What to think about before you outsource in your business

Outsourcing in business can work very well.

It’s a great way to free up your time as a business owner so that you can work on building the business up, rather than getting held back by the tasks that do need to get done, but that takes you away from boosting your profits.

You can also cut costs this way as you won’t have to take on full-time staff. 

If you are interested in outsourcing, it’s important to do plenty of research before you make a final decision; it’s not the right thing for every business, and sometimes it can do more harm than good.

Here are some things to consider before you take the plunge and outsource some of your important tasks. 

What should you outsource? 

The first question to ask yourself is exactly what you should outsource.

There will be several different elements within your business that outsourcing could be a benefit for, and these include finance, marketing, IT, and shipping. 

The answer to this question will revolve around how much value outsourcing will add to these elements. If you are looking for freight class shipping quotes would you know where to start or would an outsourced admin assistant get the job done more quickly and efficiently?

If you need to create a marketing campaign would it be better to do it yourself, or would the end result be more professional if you outsourced? 

Think about every aspect of what you might want to have a third party do and determine what value it would bring to your company overall if you stepped back and handed the job over to an expert to do. 

Will it save you money? 

The main goal of outsourcing will be about money. If the service that you’re looking at isn’t going to help you cut costs within your company, is it worth playing out for in the first place?

Or you could look at it another way; if the service you might want to use for outsourcing isn’t going to make much difference and give you a chance to improve your business, thus making more money, is it worth paying out for?  

Measure the costs to ensure you’re not paying too much for whatever service it is you want to outsource, and then determine how much money you will either be able to save or increase your profits by when you use said service.

If it works out positively, you should go ahead. If you’re going to lose money, you’ll need to look into alternative solutions.  

High quality 

Finally, you will need to consider the quality of the service you are outsourcing. Will it be up to the same standards as you would be able to provide if you did it yourself or if you trained someone in-house to do it?

This could connect to admin tasks including answering emails or taking phone messages, or it could extend to making the goods or carrying out the service you based your business around. 

Poor quality at any point in your business processes could cause problems with your reputation and you will quickly lose customers.

Outsourcing simply wouldn’t be worth it if this happened, even if you were saving yourself time and/or money.