Role of outsourced business professionals in start-ups

March 21, 2017

BY : Niranjan

Business

business support services.

cost-effective

cost-saving

Running an early-stage start-up is not an easy task in itself. Add to that the pressure of figuring out how to manage so much work with so little resources is even more difficult. There are high chances that there will be a major knowledge gap in your core team. If you have a knowledge gap within the ecosystem of your organization, the easy solution is to fill it and while your in-house start-up team needs to focus on developing your products and service, creating partnerships, and earning revenue such flexible jobs can be outsourced to professional consultants or groups.

The best plan is to outsource whatever services you can so as to save on the highest business costs of all — staffing costs — while getting the support you need and the assurance that these functions are being taken care of by professionals.

WHEN TO OUTSOURCE

There are certain tasks which can be handled by an outsourced team of experts which will ensure better quality of services and save a start-up the costs and time in training and recruiting new employees. Some of these tasks are listed below-

Human Resources

Implementing an effective human resource department involves donning many hats. While recruiting is the relatively easy part you will also need compensation and benefits, payroll, policies, and training. Outsourcing HR will help to ensure that the right procedures are being implemented and you can benefit from their knowledge without having to worry about their training. Though it can be a relatively costly endeavour on its own, it is something that you should consider when you are ready to hire multiple employees.

Accounting

Every year around tax time, a lot of start-up owners begin to understand the importance of outsourcing their day-to-day bookkeeping. It is always a good idea to keep an expert to help you keep track of your expenses, and keep your finances organized will help prepare you for tax time. And if you can’t afford to outsource your accounting services full time, you may wish to choose a tax professional who will work on a project by project basis. Some tax professionals will work for you for only part of the year, and this may be a better alternative for you.

Web Design

With the growing age of internet, having a great business website is a necessity these days, with the website being the first introduction that potential clients will have to your brand. Unless you have been trained as a web designer, you will most likely need to outsource this task. If you can find a great host, like Hostt, Ipage or GoDaddy, you will most likely pay a one-time fee. This process can save a lot of time and money and is pretty much hassle free for a start-up.

Blog Management

Business live blogging is now an essential part of driving traffic to your business website. Managing a business blog can be very time-consuming, and requires strong writing skills, an understanding of the ins and outs of the web platform you will be using and many more actions that as a business owner, you may not have enough experience to carry out with any success. Since there is no dearth of qualified professionals who can easily handle this job, it is a good idea to outsource the same.

Content Writing

Quality content goes a long way. Whether it is for your blog, website, marketing material, newspaper or press release, a well-written content is necessary to attract more customers to your business. Hiring a skilled freelance writer can save you hours of research and meticulous writing. When you have good quality content as the face of your content, it will give a better impression of your capabilities. And at the end of the day, no one but your staff knows what is and what isn’t outsourced!

BENEFITS

While you might shy away from outsourcing work for fear of incompetence, there are way more benefits to it! Some of these are-

Lower labour costs

This is one of the most well-known benefits of outsourcing work. It is often much cheaper to pay someone outside of your company to complete a task than to pay someone inside of the company to do. There are freelancers and outsourcing companies that offer work way less than the cost you will end up incurring in case you specifically employee someone. The catch is, you need to know where to look. Do not be afraid to look outside of your home country for skilled labour, as outsourcing to a foreign company can save serious bank, while still getting the task done correctly and efficiently the first time.

Outsource non-essential tasks

Sometimes, there are tasks that you just feel you do not need to be doing. This can be anything from writing your company’s weekly email newsletter, updating your Facebook page, or responding to customers who interact with your company over social media. These tasks could even be as simple as clearing the junk mail out of her inbox or managing your email subscribers. If you are being bogged down by tasks that are taking your mind away from the actual meat of the business, outsource them! There are tasks in your company that just do not need to be performed by someone actually in the company. By getting someone from the outside to take care of them, you save time and money.

Efficiency

The task is done by someone who really knows how to do it. This is one of the biggest reasons to outsource. If you do not know how to build a website, the worst, most expensive thing you could do is try to build your own website. You will waste time and money trying to make sure that it is properly outfitted for search engine optimization and for all of the content you want to place on it. Hence the level of efficiency achieved by knowledgeable professionals cannot compete with your half hearted work.

Saves your time

Time is money. More often than not, internal personnel do not know how or do not have time to complete tasks. Start-ups generally only have a few people, if that, working together to build the company. That means that all business-related tasks are relegated to those few people—and “those few people” may only really be one person. No one can really know everything they need to know about every aspect of their business. There will be facets of any business that no one inside the company really understands how to handle. Here, outsourcing is the most beneficial to your work.

Lower overall costs

It is not just labour costs that you save. Though at first glance, it seems that outsourcing is an additional expense, being added onto an already strapped budget but it is an incomplete way to look at it. Freelancers lift the burden of the routine or specialized tasks. They allow you to shorten your sixteen hour days to twelve hour days. You can maybe sleep a full eight hours for the first time in months. They also prevent costly mistakes. Focus on big-picture tasks, instead of menial day-to-day tasks that do not require training

Better access to new areas of the market and making connections

As a new start-up, one of the best ways to build your business is to hire freelancers and other small, specialized companies to take care of the tasks that you cannot or do not have the time to perform yourself. This also opens an avenue for new collaborations and for connecting with other businesses. Not only does this process afford you greater name recognition, it gets your business into sectors of the industry that you might not have thought to connect with.

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