The Benefits of Outsourcing

The word outsourcing has a notorious reputation in the entrepreneurial community, with strong views on either side. While many consider it to be a risky practice, the truth is there are a number of significant benefits to outsourcing, particularly for solopreneurs and small businesses:

Cost Efficient

In most cases outsourcing will cut down your expenses significantly if you can find the right provider. There are many specialist sites in a wide range of industries aimed at helping you find the right freelancers, but you need to ensure you spend time analysing the platform and evaluating any potential freelancer. Cheaper is rarely better, but there's usually a good middle ground to be found between cost effective and high quality, you just need to be prepared to but in the time and effort to find the right provider.

Focus on Core Principles

Delegating work via outsourcing will leave you more time to focus on your core business practices first. In many cases back office operations such as administrative and HR services can be outsourced, particularly for smaller businesses who don't have this speciality in-house. Most businesses use an accountant, which is technically outsourcing, so there's no reason you shouldn't do the same with other areas outside of your speciality. Similarly, many bigger companies will take on a specialist HR firm to deal with finding new candidates, tracking HR metrics and dealing with the legal side of hiring (and firing).

Of course, the controversy comes in when you're using freelancers to provide work to clients, but even this is perfectly acceptable in today's business environment. Outsourcing allows you to add additional capabilities to your business offering, particularly those that complement your own. For example, if you're a copywriter, you may wish to add a designer to your team to allow you to provide clients with elegant copy and strong images to go with them - hiring a full-time designer might not be financially viable, but with outsourcing you can still add this competency to your overall offering.

Time Differences

Although working with international partners can sometimes be challenging, a large time difference can also be advantageous. While you’re a sleep they’re working and vice versa. There is always someone working on improving and maintaining your business. Communication is key when working across time zones so make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to dates and deadlines.

Flexible Staffing

As a small business owner your workload can fluctuate. Hiring on-site staff whether permanent or on contract can often be costly, and often represents a significant risk on your part. Outsourcing tasks according to demand will allow your business more financial flexibility as you can increase or decrease the number of outsourced projects easily.