With the advancement of technology, it is now convenient for businesses to outsource and coordinate tasks to other companies without hassle. Add to this the idea of globalisation, and businesses now have the chance to lower their expenses further by outsourcing specific tasks to a company based in a country where quality manpower remains inexpensive.
Whether you run your own small business or overseeing a company with international operations, you will need to outsource tasks at some point. The extent to which you entrust third-party entities with parts of your operations will depend on many factors. An international company could outsource most of its operations to other organisations while maintaining a few key professionals who pull the strings together. On the other hand, it may have a large network of employees around the world and thus, will only have a few tasks to outsource.
In any case, outsourcing tasks provides many benefits to you as a business owner or manager as well as to your employees. Here are some of the main reasons why you should consider outsourcing your non-core tasks:
- Frees up time. You and your employees can then focus on the more important aspects of your business, including creating growth strategies, managing customer relationships and brainstorming for innovative products.
- More effective solutions. By entrusting tasks such as recruitment or public relations to a more capable company, you can take advantage of its expertise, knowledge, skills and resources in order to produce high quality results. A PR specialist definitely has the experience on how to manage your company’s reputation, especially during crisis. A recruitment specialist can help you find the right candidate for your job vacancy with the help of its network of jobseekers and training experts.
- Accurate reports. Especially for accounting and finance matters, reports should be accurate up to the minute detail. With correct financial data at hand, you will be able to get a clearer picture of how your business is currently doing. You will also base your business decisions on this information. Moreover, accurate financial reports are mandatory for regulatory filing with the government.
The kind of tasks that you’ll outsource will depend on many factors. To make it easier for you to decide though, consider entrusting non-core tasks to third-party companies. Specifically, administrative and mundane tasks that could eat up your key employee’s precious time should be outsourced. Repetitive tasks such as data encoding is also ideal to be outsourced, too. On the other hand, there are those tasks that require specialised skills or expert knowledge such as IT infrastructure maintenance and financial data analysis. If you don’t currently employ someone who is an expert on these matters, then there are third-party companies out there who can take the load off your back.
Here are specific areas that you might want other companies to handle:
Customer Care
Ensuring that your customers are in good hands is important for business growth. While you think that handing this task yourself is ideal to know everything that’s happening, there are just some things that are better left in the hands of an outsourcing company such as ensuring that every telephone call is handled promptly and professionally.
An unanswered call could mean a lost opportunity for sale. But if the nature of your business tends to receive phone calls daily, it’s more practical to hire a company offering professional telephone answering service. In this way, your key employees can focus on important business matters and will not be distracted with phone calls. The service is also ideal for screening unwanted calls.
Imagine the frustration of getting a phone call while working on a crucial matter only to realise that the caller has dialled the wrong number. With a telephone answering company, you can ensure getting only important calls.
If you receive a lot of calls from customers seeking assistance or from potential clients making enquiries, then it’s time to outsource your customer support services. Telephone answering companies can study your products and services so that their agents can provide appropriate responses to help customers. For complex matters, the call can be transferred to your key personnel. If you’re offering innovative products, there are also companies who can handle technical support services to guide clients with troubleshooting.
Human Resources
Whether you need to hire more employees on a regular basis or have to conduct a mass hiring for your new operations, you can ask a human resource solutions provider to conduct the recruitment for you. The outsourcing company has the means to find the right candidate for your business, thus saving you time, money and energy.
Training is important for the growth and development of your employees. While skills training that are specific to your business are best handled by an in-house mentor, there are some topics that can be outsourced to the experts. To make finding resource speakers easier, you can seek the help of human resource solutions providers.
Finance and Accounting
Especially for small businesses where hiring an in-house accountant can be expensive, outsourcing your accounting tasks is vital. Financial reports as well as daily cash flow records have to be accurate for a variety of reasons, and so will require the keen eye and experience of a trained accountant. You base your business decisions on your financial data, after all. You will also need accurate reports for taxation and regulatory filing purposes. You can get into trouble with the law when reporting inaccurate financial data.
Marketing and Communication
You need to evaluate your operations to see if it’s time to outsource some marketing tasks to the experts. For one, conducting a market research is an intensive task that will require surveying people, collating information, analysing data and presenting results. Assigning this to your own limited number of employees will result to the important matters getting abandoned. It is then best outsourced to the companies who have the time and resources to do it.
Planning and implementing marketing campaigns can also be outsourced to the professionals as long as you have a trusted employee or team who’ll monitor the progress and provide input. Outsourcing these tasks can best work when you’re consulting for an area that is new to your business, such as in the case of market expansion. In this case, it’s best to work with an experienced marketing company based in the city you will be expanding to.
IT Services
When your business operations rely on technology, you may have to entrust the installation and maintenance to the experts especially when your employees are technologically challenged. Make sure that you’re working with a reliable company who will be there to assist you and your employees when problems occur.
These are just some of the areas of your operations that you can outsource in order to save you energy, time and money. Assess the current situation of your business and determine the tasks that you can entrust to third-party entities.