Outsourcing involves hiring another company or individual to handle particular business activities on your behalf.
In the long term, it will usually save you both money and time, but before you start the process of paying someone to do the work, it is essential to make sure that it is something that will benefit your business.
Some things to take into consideration include:
- Whether you enjoy doing the task that you are thinking about outsourcing
- Whether you have time to do the job effectively yourself
- Whether you have the skill set to do the task properly
- Whether you need to be directly involved in the task
- Whether the job can be automated
If the answer were ‘no’ to one or more of those questions, outsourcing would benefit your business.
By delegating these tasks to someone else, who is more effective or more skilled at it, you can focus on the important job of growing your business and concentrating on your clients and customers.
However, you shouldn’t outsource just for the sake of it, as it will be an expensive mistake if it is not necessary.
Some tasks that you might think about outsourcing to a third party include:
IT Services:
IT is a big part of most businesses these days and is an essential part of keeping it running. We are becoming more reliant on computers, and when something goes wrong, it can completely shut us down. We keep track of stack, advertise, communicate with other members of our team, customers and suppliers, keep accounts and store important documents, amongst many other things. It is vital that IT systems are kept up to date and in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Outsourcing it and having managed services can take a lot of pressure off you and your business.
Human Resources:
If you employ other people, a human resources department or team is a necessity. It can be tricky, particularly if you have large staff numbers, to keep on top of everything, and so outsourcing HR to a third party company can be useful. They will be able to sort out any issues, authorise holiday requests, arrange cover for sickness and manage new starters or dismissals.
Research:
Market research is a pretty essential part of any successful business, but it can be extremely time consuming, and converting research into meaningful data and statistics can be tricky if you don’t know what you are doing. Hiring someone to do this for you can leave you free to use that data to grow your business.
Social Media:
Social media is now one of the key ways of marketing your business and keeping in touch with customers, but it can be challenging to get right, but there are plenty of people out there who can manage your social media channels remotely.
As you can see, there are various tasks that you can delegate to a third party freelancer or agency, allowing you to concentrate on what matters for your business.
