Small businesses always need to look for every advantage available to them to compete with their often-larger competitors. For many, they may be ignoring one of the most beneficial advantages available to them: outsourcing. Outsourcing as a general word tends to have a poor connotation in the United States as many people see that word and immediately think about how local companies are outsourcing production and jobs overseas away from the American people. That is not the only definition of outsourcing as there are plenty of United States-based companies looking to help small businesses with payroll, accounting, hiring and other services. Getting over this negative connotation can help a small business owner find ways to succeed using outsourcing for their business, and put them on a more level playing field with their bigger competitors that might already be leveraging this powerful tool for themselves.
1st Benefit – Control Costs
One of the biggest reasons that a small business owner should look at outsourcing is to help them to control costs. Outsourcing can help to reduce the costs associated with hiring and training new employees as well as reduce the number of employees that are needed. For instance, your office has been growing, and your human resources expert is not able to keep up with all the demands on their time with payroll, benefits, and training. You could either hire a part-time employee and hope that they work out well, or you could examine the current human resources workflow and outsource some tasks to a knowledgeable company. You not only save on avoiding the hiring process, but time will be saved because your outsourced contractor will not need the same type of training and instructions that a new employee might require. This frees up your current employee to focus on their tasks while you have security knowing that other tasks are being handled by professionals. Your once fixed costs of performing these tasks can become variable costs that can also allow you to put more capital back into your business, as well. For instance, the capital that you would have used to purchase a new accounting software can be put back into the coffers for other needs.
2nd Benefit – Capitalize on Specialized Knowledge
The second benefit that can be had from utilizing outsourcing for your small business is that you can capitalize on more specialized knowledge from experts in their field for a fraction of the cost of hiring an employee to perform the same task. An excellent example of this would be if your small business is looking to build a new website, but otherwise has very low Information Technology needs. It would not be very cost effective to hire a full- or part-time employee for the creation of a new website. Outsourcing this task can maximize the dollars spent on getting a professional that can provide a top-notch website without having to go through the hassle of hiring an employee that will not have enough work to fill the day every day of the work week. There is the added benefit that these specialists will often have their own up-to-date equipment to fulfill the task, rather than adding another expense to your budget. Plus, many professionals have learned that their skills are in high demand, and are more interested in working for themselves than having a corporate job, so you may be able to attract better talent in this manner.
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3rd Benefit – Focus
The final benefit is all for you. It’s your focus. You will have the ability just to focus on your company without distractions. With outsourcing, no longer do you have to worry about doing all those little things that took your focus away from the reason behind why you started your company in the first place. You can focus your time on making your products and services better, and how your company can continue to grow. The hours in the day are precious, and for small business owners, especially those just starting out with an extremely small staff, there are just not enough hours in the day. You need to create your blog content, manage your social media accounts, handle your accounting, design your website, respond to emails, deal with marketing, and everything else that goes into running a business. This is where hiring an outsourced bookkeeper, graphic designer, ghostwriter, project manager, or virtual assistant can come into play to save your workday.
Each of these benefits can help a small business grow because their owner is able to reinvest their time and energy into their business rather than worrying about the services that should have been outsourced. Getting rid of that generally negative connotation of the word outsourcing is the right way to go for small business owners. Invest in partnerships with other local businesses that provide outsourcing to improve your chances of being able to level the playing field with your competitors.
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