Outsourcing as a Business Growth Solution

By Vincent Sevilla

Although outsourcing is mostly practiced by enterprise-level businesses, small and medium business owners can take advantage of it to grow their operations. Here are tips on how to outsource successfully.

Tips for successful outsourcing

Know your weaknesses

As a business owner, you should be aware of where your business’s strengths and weaknesses lie. You want to focus on what your company is good at. Tasks that do not fall into your core group’s area of expertise, as well as those that are simple but time-consuming, should be relegated to an outsourced team.

Do you believe you have a gap when it comes to customer service? You can rely on an offshore call center to handle that area of your business. Are you having a hard time managing your company’s everyday duties? Hire a virtual assistant who will help you keep track of your day-to-day operations.

Scour networks and virtual marketplaces

Once you’ve identified your company’s flaws, you can start hunting for the right people to outsource your work to. The first place you should look into is your own networks for references that you can trust. Ask your family, your friends, your colleagues, and business partners. A great social media site for reaching professionals from all kinds of industries is LinkedIn.

Virtual marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr are great platforms for finding freelancers. They have easy-to-navigate interfaces where you can post jobs and review portfolios.

Create a comprehensive brief

To help you find the perfect contractor, you need to provide a thorough description of the job you’re offering. Write a project brief that outlines all your instructions and expectations. By clearly spelling out the requirements, you'll increase your chances of hiring the person best suited for the job and avoid any surprises on how the outsourced service provider accomplishes the tasks.

Allow a measure of control

Although you do want to make sure that the outsourced labor is doing your assigned job to your specifications, you have to remember that you pursued this course of action so that you can focus on your core competencies. Let the people who have the expertise in that field take care of the work.

You should also be open to advice from the contractors about how the job you’ve delegated can be run more efficiently. If you hired quality contractors, they should have a wealth of experience backed up by a proven track record to draw from. Take into account whatever insights they might provide.

Don’t overcommit

As a business owner, you have the power to decide how much of your operations you want to outsource, and how long you want to avail of the contractors’ services. Try outsourcing one area of your business to see how it goes in terms of the quality of the work as well as how you and your employees can deal with it.

Once you’ve seen first-hand how the decision to outsource a process has positively affected your company’s growth, you can then start applying it to other parts of your business with more confidence.

Set your priorities straight, and take advantage of business partnerships you can build online. You will find more time and resources available for your company’s main goals while cutting costs, opening more opportunities for business growth.