5 Best Outsourcing Opportunities for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses

What outsourcing opportunities do you need for your company?

Is your growing business starting to lag behind your competitors because you have been spending too much time attempting to manage the whole operation? As the head of your business, you should be leading from the front, rather than micro-managing every tiny process. If you’re in this position, you are not alone. Eighty percent of managers and startup owners believe they could be spending their time more productively. 

Having a crack team that is capable of handling everything your business requires is the dream. But if your company is growing, you may not be able to keep up with demand. Whether this comes down to lack of funding or the time and resources to invest in training new employees, it’s unlikely that you will be able to snap your fingers and summon your dream team out of nowhere. That’s where outsourcing comes in. Whether your most draining processes are in the areas of HR, Payroll or IT, you may find that outsourcing can take some of the draining tasks out of your hands, giving some much-needed breathing room to focus on growth-oriented work.

But where do you start with outsourcing? If you’re looking to outsource certain parts of your business but want to keep others in-house, this list of the most widely outsourced services gives you the tools to decide how best to leverage outsourcing opportunities for your business.

Hand Over Your IT Needs

According to a recent survey of small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs), the area of IT is one of the most often outsourced in business, with over half of growing businesses outsourcing their IT requirements at least partially, and a further 33% hoping to follow suit soon. Compared with recruiting and training a full-time IT technician or team, outsourcing your IT requirements can save you as much as a third of your IT budget. Impressive savings are certainly not the only benefit of managed IT, though. Managed services can also make your business more agile, flexible and scalable as your operation grows and evolves. A big challenge facing growing companies is the ability to scale their technical capabilities according to demand. If your business is growing fast, managed IT may be the ideal solution.

Recruitment & HR

These days it is a truth universally acknowledged that having a team of talented people on board, and keeping them happy, is the key to business success. Seen in this light, every step in the HR process from recruitment to office management and retention is crucial for the continued growth and sustainability of your business. For this reason, many SMEs choose to outsource their recruitment and hiring processes to experts who understand their industry and needs. Once you have your talented team on board, it’s really important to ensure that their experience is positive, and that the job works for them, too. Retention is everything, and the complex and frustrating work of scheduling often costs businesses key employees. Having the best software on the market for effective scheduling will play an important role in whether your employees feel looked after. Check out https://getsling.com/blog/free-employee-scheduling-software/ for an ideal solution. HR outsourcing options also include expert HR management for everything from onboarding to employee wellness.

Hire Talented Freelancers

Three out of four SMEs that make use of the wealth of talent offered by freelancers report that bringing freelancers on board gave them a crucial edge over their competitors in the early stage of growing their businesses. Why is this so often the case? Because the gig economy allows your company to tap the insights and skills that you may not be able to afford if you were to hire full-time paid employees. Getting freelancers onto your team temporarily to handle projects that your team does not have the capability for also means your staff can swell if and when you have the need, covering those busy growth periods without ending up with too many employees on your payroll long term. If you’re already looking for ways to cut expenses as a small business, hiring fewer full-time employees in favor of freelancers could be the way to go.

Outsource Your Payroll Requirements

Many startups aren’t great at handling HR and tax compliance at first, and that’s understandable—who goes into business ready and rearing to go with things that hadn’t even occurred to you at first? That is until they decide to outsource their payroll needs rather than attempting to manage everything in-house. Offloading such a complex task to strained professionals—or shelling out for specialized software—is a great way has been shown to drastically improve your company’s compliance, and significantly reduce your operating costs. And the cost savings are substantial: businesses that outsource their payroll needs stand to save up to 20% more than companies that opt to hire and train a dedicated team to handle payroll.

Outsourcing your payroll requirements has another significant benefit that is often overlooked when the time comes to prioritize which areas of a company are ripe for outsourcing. As the head of your business, you know first hand that having the trust of your team is vital to your bottom line. Looking after your team well will enable you to retain the fantastic talent you’ve brought in for your business. Outsourcing your payroll requirements will significantly reduce the likelihood of accounting errors, which will help to build trust in your business among your employees, fostering employee loyalty. 

Content Marketing 

If you don’t have a blog for your business, you are totally missing out. Nowadays, every business needs a blog, end of story. Why? If SEO matters to you, you’d be seriously losing out on opportunities to get your website to the top of Google’s search rankings by not taking advantage of that blogging magic. Not only will a business blog assist with that all-important SEO, but your blog will also help you to build a meaningful relationship with your customer. You’ll also work towards positioning your business as the preferred source of reliable facts and opinions on any of the issues that matter to your target audience, building trust among your audience in your brand, and enhancing your brand’s reputation. A company blog can also be extremely handy for recruitment purposes, as it’s a great way to demonstrate your employer branding, giving potential employees a glimpse behind the curtain, so they get a sense of what it would be like to work for you.

Running a successful blog may seem like an easy thing—you’re just creating content, right?—but in practice it is a real skill. Updating your blog regularly with informative and relevant content is crucial if you want your audience to connect with your brand. Many SMEs (especially in the startup phase) make the mistake of assuming that they will get by without a specialized writer or content agency on board. Attempting to run your company blog yourself (or adding content writing to your team’s existing responsibilities) can breed stress within your organization and does not always turn out well, especially if your business is focused on an area that is quite specialized. Having several different untrained writers can result in an inconsistent style and voice for your blog, which can quickly erode any trust that you have built in your brand. It’s advisable to bring an agency on board, or hire a dedicated writer to research and create the content you require.

When you’re attempting to expand your business, it can feel natural to attempt to handle every procedure in-house because you want to stay in budget. However, stretching your small team to cover all the required bases is often counterproductive. If you’re interested in outsourcing, these commonly outsourced solutions will give you some options as a starting point.