As a small-business owner or a single-man band, you won’t have second thoughts when it comes to hiring an accountant. Only those who have the skill and the confidence to do their own accounts and taxes will choose to have an in-house accountant – themselves. Since there are so many things and places an SME owner needs to get to, paying for professional accounting services is a small price really, for knowing that the job gets done properly. This is a perfect example of outsourcing people do not even recognize as such, yet it perfectly depicts what outsourcing can do for you. Read more to learn about the numerous benefits of outsourcing.
The cost
The topic of the cost of certain business activities always comes up among the first ones. We all work for the financial gain and the lower the cost is, the greater your profit. The word outsourcing often has a connotation of being done purely for lowering expenses. In a way this is true. But before we clarify, we need to make sure that the old saying “You get what you paid for” is not necessarily correct.
It is true that there are markets in the world which can offer lower prices than others, but this is not the only way of cutting down your costs. Usually, the better logic is to think how much you will require certain services. Do you really need to hire an employee and pay for their benefits, or simply hire someone reliable to do a project for you whenever you need something done? Put it on the paper and you will see that you are about to save money, regardless of which market you are hiring from.
The time
Perhaps you do have a team or skills to get the work done, but the opportunity of being able to close a good deal may slip through your fingers due to a tight deadline. That’s where outsourcing can help you speed things up. You can have two fully trained teams coordinate their work and finish it in half the time you would if you were working with just one team. Or to look back at the prospect of hiring an accountant, it is very hard to have to do everything on your own, your life quality drops, as well as the enthusiasm you once had for your job. With the lack of time and a lot on your hands, you can lose focus and underperform which is not something you can afford, particularly if you are still in your early days.
The quality
If you get your priorities right, you can make it a rule to always outsource to professionals specialized in the field you need help with. That way you will be getting the top-quality services without having to put any effort into it. Your only job is to communicate what you need to have done, that is your goals and wait for the results. Across all industries, the choice of specialties is vast, and even if you had a well-trained professional working for you as a full-time employee, the chances are that they will not have the same set of skills to deal with each of the projects you give them the same way. Sometimes they will excel, others, they will underperform. By having a specialized team at your disposal for every single project you do, you will ensure your every move is a success.
Seasonal work
Is there a consistent demand for your services all year round? If you have peak seasons, focusing on them while they are approaching and preparing for them is the only way to push through and maximize the gain. Outsourcing should be on the top of your list. It keeps your work-force flexible. You will not have to go through the lengthy and costly processes of hiring and firing people every time your workload fluctuates. Find a team or hire employees on a short-term casual basis to help you out. Make sure you do it in a due time though, as you want everyone to be on the same page and in tune for the season.
Improve in-house efficiency
When you are hiring your permanent staff, you can implement the same philosophy we suggested for outsourcing. Look for professionals, best at what they do and allow them to be in charge and responsible for only those tasks they can do at a proficient level. Focus on your business’s core activities and make sure you have the team which can fully dedicate to those activities and always keep their performance at an above-average level.
Happy employees
We believe that every well-motivated employee understands that there may be an occasion when they have to put in some extra effort. Most of the time, most of the people do not mind it. However, if these occasions are common, the pressure to perform and go through large amounts of workload is very likely to negatively affect your employees, on both an individual, and a team level. By outsourcing, you will be able to take that stress off your team members and retain employee satisfaction at a substantial level.
To sum up, outsourcing is a way of utilizing all your resources and bringing your business to its full potential. If you have a team where everyone knows exactly what their job is and they know the best way of going about it, they won’t waste time with the things they don’t really know how to do. Their time is another one of your expenses, as well as any errors they may make.
Furthermore, by outsourcing, you can always count on top performance. The way the communication functions today, it is really simple to get to the reference which can give you an insight into what a business or an individual you are about to hire is like. You can also find out what it is like to work with them. This reduces the risk of getting the wrong people for the job. As a final point, it is always useful to have a fresh set of eyes and fresh views of the world, to come up with innovative solutions to any issues you may be having, which is exactly what outsourcing can do for you.
