When to Outsource

Sometimes it's difficult to know what to spend your money on and what to do in house. See my tips below on Making a decision to outsource your processes

Often small business owners wear many hats. At first it’s a necessity and then as your business grows, it can be hard to let go.

You are never too small to start thinking about transferring tasks outside of your team. Often this will happen organically - the situation may arise where you and your staff are simply too overloaded to complete your usual workload.

This can be manageable for a time however when it comes to pursue growth or manage resource dependencies, sometimes it helps to take some of the pressure off.

Another excellent way of thinking about it in small business terms - if you know how much your approximate hourly earnings are, it can make it a lot easier to justify the expenditure on a service which may take you much longer than a seasoned professional to complete (bookkeeping always seems to be the first to go in these instances…!)

Top three types of tasks which are commonly successfully outsourced:

Executive tasks | These are areas where perhaps expertise or research is required to provide strategic help, someone with a C-level of experience who is able to provide external knowledge. For example, you don’t need a chief information officer to make ongoing business decisions regarding your technology needs but maybe you’re thinking of implementing a system to consolidate and manage your clients . In this case, it can help to have someone who knows what is out there help give you and your team some direction.

Specialized tasks | These are your tasks which need more specific knowledge before they can be completed. Like Social Media management or IT support. Things that you might have started doing because the need had to be addressed but now more time needs to be spent in these areas and they are taking away from your main business focus. There are so many Freelancers who can manage these aspects of your company more effectively and efficiently than perhaps you have time for.

Repetitive tasks | These take up a lot of time but don’t contribute much to the creative or management process of your company. These could be things like invoice reconciliation, data entry or scheduling. Again, think about your own identified cost per hour, could this this responsibility be outsourced at a cheaper rate with the same results? If the answer is yes, consider looking virtual assistants or shared service companies which specialize in completion on repetitive assignments.

Stay on track

Outsourcing is not really a viable option unless there is justification for the business. In simple terms, not wanting to do it is very different from being unable to. It’s important you are able to make this distinction before racking up unnecessary costs.

The most critical part of finding another outlet for tasks is ensuring everyone is on the same page with regards to the scope of work, requirements needed to complete the tasks and the expected results.

And remember...

You are outsourcing in order to take tasks off your plate so that you can focus on propelling your business forward. Once the first couple of cycles of delivery have been completed to your satisfaction, manage the process as you would any other employee - trust that they know what they’re doing and ensure the correct communication network is in place so that they can reach you for issues and updates as necessary.