We’ve talked about certain tech that startups should invest in to make their initial growth much easier, but new companies can take it a step further by outsourcing certain aspects of the business cycle.
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Benefits of Outsourcing
Outsourcing certain processes can be a money-saving, not to mention efficiency building, practice that is more sustainable than maintaining in-house teams. Of course, this all depends on how good your third-party providers are, but in general, outsourcing from the get-go can help your company in a lot of ways, such as:
Lower costs
in general, managing in-house teams costs money, from overheads and utilities to benefits and office equipment. Outsourcing certain parts of your business from the start immediately lowers the amount of money you need to invest in terms of infrastructure and physical space, leaving you more capital to funnel into growing your business.
Turn-key Solutions
most third-party providers will provide their clients with “turn-key” teams; that is, teams that include everything you need for that particular process. Not only is this more economical, it also ensures that you’re getting experts in that particular process, which reduces the risk of errors and ultimately saves you money on training while increasing your business efficiency.
The Gift of Time
Outsourcing means you won’t have to think about that particular business process; just let your provider do all the work for you. By drastically lessening your workload, you’ll be able to focus on other parts of your business, such as growth, development, and research. It gives you more time to foster relationships with your clients.
So, what business processes should startups consider outsourcing?
Calls and Queries
It might get a bad rap, but call centers are actually a huge boon to any company, but especially startups. Call centers are one of the most cost-efficient ways for new companies to lessen the workload of their employees. The more successful a company becomes, the more in-demand their products/services are. But with that success comes calls: leads asking about your products, customer queries, and even complaints.
By hiring a call center to handle these calls, you’re not only bypassing the need to train customer service agents, you’re also bypassing the need to pay for expensive phones, equipment, employees, and a phone infrastructure. Depending on your service provider, many call centers and answering services, like AnswerFirst, will provide clients with a full crew of highly trained and expert customer service representatives. All you need to do is to synergize with your provider at the onset of their service period, and you can relegate all answering tasks to them.
The Drudgeries of Administration
Administrative duties are, for lack of a better term, a chore: answering endless emails, taking down notes in executive meetings, scheduling, filing employee benefits…the list goes on and on.
But rather than hire a secretary, or even an entire HR department, it’s more efficient to outsource these tasks to third-party providers. This frees up your teams to focus on important projects, meeting with potential clients, and basically growing your business. Meanwhile, all administrative tasks, whether individually or collectively, can be expertly handled by an outside source.
The I.T. Crowd
The I.T. department of any company can be one of the most expensive investments you can make. This is because they require specialized training, specialized equipment, and even a specialized timetable (some IT departments have night-shift employees to monitor equipment).
Outsourcing these tasks can be of huge help to startups. Eventually, you’ll probably need to have your own tech and information infrastructure, but until then, the most cost-efficient option is to hire third-party experts to handle your IT needs.
Besides, with all the advances in data warehousing, robotic process automation, automated customer relationship management, among other things, many of these processes are offered by other providers anyway, so it’ll be cheaper to outsource the management of these systems rather than maintaining an IT department of your own.
Get That Money
Much like IT, payroll departments require specialized training for their employees. What’s more, they’ll be handling the money of your whole company, so any misstep brought about by inexperience or human errors will be costly, figuratively and literally.
To avoid this, startups can outsource all their payroll needs to expert payroll specialists whose sole job it is to keep track of your revenue, provide you with accurate budgets, and be trustworthy enough to ensure you’re always in the black.