As your small business grows, the demands on your time and energy grow, too. You and your employees can find yourselves consumed with activities that creep beyond your passion and proficiency. This can be risky for your business, at worst, and boring or unfulfilling for you and your employees, at best.
Many business owners use outsourcing as a solution for handling specialized roles such as payroll, accounting, marketing, human resources, and technology. Outsourcing can also be an effective solution to temporarily supplement your team, expand your capacity, or find an expert to help with a special project.
Benefits of Outsourcing
Access to a Team of Experts
One great benefit of utilizing outsourced resources is gaining access to a team with a diverse background. Typically, you have one primary contact who knows the outsourced function or project very well, and they incorporate their team into the work when necessary. As a result, you gain access to a broader set of skills and ideas that can create greater efficiencies for your organization. If instead, you choose to hire a person internally to complete the function or project, you are limited to the knowledge, expertise, and capacity of that person.
Skip the Hiring Process
One of the major considerations to keep in mind when hiring a new employee is the human resource impact of the decision:
– Will I have a good candidate pool to choose from?
– Will I have enough work to keep the new employee busy long-term?
– How will I cover for their time off?
These are all important factors for a company to think through when hiring a new employee. When you choose to outsource, you can skip the stressful hiring process!
Staff Availability – No Matter the Workload
Outsourcing provides access to a fractional employee. It can be challenging to find the right fit for an employee to join your team, and even harder to find the right person who is also willing to work on a part-time basis. With outsourcing, you can have a fractional share of an employee and can typically scale that time up or down as your needs change.
Increased Internal Controls
Another consideration for outsourcing a function within your business is the benefit of increased internal controls. For a small business, it can be a financial burden to hire enough internal resources to implement proper internal controls. When outsourcing, you gain access to additional resources that can help you create proper separation of duties without adding multiple employees.
Oversight and Analysis
Delegation is a must as your business scales, and business owners often become too hands-off once they outsource certain functions. Take advantage of the time you’re saving on and use it for high-level oversight and analysis of your business, instead. Partner with your outsourced provider(s) to continuously evaluate your needs as your business grows and changes.
Small business owners get to wear many different hats in their operations, but it is important to focus your valuable time and efforts in the areas where you provide the most value – the areas where you are most passionate and proficient. Look for ways you can utilize the resources of third parties to increase efficiency, gain access to new expertise, or improve your internal controls. Forge Financial and Management Consulting has access to great resources, and we are always looking for ways to help our clients move their businesses forward to enjoy continued success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Courtney De Ronde
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Your business relies on four key areas, or centers of intelligence, to thrive. Take the free Business Intelligence Grader to see how you score across financial, leadership, productivity, and human intelligence and learn where to focus to drive greater results.