How can small business owners compete with larger, more established companies is something many new businesses ask time and time again. The thing is, you need to be clever about how you work to allow you to maintain high standards and give the bigger companies a run for their money.
One such way of doing this is via outsourcing. Outsourcing is the practice of hiring a third party company to perform certain tasks within your business to allow you to concentrate on the parts of the business you need to.
So how exactly can outsourcing benefit your small business?
Seamless Payroll
Outsourcing your payroll requirements to a third party allows you to remove the need to collate hours and make physical payments while ensuring you are meeting your legal obligations. Many companies utilize the best n cutting edge technology to allow them to automate and process CIS payments, PAYE, P45, P60 and more to get your staff paid on time every time.
Improved Customer Service
AI is making huge strides in the customer service industry, and failing to utilize this impressive tool can be doing your company and your customers a disservice. In a world where we have pretty much everything at our fingertips, having to wait for answers and replies can feel like, well, you’re a bit in the dark ages. And you can bet if you are answering a customer enquiry your competitor is.
Chatbots can allow you to automate the initial contact process, and the ability to pre-programme replies to popular questions can improve your customer service until you are a staff member can answer.
More Time
How often have you said you wish you had more time? There are never enough hours in the day sometimes, but by outsourcing processes and factors within your company such as data collection and analysis, you can find you are eliminating time spent interpreting data you have and collating it to pursue the best leads.
The trick is to identify which areas of the business would benefit from being outsourced and at a justifiable cost to you. As with anything, there are pros and cons.
Expert Skills and Training
Ask yourself how long and how much would it cost to train new staff or bring in a whole new department to take care of specific tasks for you. Take IT services, for example. Do you really have the time and money not only to hire someone but have them trained up to speed to ensure your systems are working, downtime is minimised, and your security is protecting everything it needs to?
Generally, the answer to this is no. Managed IT services can not only offer to take over all of your IT needs, but you can lean on their collective training and experience in their field and feel confident everything is running as it should be, and ensure you have the Business IT Support that you require when you need it most.
When it comes to outsourcing, it is important to remain balanced regarding what you outsource to avoid common pitfalls associated with outsourcing to ensure you reap maximum benefits.
