for your business can help you with your success. These videos can go viral and be used as promotion, or they can be instructional guides if what you do or sell requires this. They could involve a landing page video which introduces and talks about your business giving more information. But they need to be done well, outsource to a video production or editing company for the best effect.

Human Resources
There are many legal considerations when it comes to human resources, as this department deals with things like bullying in the workplace, employee theft, hiring, firing and other very important issues. When you work with a specialist HR company you can be sure that everything will be handled fairly as they will be well versed in the ever changing law.

You can outsource just about any area of business these days. Not only does it save you money, but it can give you peace of mind too, as when you hire a professional company, you know that they’re professionals in their area and you can trust them to do a good job.

Two key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When running any business, it’s important to know what tasks you can effectively perform on your own, and when the need arises to outsource those tasks. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Where And When To Outsource Your Solutions.

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Outsourcing provides you with the option of giving some of the work that your business is responsible for to a third-party company. There are companies that can help you outsource all kinds of work, but it’s an option that needs to be used responsibly. It can help get rid of monotonous tasks and implement expert knowledge in the business but if it’s overused, it can cost a lot more than simply hiring someone. Here, we’re going to look at when it’s a good idea to outsource and some of the risks of doing it poorly.

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When you’re not ready for full-time employees
A common reason to outsource is that you have more work and duties than your current team can handle. Why wouldn’t you simply take on some employees? The biggest reason to go with outsourcing instead is that there isn’t quite enough suitable work to justify a full-time role in the business. In that case, the process of recruiting and training an employee so that they can spend most of their time doing nothing can be much less cost-effective than simply relying on a service that you can call on whenever you need it. Outsourcing is scalable to your needs, but a full-time employee might not have that flexibility.

When it makes your business more efficient
There are services that can help you work on the business from a bird’s eye perspective, creating the structure and tools that allows your team to become a lot more productive and efficient. Many business consultants do exactly that, helping business owners strategize certain teams, processes, and systems that the rest of the team uses. The most common form in today’s tech-fueled environment is IT consulting for businesses. You might not necessarily need a full internal IT team if your business isn’t big enough, but consultants can make sure that you have the right tech systems in place, as well as providing repair and maintenance when it’s needed.

When you need real expert insight
There are a lot of tasks you might not need to do quite as often, but when you do, you really need expert input on how to do it right. For instance, there is a lot you and your team can learn to handle in marketing, from content marketing to social media networking. When it comes to website design, however, you need someone with specific experience and expertise in that field. When it comes to parts of the business that have legal implications, it’s best not to go it alone, too. For instance, hiring a business accountant when the tax season rolls around, and you want to avoid getting audited as best as you possibly can. Outsourcing allows you to temporarily tap into a much broader network of expertise that you might not necessarily need on your team, but you definitely need on your side.

Outsourcing can really help you unlock the productivity of your team and benefit from reals experts that you might not have room for on your internal team. Make sure that you’re following the tips above to outsource in a way that promotes the growth of your business rather than stifling it.