Using Outsourcing to Scale Your Small Businesses Fast and Smart

To remain viable in today’s competitive business market, leaders are always working towards growth.

When growth becomes a reality, the need to scale up resources to support those efforts often must be done quickly.

Outsourcing is a way for companies to increase efficiency and decrease costs by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers, rather than completing it internally.

Outsourcing can be a strategic tool for making your business more productive and more profitable if you know when to take advantage of it.

Internal teams should focus on the core work that differentiates their business from the competition. All other work is a good candidate for outsourcing. In other words, it’s worth considering outsourcing any supporting work within the company. Volume is another important determining factor for outsourcing.

More than 500 hours of work per month is an obvious outsourcing candidate and would be a good fit. 200 to 500 hours of work per month should be evaluated case by case to see if the oversight requirement justifies the efforts needed to make remote outsourcing work. Less than 200 hours of work per month may be better suited for shared economy platforms.

Shared economy platforms, like Upwork, are good for one-time projects or a low volume of ongoing project work. However, when you need dedicated, reliable teams that align with your company’s culture and can deliver quality projects on time, shared economy platforms are of little help. You need to partner with an outsourcing company that works as an extension of your internal team.

To make that happen you need management support, not just technical support, from the company. They should also have the resources for daily reporting, discussion, and feedback, just like full-time employees, ensuring that the output is per the desired standards.

Scalability is another growing trend which enables outsourcing firms to tailor projects based on their client’s distinct specifications and scope. Scalability allows each project to receive individual attention, which decreases time and money spent on approaches that will not garner successful results. Outsourcing allows you to scale up when work is needed, as well as the option to scale back down when the project concludes. This flexibility can be extremely cost effective when it comes to your bottom line.

Outsourcing also provides a pool of highly educated, well-trained professionals, who produce quality work. In the past, large companies would dominate the market by offering higher salaries and larger benefit packages to attract the most accomplished professionals from top schools. Today, the landscape has changed. Through outsourcing, even small businesses have access to tremendously skilled specialists who will increase your business’s overall productivity and efficiency while saving you time, money and resources.

Aligning yourself with the right outsourcing partner can alleviate internal pressures such as tight deadlines and an overburdened staff. Work completed from an external source is often even higher quality than work completed internally, due to the outside team being able to focus on the specific task at hand. If bringing in external help makes the most business sense for your company, communication and transparency to your employees are vital to a smooth transition. Often your internal team will welcome the additional capacity and employee morale will increase. When your team’s spirits are high, an entire department can double or even triple in bandwidth almost instantly with little time wasted.

Developing a strategic partnership with an outsourcing company often means the willingness to change some business processes to make it work. Minor changes such as understanding and working around time zones, and embracing more written and scanned communication are key to making an outsourcing partnership successful. If top management is committed, and the entire team is aligned with the objectives, outsourcing can greatly increase scalability, access to talent and productivity while saving you time, money and resources. Isn’t it time to give your company the competitive edge it deserves?