To help your business grow and succeed, you need to know and be clear about what your role is in the company, what you can do and what you need to hand over to others to carry out for you. The art of a good business owner isn’t about being able to do everything and showing off your ability to juggle everything the business needs; it’s about knowing what’s best for the business, where you need help and getting the proper support to assist you in making things better.
Business owners can fail for a multitude of reasons, from poor cash flow, not understanding their industry, not innovating, and not being able to separate their needs from the needs of the business. Pretty much most of the reasons people fail are because they don’t ask for or accept help or get the right support when they need it.
Putting the business first and knowing your own shortcomings when it comes to what you can give your company means you will be better placed to find those who can help you and offer you the support and services you need to keep going and improve day after day.
But who do you need, and how do you find them? In the first instance, you need to sit down and have a long, hard look at what is and isn’t working within your company. From here, you can identify service providers, outsourcing companies, or individuals who can deliver on these aspects to eliminate the need for you to struggle with them.
To find the right people, you can talk to those in your industry to see why they use or recommend, look for reviews online with third-party review sites and make enquiries with the providers themselves to get a feel of who they are, what they can do and what you can expect from partnering with them.
However, when outsourcing, it is essential that you follow some important rules to ensure that you only outsource those tasks that need it and you don’t cross the line between it being productive and losing control because you handed over too many parts to different providers and are now in a worse state than before.
How Time Consuming Is It?
If you have certain aspects of the company that take you or your team a long time to complete or you find you’re becoming bogged down with tedious tasks, then this could be ideal for outsourcing. Ideally, you want to use this service to free up time so you can do other more important things. So, identifying the areas where you lose time or those jobs that take up too much time should be considered to pass over to a third party to complete so you can get the results without losing hours finding what you need. This can be areas such as data analytics, accounting, bookkeeping, and HR, for example, where you would require a dedicated department for you.
What Skills are Required?
Typically, if you need to hire someone with a specific skill set or learn something outside of your area of expertise, it should be a task you are outsourcing if you cannot hire in-house. If it requires in-depth knowledge and experience to bring it up to the required standards, outsource it.
This can be aspects of the business such as cyber security and IT management to ensure that all of your digital operations are running smoothly and are up to date and that all of your digital defences are in place and protecting your company as it needs. Or it can be that you need to outsource your logistics to a company that is fluent in getting packages from A to B with no hassle and understands what is required to make this happen.
Essential if you cannot do it personally, nor can your staff, then outsource it. The reason is that the outsourcing company will be fully trained and up to date with the industry they are working in and can offer you their skills and expertise for your company, so you don’t need to learn them.
How Much Does It Cost?
How much will it cost you to hire employees specifically for the job role, buy the tools and equipment you need, and get this expected to the level you require? If you are starting from scratch, building new departments for certain tasks can be time-consuming and costly. If the numbers aren’t working out for you yet, the tasks still need to be completed, then his is an ideal candidate for outsourcing to another provider that will help you manage the cost associated with this.
Your provider will work with you to develop a package based on your needs for a set cost for what they do. Not only will this eliminate the need for you to pay out to get up and running, but it can help you to mitigate any disasters you might face and remove the need for paying for emergency assistance, i.e. in the event of a cyber breach or hack, to get things rectified.
Does It Need Your Explicit Attention?
There are likely aspects of your business that do need your explicit attention, and you want to be giving as much of your time to those areas as possible. However, for those tasks that can be carried out by someone else and don’t need you to be as hands-on, you can either delegate to existing employees or hand over to an outsourcing partner to complete for you. If you can be hands-off and relinquish control, then it is worth considering it to be handed over to someone else to carry out on your behalf.
Outsourcing can be extremely beneficial for businesses of all sizes when done correctly, But knowing what to outsource and how it will benefit you will enable you to make better decisions and ensure that you are outsourcing the right aspects, not just any random parts you simply don’t want to do yourself. From here, you can benefit from cost savings, increased time to devote to other areas of the business, and improved standards.