Small and mid-sized businesses face a challenging business environment, making it essential to carefully manage budgets. While you should always handle some tasks in-house, there's a real upside to selectively outsourcing certain tasks. Save time and money by creatively using outsourcing services to drive success at your company.
Outsourcing benefits the bottom line
It's no secret that there is tough competition for talent. By going with a contractor, your business can access the same high-quality skills tapped by larger businesses while still staying within the budget. Since it's expensive to locate, hire and retain talent, outsourcing can be a lifesaver.
In addition, an outsourced expert who can quickly get to work and understand the project's possible challenges is especially valuable for one-off projects. By hiring outside contractors to work on specific projects, you free up your employees to focus on your core business goals. While it can still be challenging to find the right outsourcing partner, it is much easier and cheaper than trying to hire, train and retain full-time employees.
The most important decisions about outsourcing concern the nature of the project. Deciding when to outsource is critical to realizing the maximum amount of savings so do this in the planning stage of the project.
What kinds of tasks can be outsourced? Typically, it depends on the nature of your business and what you need to accomplish. For example, temporarily augmenting your IT team with developers with specific business logic skills or full-stack capabilities can save time and money.
When to use in-house staff
While outsourcing does deliver value, it should be seen as one more tool in your toolbox. You should handle certain tasks in-house. For example, if you are planning a project that will be integral to your company's core business, then using in-house employees makes sense.
In-house teams offer consistency and reliability, and they are dedicated to your business's success. Because of their close proximity and understanding of company culture, in-house teams can quickly resolve issues. They can also be relied upon to address recurrent challenges for sensitive projects.
Due to the increasingly strict regulatory environment, your company may be prohibited from outsourcing some projects due to their sensitive nature or the types of data involved.
Just as there are some tasks you can easily outsource, there are some you should either never outsource or only outsource with extreme caution. For projects that are related to the core intellectual property of a business or use proprietary information, you should only outsource with caution or have an in-house team manage it.
Carefully consider projects that require a high degree of continuity too. Hiring an outsourced team that has worked well together in the past might be one option, but hiring individual freelancers may backfire since each individual will have their own design and stylistic approaches. Communication challenges can also arise, especially in contexts where English is not the primary language.
Getting the help you need
A challenging business climate means that small and mid-sized businesses need to think more like a large company. By making informed decisions about outsourcing or using in-house teams, your business can improve its efficiency, cut costs and boost revenue.
There is no need to face these types of decisions alone. The skilled professionals at W. O'Donnell can help you with your outsourcing and in-house needs. Contact a representative now to get insights about how our team can help your business thrive.