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11 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Parts Of Your Business To Fuel Sustainable Growth - read the full article about what is Business process outsourcing, BPO and Outsourcing from Axies Digital on Qualified.One
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Outsourcing parts of your business became a popular strategy at the end of the 80s and in the early 90s to combat rising costs of labour.
But at one point, outsourcing was seen as a thing only big, multinational companies did.
But with the spread of the Internet and availability of more resources, even small businesses can get a lot out of outsourcing.
As you can see, we have a guest again today.
We have Maria Szmit.
She has background in recruitment.
Now shes dabbling into marketing, especially into design and UI.
And should I say recruitment marketing or something there? Well, Ill say recruitment marketing.
Yes.
So how are you doing, Maria? Im really good.
Thank you.
Im just working on my projects at the moment and exploring more clients.
So very good time.
What projects are those? Branding, logo designing and marketing consultancy.
In many cases, especially for smaller businesses, Outsourcing is not just an optimisation strategy.
It is the only way businesses can grow.
Its the only way they can launch new products.
It is the only way they can manage their operations and keep running.
But that doesnt mean that outsourcing is a burden.
It has compelling benefits.
Saying that: here are eleven benefits of outsourcing in your business.
Number one: focus on your core business processes.
If youre an individual trying to do everything yourself, youre not going to reach your potential very quick.
In reality, its a lot more effective to do what you do best.
And this means if youre a marketing company like us, then its better to focus on building an audience for your clients and customers.
If youre an accountant, its giving meaning to the numbers that you work with and budgeting for your client.
Point being, dont go outside of your industry.
Can you really become a master whilst being a Jack of all trades? In business, as a leader, there are many tasks on your plate; and are you able to spin all of them by yourself? What were recommending is you play to your strength.
What is it that you enjoy? What is it that youre good at? And thats what you focus on.
And usually this is what you do within your business or your industry sector.
Lets say Maria, as an example, weve said that she worked in recruitment, but she was on the design and marketing side for the business.
You made the website; and thats what youre doing now your own business.
Youre growing your own marketing company, you can say. its almost cheaper to outsource until its a good investment to hire.
The question is, where do you, as an individual, create the most value in the business? And thats usually when youre playing to your strength.
Yeah, on that point, how long did it take us to hire our first employee? It took around about a year and a half, coming to two years.
And since in the last nine months, weve hired seven.
Number two, increased value External outsourcing partners bring expertise; bring skills that will take years within your company.
In addition, the expertise that these outsourcing partners will bring to your business will be invaluable; will bring even further value if they have more knowledge in terms of the sectors that are working in, the region that they are in.
So you become partners where they can help you compel your business even further.
Put simply, when you outsource part of your business, lets say you are outsourcing to a marketing agency, They are not just doing your marketing.
They also stay on top of all the industry changes that are happening.
For example, if they are doing SEO, what is happening in terms of search, what is Google doing at the moment? They have to keep on top of that which you dont have to do. In case of marketing, Unless you become a big enough business which can have its own marketing department, it is almost always better to outsource this because if youre running a major marketing campaign, the expertise that you need cannot be fulfilled by even one or two people in your company.
You need a marketing agency which knows what is happening in the market and what to do with what you are trying to achieve.
Number 3: Reduce labour costs and overhead expense.
This is usually the main reason why people outsource.
Yeah, usually when people see the numbers in the business, they realize they can outsource.
Simply hiring and training staff is expensive, especially for short projects. And temporary workers dont often produce high quality job that you need.
When you outsource, you convert your fixed labour cost into variable cost, meaning you only pay for the services you consume.
This gives you staffing flexibility that you wouldnt get with your full time employees.
For instance, you probably dont need a full time in house bookkeeper.
The job is very important, of course, and needs to be done.
But you dont have enough work to justify full time salary.
To be fair, even if you can do bookkeeping like Harmeet here, hes done his first degree in accounting.
You could be better somewhere else. Harmeet, For example, hes doing business development.
Number four: control cash flow.
This now connects well with what Maria was saying.
When you convert your fixed costs into variable costs, you are saving up money.
You are now freeing up money, which can now go into other parts of your business.
You could funnel that money into new product launches or a marketing campaign.
This is especially true for smaller businesses because this money can now be used to create a product or service which you can launch.
For instance, by working with a design studio, you dont have to worry about buying the newest camera.
You dont have to buy the video editing software.
This is the problem of the person that you are outsourcing to.
Not having to make these investments, especially as a small business allows you to grow and invest.
Number five, access to new resources.
Again, we have slightly touched on this point in the previous one.
Hiring a new team member often requires expensive recruitment and training.
You have to teach them new processes, new workflows, or sometimes even create a new process for them.
You might have to invest in their education; So that theyve got the right skills in the job theyre going to be doing for you.
But when you access your business functions, the service provider assumes these costs.
Furthermore, outsources have access to skills and tools you might not need today, but you will one day.
And if they dont have someone on the staff who can solve your problem, they are likely to have a network of specialists with complementary skills that they can pull from.
You dont have that kind of flexibility with your in house employees, or at least not exactly when you need it.
You might need to train your employees when you need more to be done, but that becomes a problem.
If you need something to be done ASAP.
Number six, you will learn a lot.
For some reason, business owners avoid other peoples experience and specialism.
I say for some reason, reality is: its because they believe that it will save them on money and costs.
But in the long run, it will cost you more.
And this is because if you were to learn the skill, youve got to remember it takes time and dedication, and sometimes it can take years.
And even still, if youre hiring someone from outside your expertise, have you got the team to train them up? Despite the popular misconception that by outsourcing, you wash your hands and you allow someone else to deal with it? This is actually untrue because you still have to work in a collaboration.
And this is a great opportunity to learn from their experience. A lot of the time If you use someone that is an expert and has experience, they use their time to stay up to date with their information.
It could be the latest technology or it could be something to do with the law and regulation.
For example, in accountancy. For you, this means that you speed up the time where you dont need to go and research.
And finally, well make this point again: that its about creating value for your business, and this will be where youre playing to your strengths.
A lot of the time, people dont realize that they dont even have to pay for this.
Yeah, its like us, For example, we give our knowledge and experience at no cost to our clients, and something that we find is that their team arent always willing to give this information just because of the hierarchy.
Number seven: efficiency.
Again, this connects well with the points we have been making previously.
Outsourcing also leads to increased efficiency because you outsource your non-central business functions to experts elsewhere.
Since the service providers specializing in the area, they know ins and outs in a way that your own employees wouldnt be familiar with without extensive training.
This way, the functions you outsource can be completed both efficiently and effectively by highly trained experts in the field who are able to implement their skills and knowledge immediately.
For example, by outsourcing your accounting Department, you are taking the burden of mastering complicated account duties out of your business.
Meanwhile, your accounting work would be completed smoothly and fast by the outsourced team.
Number eight.
Flexibility.
We live in a country that favours labour, which is perfectly fine.
But the problem here is that the law is changing and its getting ever so more difficult to hire and fire.
In most cases, these employment changes are good because it adds that human touch that bosses and leaders werent doing before.
But it does create challenges as well.
Adapting to micro market changes, which means that youre able to bring in short term jobs requires flexibility within your business.
But what about economic changes, such as the recession that comes once every ten to 15 years? Over this period of time, there are companies who have developed an inhouse HR team, or maybe an IT team.
The problem with being over geared and larger than necessary, it means that it takes a lot more time to change and adapt when its necessary, such as when a recession hits. And in a lot of cases, it kills businesses.
But on the positive side, this is when a lot of other businesses take the advantage to buy companies out.
Taz, a question for you is what have we outsourced in the past and what we currently outsourcing? Yeah.
To be fair.
When we started, for SEO, which was our main service, and its still our main service.
We were even outsourcing parts of content writing, but then I was acting as the editor.
We are still outsourcing accounting.
We are still outsourcing HR, which is giving us quite a bit of flexibility in our business.
Yeah, and thats given us the peace of mind.
Exactly.
And that brings us to point number nine.
Peace of mind.
We are in no way implying that outsourcing is a walk in the park.
Like any other thing in life, in business, there are good and bad service providers, and it comes down to you to vet out what is better, what is good, what is bad? While there can be a lot of uncertainty, especially when you are negotiating, when you are looking into contracts.
But once everything is in place, it will bring a lot of peace in your business.
And to be fair, these contractual agreements can take away a lot of problems when things dont work out, especially.
And if there has been some negligence on the part of the outsourcing partners, they can be held responsible legally.
All in all, you are in more control of your business, if you are outsourcing parts of it.
Interestingly, the same point can be extended to your own employees as well.
Number ten: employees are happier.
There are some routine tasks that smart employers dont enjoy doing because they are boring and time consuming.
They are not experts in these tasks, and they procrastinate whenever they need priority.
If the core team could outsource these tasks, it allows them to have more time and resources to focus on jobs they love.
This is rewarding for the employee, and it provides greater job satisfaction.
For example, recruitment companies task their account managers to follow up on overdue invoices.
Is this the best use of their time? Is this really good for the relationship with the client? Is this something they enjoy? Likely the answer is no.
So its better to outsource these functions to a debt collecting service, For instance. Number eleven: managed risks.
From a leadership perspective, its often said, what is most important to your business.
You do that yourself and what is least you can outsource that, especially when others can do it better than you.
We can see this in the context of a company where its important to outsource tasks that they cant do inhouse.
If we want to take it to the extreme, its about managing your success or from another perspective, its about failure.
It could potentially be make or break for your company if you choose to outsource or not.
So Taz, I dont know if you can remember.
About two years ago, two and a half years ago, when we started our business, we went to Innocent Smoothies, to the headquarters in London.
And what was really good is that they gave us a tour from the building.
They had about five floors, and we went from top to bottom.
But one of the things that we noticed is that we didnt come across the manufacturing area Department, which is where I asked her, Well, where is it that you make your Innocent smoothie drinks? And Interestingly enough, they said, we dont actually make it.
We outsource this to others. Effectively, Innocent Smoothies is therefore a marketing company for smoothies, and more specifically, one brand and one brand only.
And thats Innocent Smoothies.
Overall, its very clear that branding, marketing, and manufacturing are different ballgames.
And for this reason, its important to understand the operations of each Department.
If you specialize in a particular service, such as marketing like we do, if we attempted to hire for manufacturing, then theres a very good chance that well have a high turnover for a host of reasons.
If I had to pick one, it could be something like training, Saying that: outsourcing builds a level of consistency within your business.
For example, if you had an in house accountant, if they were to leave, where does that leave you? Theres a very good chance that youll be scrambling around to find an accountant.
A lot of the times, there wont be a good fit for your company.
But if you outsource this function, youre able to run your business smoothly with less disruptions.
Before we end this video, we should also cover some of the potential negatives.
Some businesses may face longer delivery times if you are outsourcing parts of your business, especially if you dont have access to the services or the people when you require.
However, if you regulate all of these things within your organization like we do at Axies, we have a direct connection with our accountant.
We have a direct connection with our HR Department and all the files that we need, They are always available on Google Drive or we can message the people who are managing these things for us via email or WhatsApp or just calling them.
A good example of this is just this morning Andy Miles of MilBen Accounts.
So we were having some challenges on Xero.
We wanted to understand a little bit more about the reporting.
He made a video for us and sent it across.
And finally, if you watch this video and you are thinking outsourcing is an amazing option, you still need to do your due diligence.
Decide which departments you want to outsource.
For example, we have no intention of bringing back HR and accounting into our business and then go and find experts who can fill these positions.
It may seem daunting at first, but in the long term, this is all worth it.
Good luck with your outsourcing partners.
Hi Im Harmeet Singh and Maria.
Thanks for coming in today.
Thank you for inviting me.
And Im Taseer Ahmad Hopefully, you like this video.
I also add in here that we are marketing agency.
Do check our website.
Its Axies.Digital.
Please like and subscribe and connect with all of us on LinkedIn.
Cheers. Thanks.
Axies Digital: 11 Reasons Why You Should Outsource Parts Of Your Business To Fuel Sustainable Growth - BPO