Growth is a huge part of every business, but it’s not always as simple as taking on all of the responsibilities for yourself. Sometimes when you grow, you have to hire others to help you cover all of the bases, allowing you to keep your hands free for other important tasks.
That’s where outsourcing comes in. There are handfuls of businesses out there that specialize in fields that you may want to hire, and you can ensure that any job that needs doing will be handled by a highly reputable company. You can save yourself from increasing the size of your team, while still being able to make that expansion.
IT Support
As your business grows, you will have to take on and store more and more sensitive information. Be it that of your customers, your employees, or data that should be kept strictly to your business. That data is at risk of being stolen if you don’t have good digital security or a competent IT team. If you or no one working under your business isn’t experienced in the IT field, then your business is vulnerable.
It’s not just data security that you need to worry about, but all of the systems you use need to be reliable, and efficient. You don’t want to be stuck with computers that are unreliable or have data just disappear due to a poor investment. Outsourcing IT support services is a must if you rely on tech to run your business.
Accounting
Accounting can be a tricky job to cover, especially when you have no one on board that’s a financial expert. It’s fine when you’re just starting out and there’s not a whole lot going on with your business, but as you start to grow and gain more customers – that can be a lot more of a challenge among the other things that you need to take care of. That’s why a lot of small businesses look to help with their accounting as they start to gain recognition, and it could help you out significantly.
Accounting is an area that you absolutely cannot afford to get wrong. It could cost you, and it could land you in legal trouble when it comes to filing your earnings. Don’t leave it in the hands of someone who isn’t qualified, instead, you should try outsourcing it.
Customer Service
Being understaffed when dealing with customers can be very difficult to manage, and you could end up with frustrated customers. No one wants to let their customers down, and you shouldn’t let that be a possibility. Of course, customer service is a broad term, and you can’t have other businesses run a physical store for you – but when it comes to things like emails and phone calls – there are services you could consider hiring. Consider that it may be much cheaper than hiring employees and then having to train them on all of the things that you sell, and how they should treat your customers.
When you hire a company to cover a portion of your customer service, you can pick and choose one that fits the values of your business, and are sure can handle customers just how you need them to. You won’t have to worry about being stuck on the phone all day or having to work through hours’ worth of emails any longer.
Marketing
Again, as a beginner, marketing can be a huge challenge to undergo. There’s a lot to be done in terms of reaching your customers and actually creating schemes that connect with them. Without a proper marketing plan, you may as well keep your money and find other ways to reach your audience. An already established marketing team has a lot of experience handling all kinds of business and knows the ins and outs of marketing.
The marketing angle doesn’t have to completely leave your business, and you might find that you end up bouncing a lot of ideas to and fro before you settle on something. However, there’s a huge advantage in having a huge team come up with creative ideas instead of trying to handle it on your own.
Market research
It’s not just creating advertisements that you need to worry about, it’s finding the new trends and figuring out ways to adapt your businesses. If your competitors are able to adapt, you should be too – but you’re not going to see that unless you have someone working on your market research for you. You need to find fresh new ways to pitch your business so that you can keep new customers coming, and maintain the interests of the customers you already have.
As the owner of a business, you don’t necessarily have the time to collect feedback from your customers, nor see what other businesses are doing to change and improve their business model. Having a team or individual to take care of that for you, that already has the necessary experience can make a huge difference for your business’ earnings.
Distribution
Distribution is an area of the business that most small and medium-sized businesses will hire instead of trying to take on themselves. Not only does it require more manpower to handle all of the distribution, but you need to invest in a whole fleet of vehicles if you’re going to be able to effectively distribute everything that gets ordered. Unless you own a huge business, it’s not really worth the investment and it’s not something that you can take on all by yourself – no one has the time for it.
It would be much more cost-effective to hire the services of a team that already has the tools needed to get it done, as well as the driving experience to make sure that everything you have to deliver is delivered safely. If you’re an eCommerce business, some of these packages may be delivered across the country, and that’s not something you would be able to do without the help of a distribution service.
Recruitment
Hiring more employees is an essential part of growing your business, you’re going to need a few helping hands here and there. Especially as you grow even bigger, to the point that you’re no longer a small business. If you’re going to spend all of your time interviewing applicants and looking through resumes, you’re not going to have any time to handle anything else. There’s a lot of work involved in hiring people, and even more in hiring the right people. It’s something that takes experience, and that’s not something every business owner starts their business with.
There are HR and recruitment agencies that you can invest in, and they’ll handle nearly all of the steps involved in recruitment. Not only will they post up your vacancy advertisements, but they’ll also sift through the resumes and speak with the applicants. This way you can make sure that when it comes to interviewing, you’re only dealing with individuals who are a great fit for your business, and you won’t worry that you’ve wasted time.
Growing is a natural stage for any business, and outsourcing is your best friend when doing so. However, it’s not always necessary, nor is it always cost-effective. Trying to grow your business before it’s ready by outsourcing can leave you seriously out of pocket, and you’ll find that any contracts that you’ve signed could be the end of your business. There’s no backing out of a legal agreement, and you want to make sure you’re paying for it with the money that you have.
