Outsourcing Only When You Need To

The main mistake many of us make when we decide to outsource work is we think we’re hiring permanent employees. That’s simply not the case.

When you choose to order a meal at a local diner, you’ve outsourced work to a chef, a server, and a clean-up crew. Does this mean you’ve hired them on as permanent employees? Of course not. You’re only employing them for long enough to prepare a meal for you — something you either can’t or don’t want to do yourself. It’s outsourcing at its very finest!

Not to mention, the benefits of outsourcing — even if they’re on a short-term, temporary basis — are pretty darn amazing:

• Fresh ideas

  By bringing in a new person (or people), you’ll also be gaining a new perspective. Issues that have been plaguing your business that you just can’t quite figure out how to solve will get a fresh pair of eyes on them. Blog posts that have gone unwritten because you’ve “run out of ideas” will suddenly have topics.

• Cut costs

  Working takes time. Training to learn how to do your work also takes time. And time is money. The more time you spend doing something, the more money you potentially waste. By outsourcing, you’ll gain back some of your time; therefore, you’ll also save some of your earnings.

• Flexible hours

  Unlike regular employees, subcontractors (outsourced freelancers) tend to have more flexible hours. If your hours are also flexible — as a business owner or fellow freelancer — you can effectively sync your work hours with theirs, creating a truly efficient work schedule. (It can sometimes feel like you have more than 24 hours per day at your disposal!).

• Specialization

  By hiring someone to do the tasks you either don’t want to do or don’t know how to do, you’ll be making room in your life to do what you do best. No professional wants to get slapped with the “Jack of All Trades (Master of None)” label. By outsourcing the aspects of your business that you’ve been struggling to do on your own, you’ll be able to relax and start specializing. Your services will then have a higher value (because you’ll have more time to dedicate to performing them well) and you’ll be able to command higher rates

The beauty of outsourcing is it has this “As-Needed” element or landscape, allowing you to reap these advantages:

Scalability

The greatest advantage of outsourcing is that it can be done on an “as-needed basis” and this offers businesses primary benefits to improve scalability and business agility. In a call center, you have the ability to scale up and down in terms of staffing depending on seasonal needs so you won’t be stuck with the traditional process of hiring, onboarding, and training that will cost you so much in terms of money, energy, resources, and propensity to scale.

Agility

Technology impacts any industry you’re in as it can help reduce waste in terms of resources and also overhead costs. And that is why many businesses have moved towards outsourcing most of their processes in an effort to maximize capacity, cut costs, achieve high quality and better results, and focus on the core facets of the business.

Now, the outsourcing model should be intertwined with AI or digitally automated tools including but not limited to robotic process automation, machine learning, software processes, and other disruptive technologies that are becoming the new standard and taking over the world. And if you don’t outsource and have limited to zero know-how, technology, resources, and manpower for this, then your business can be left behind.