The goal of every business is growth. Achieving it includes spending time and resources that not all small to medium sized business have on their hands. As a business owner or entrepreneur, it’s natural to feel the need to do all the work and orchestrate every part of your company. Letting go of other activities in your organization means losing control over what you’ve built with your blood, sweat, and tears. However, doing it all even for non-critical tasks can seriously hamper your corporate objectives to multiply and expand. So one of the solutions available is outsourcing for SMB. We find that more and more have been partnering with top outsourcing providers to address various business problems. Doing the same can cost-efficiently augment your workforce capacity so you can get things done by leaps and bounds.
Here are 5 questions to help you decide if outsourcing is ideal to you as a small to medium sized business:
1. Does your team lack the time needed to focus on core functions?
Like everything else, businesses has its own limits when it comes to resources. That includes time, energy, and attention of you and your in-house team. It makes very good sense for you to outsource non-core or even vital, yet routine functions. Examples are customer service, technical support, virtual assistance, data entry, accounting, and other back office work. This can free up your team from all of those time-consuming tasks that they have to deal with on a regular basis. As a result, you can shift your time on complex and core activities within your business.
2. Do you need access to qualified and skilled workforce minus the recruitment and operational headaches?
All companies experience challenges with hiring and managing people no matter what industry they’re in. You can minimize these problems by farming out tasks that doesn’t have to be done internally. An experienced outsourcing provider can open doors for you to access a different pool of talented and qualified professionals. They also take on the arduous and time-consuming process of recruitment. It’s also important to note that a good outsourcing partner will align themselves with your company goals and culture to effectively manage your outsourced team, leaving you with less things to worry about.
You can check out our blog here to know the quality of staff available in outsourcing hubs like the Philippines.
3. Is optimizing financial resources a priority now in your organization?
Outsourcing is an ideal solution to tap into if you need more control over your operating costs. Cost savings remain to be one of the top driving factors for companies jumping into the outsourcing wagon. It’s a game changer for the company’s bottom line if you can relieve yourself of capital expenses and shift fixed costs into a variable one. But remember, cost should never compromise quality. Only partner with a provider who truly understands your business and operates in that disposition.
4. Are you actively aiming to grow your company?
Every business should ideally be finding ways to multiply. In fact, most would say they aim to grow but end up putting off solutions that could be transformative for the organization. With outsourcing, companies can save on recruitment, training, infrastructure setup, and other overhead expenses associated with in-house workforce. These cost savings can be reinvested into growth initiatives such as research and development, marketing campaigns, or expanding to new markets. Another important factor that contributes to business growth is speed in getting things done. Using external specialists lets you carry out the daily grind so you can reach your desired outcome, faster than having to do everything by yourself.
If your company is serious about expansion, the operating efficiency and substantial cost savings that comes with offshore outsourcing will enable you to gear up for the next level.
5. Are your internal processes clear, defined, and effective?
The absence of clearly outlined and proven processes in place are one of the common culprits among outsourcing failures. A poor job description of the role that the outsourcing firm will assume can also add up to the challenge. No matter how good your outsourcing company is, your ability to collaborate with clarity and having a solid plan greatly influences the overall outcome. Without those, you can expect to see reduced productivity, inconsistent outputs, bottlenecks, and plainly speaking — a lot of wasted time and effort.
To sum it up, transferring a broken process or poorly defined role to your outsourcing partner is setting yourself up for failure so avoid it at all costs.
If you’re planning to outsource a complex process or job role, have all your ducks in a row first to yield a high success rate. For straightforward tasks, partner up with a reliable outsourcing provider to help develop your SOPs and streamline your processes. The time you put in at the beginning of your outsourcing journey is worth its weight in gold. The ultimate goal is to have a role or work process that’s easy to understand and duplicate.
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