As every business owner knows, running your own company takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Not only do you need to have an entrepreneurial spirit, you must be able to take charge of a surprisingly wide variety of tasks – including many that you might have no background knowledge or experience of.
One way to handle this situation is by hiring other members of staff to handle different aspects of your business, such as accounting or marketing. However, this isn’t always a viable option when you don’t have a large budget or vast physical space to operate in.
That’s where outsourcing comes in.
Outsourcing is the process of hiring external individuals or companies to take over certain aspects of your business. This could be on a one-off basis, as a recurring arrangement, or permanent, depending on the tasks in question. Although some entrepreneurs are reluctant to accept outside help, doing so can bring you a wealth of benefits.
The benefits of outsourcing
Firstly, outsourcing enables you to access a range of experts in numerous different fields. This is especially helpful for small businesses who can’t attract top talent or afford to hire many full-time staff members. Not only will you be able to tap into their vast knowledge, you’ll also benefit from access to their specialist technology. For instance, working with a company such as Contract Manufacturing allows you to benefit from their advanced formulation plant and manufacturing facilities.
Secondly, by outsourcing those tasks that you don’t enjoy or don’t have a talent for, you free up your time to focus on those that you do. This means you can dedicate all your efforts to keeping the core areas of your business functioning, without being distracted by boring jobs such as doing your taxes or packaging up your products. This is particularly useful if you have big ambitions for growing your entrepreneurial empire!
Areas you can outsource
So now that you have seen some of the advantages of outsourcing, let’s talk about what sort of tasks you can pass on to external agencies. The choice of what to outsource will depend on a range of factors, such as your personal skills and preferences, your budget, the industry you work in, and so on. Here are some suggestions:
- Manufacturing – to save on the costs of equipment to make physical products, as well as space to store them
- E-commerce fulfilment – to save on the time and space needed to package and post your physical products, as well as benefit from preferential postage rates
- Recruitment – to gain access to industry contacts and top talent
- Design – to make use of talented and artistic freelancers who specialise in everything from logo creation to making digital adverts
- IT – to have tech support for everything from data backup to encryption and maintenance of your hardware
- Finance – to ensure your business runs smoothly and you don’t incur large penalties for missing deadlines or making mistakes when it comes to confusing tax rules
- Payroll – to make sure all your staff are paid on time, and you meet all relevant legislation on pensions and similar issues
