Outsourcing – How It Can Improve Your Small Business
One of the fears associated with starting your own business is that there are areas of expertise where you are lacking skills or experience. Outsourcing can be a beneficial arrangement for small business owners. The beauty of outsourcing is flexibility. Small business owners can outsource whatever they want and for however long they want. This gives small business owners a vast amount of options when looking to outsource some part of their small business.
The reality is that small business owners can’t do it all, and outsourcing part(s) of their business is an absolute must in order to take their business to the next level.Here is a brief guide for small business owners considering outsourcing jobs to contract workers.
Why Outsource?
There are many reasons small business owners may choose to outsource including:
Owners can’t do it all themselves
Small business owners are not experts at everything
Additional seasonal or part-time during peak season is needed
Get help to complete a temporary task.
What can be outsourced?
Generally, outsourcing can be broken down into the following areas:
Professional services: accounting, legal advice
Technical services
Temporary/Part-time Staffing
On-Call / Seasonal Workers
Keeping in mind the above classifications, small businesses can outsource a variety of tasks and some of the most common include:
Website Design
Accounting / Taxation
Law
Business Consulting
General Administration Duties
Design / Graphic Design
Payroll
How Outsourcing Benefits Small Business Owners
Outsourcing some parts of the day-to-day operation is necessary for small business owners. And by doing so they’ll have the opportunity to focus on bigger projects – like bringing in new customers through increased marketing.
In order to gain the maximum benefit of outsourcing, business owners need to create a detailed job description and plan of action for their contract hires. Expectations also need to be realistic. Know what you’re paying for and accept the fact that no outsourced help will do the job with as much care and love as the small business owner.
Furthermore, small business owners need to accept their own strengths and weaknesses by understanding that they’re not know it all’s. For example, if you don’t know much about graphic design, it’s unfair to tell someone how to do their job.
As a small business owner, outsourcing is something that I invested in on a regular basis. And anytime I outsourced, I freed up the time to grow my fledgling 'start-up' into a profitable, multi-faceted, service business.
