For a number of companies, outsourcing can be wasteful. It can be so when the services being bought can be easily allocated in-house, or when lacking visibility over the chosen agency. You also might not want to disclose some of your trade secrets to an agency which might sooner or later work for one of your competitors too, so all outsourcing contracts need to be signed with the right strategic vision and legal coverage.
The benefits of outsourcing, however, often outnumber the potential risks, and many companies and small business have found out more about this in recent years, mostly thanks to the internet. Whatever your business objectives are, there always will be areas in which outsourcing will lead to a win-win situation. Here are three of them.
Payroll outsourcing
If you’re managing a small company or startup, you’re likely to have control over all aspects of the business. This means that your time is very precious and you need to focus on the areas that have the most impact on your business and on the morale of your (few) employees. If you can’t afford an HR person, it makes sense to take care of your employees directly.
Likewise, you will want to do your best to reach new business targets month after month and closely work with your sales team. However there always will be some repetitive aspects of your work that don’t require any special skill whatsoever and will still take away a significant chunk of your precious time. Working on payrolls is one of them: this is something that doesn’t require any particular input on your side yet it’s unavoidable and necessary.
Taking this weight off your shoulders, payroll companies out there claim to save you a lot of money (even up to £100,000 per year) and choosing one of them won’t lead to any confidentiality issue.
Customer service
Calculating the benefits of outsourcing can be way easier than you’d think. Take customer service, for instance, which requires nothing more than a knowledge of the company, friendliness and of course language skills. This is generally easy to outsource in markets where wages are lower, by Western standards. Native speakers can be found all around the world and the need for this kind of job is perhaps stronger in developing countries than it could be in Western Europe, where more skilled workers are on the market.
Of course you would have to make sure that everyone in your outsourced customer service team gets a fair deal, but outsourcing customer service will help you save a lot of money and maintain the same standard of service.
Web development
If your company operates within the internet industry, a web developer will hardly be enough to meet all of your needs. Yet most times a single web developer might also be all you can afford, considering the hefty salary you’ll have to pay him.
To stay productive and competitive in this area, you will want him to oversee the most time-sensitive work and outsource all of the legwork that comes with maintaining a website, database and server. This will allow you to obtain a decent working product and meet your objectives for a very reasonable price.
