Business growth is what every entrepreneur wants to see. But as your fledgeling organisation begins to spread its wings, you will likely find yourself spread ever thinner, spending more of every day distracted by things that have nothing to do with your core business.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the solution to the problem that you often don’t even notice exists until it has already done irreparable damage to your business. Here, we take a look at four key BPO functions that you can and should get off your plate. These are the functions that should be in the hands of third-party providers who know what they are doing, tells Probrand.
As a word of warning, keep in mind that one thing you should not outsource is your core business activity. So if you see that on the below list, skip past it onto the next item.
IT Support
Technology now plays such an important role in every business that outsourcing IT support makes sense for a growing number of reasons. The cost alone of paying for your own IT infrastructure and staff, when everything can now be remotely managed makes it an obvious decision. Then add to that the improved security and access to the most knowledgeable support staff. You can see why in-house IT teams are rapidly becoming an endangered species.
Bookkeeping and finance
Even an independent sole trader will usually use a local accountant for tax returns and the like. So why on earth would a company that is not in the finance sector want to have a finance team? Today, there is cloud-based software that makes it easy to share knowledge and documentation. This enables your bookkeeper to keep everything in order, ensure your tax commitments are met and provide you with valuable insights and reports.
Legal support
In much the same way as they use an external accountant, small businesses will go to their local law firm if they need legal advice or support. The reason behind larger ones deciding to bloat themselves with an in-house legal team remains a mystery. This is definitely an area that you are better off outsourcing. The type of support you need really depends on your business needs. If you are in a highly litigious industry, where claims are a routine part of life, or if you have regular client contracts that need legal review, it is worth getting a local lawyer on a monthly retainer that will automatically entitle you to a set number of hours per month. If you go over one month, it will still be cheaper than the six-figure salary that an in-house counsel would command.
Admin
Surveys suggest that as much as 40 per cent of the average employee’s working day is spent fulfilling administrative tasks that anyone could do. Cut out the non-core activities from your best people’s days. Send tasks like report writing, transcribing notes, arranging travel and so on to an external admin support. You’ll be amazed at how much more gets achieved in a working day.
More on starting up and outsourcing.
Follow Company Bug