Outsourcing back-office functions can offer small and medium companies -due to their limited resources- the possibility to delegate some of their non-core tasks and cut expenses helping their business grow.
Giving the possibility to an outsourcing company to manage jobs such as payroll processing, information management, human resources, and advertising; It’d give freedom to your company to relocate its employees in core tasks.
According to a study by Clutch.co, 37% of small businesses currently outsource at least one business process, and 52% that don’t, plan to start outsourcing in 2019. And the most commonly outsourcing tasks are accounting, IT services, and digital marketing.
But be careful, you also have to think about which company you are leaving these business tasks to, which may have sensitive material about your business, knowing that the outsourcing company has a SOC 2 regulation system is always helpful. Without sufficient planning, these projects could fail and harm your business rather than help it. What is valuable within outsourcing is also to lower costs in employment, training, supplies for your team, etc.. It is also the knowledge of someone who knows what they are doing, skills, abilities, and low scalability.
What Should my Business Outsource?
- Payroll: Allows companies to save time and resources in this task, also behind the hands of a professional, you won’t have to deal with any calculations errors, and worry about being in compliance with the government regulations.
- Data entry/extraction: Instead of worrying about such a tedious but important task as gathering information, it is better to leave it to a team of professionals who can verify that everything is in order with structures and organization.
All this information can help you make important and rational decisions about your business.
- Human resources: Can help your business through an easier recruitment process, look at employee satisfaction and look for strategies of organization so you can focus on the workforce of your team.
- IT support: It usually involves security, monitoring, data back-up, support services, etc. Outsourcing IT support, besides saving you money in an employee’s salary, you will also save in all the infrastructure expenses for the IT team.
- Marketing: While getting your brand out there is one of the most important things to do. Your team should focus on crafting and improving the products you’re selling. And letting an outsourced expert deal with your online presence.
Signs that it’s time to start outsourcing
Limited talent of your employees: You hired someone to execute specific tasks, but your company is growing by leaps and bounds, now that employee has other jobs for which he was not hired, and therefore is not an expert in those. You are going to remove your employee from the area where he is an expert, to move him to another where it will take twice as long as an expert in that field.
Your business needs are getting too expensive: The main reason for outsourcing is to save money. So, hire cheaper labor for the necessary jobs. Why design your website locally if you can do cheaper outsourcing?
Limited time: Your company is growing, and therefore also your responsibilities; now you have tasks that usurp your time of merely important things. Also, the tasks of your employees are increasing and have to leave some in the background, even when they are important.
As said above, the main focus of outsourcing is to reduce or control costs; but according to a survey made in 2016 by Deloitte, other main reasons to outsource were:
-Focus on core functions
-Solve Capacity issues
-Improve service
-Access to expert talent and knowledge
-Accelerate organizational transformation
If any of these reasons seem real to you, maybe it is time to start outsourcing.