Creating and managing a startup is a step closer to materializing the valuable vision that motivates its founder to enter the entrepreneurial landscape. Since startups need to focus on its specialized and core operations – to achieve results – it has the natural tendency to shy away from doing the routinary and repetitive tasks at hand. And it should because what is important at its early stage is to ensure that its business and customer base grow.
It is in this light that small to mid-size companies are seeing the importance and benefits of outsourcing.
Any small and growing company needs to focus its energy and resources in minding their core competencies. Multitasking at this stage is a bad idea as this would cause the company to deviate from its focus. Unfocused operation could lead to more drastic results.
The nature of startup companies vary therefore their capabilities and specialization are organically different from one another. However, some startup tasks should be outsourced accordingly, particularly if the tasks are not within the range of company’s specialization.
From here we can have a better view of which services should startup companies consider for outsourcing. Functions that can be outsourced include –
Human Resources
Although this department is considered integral to the generic structure of any existing company, small companies are short in budget and cannot afford to have one at this stage.
There are outsourcing firms that offer their assistance as regards to human resource management. Startup companies can save time and effort by outsourcing the processes involved in recruiting, hiring, and training personnel.
Also, offshore companies that specialise in human resource works can provide a better job in relation to employment process than what you can do especially if the nature of your business is nowhere related to human resources.
Accounting
Several prominent companies are known for employing third party agencies to perform their accounting works to avoid technical problems and delays if inner management conflict occurs.
Outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping roles, either by hiring a remote accountant or sending out a particular accounting job to an offshore firm, can prove to be less costly and efficient than approaching an established and large auditing firms.
Processing tax is always time consuming and a starting company should not be burdened by the troubles involved in the tax process. It is highly advisable for startups to outsource this function. CFO service and bookkeeping can also be included in this outsourced function.
Digital Marketing
If the nature of your business is nowhere related to digital marketing, you are not expected to ace this function. You may know how to use social media but there are skilled workers out there who have mastered the using digital platforms for marketing purpose and getting their service is just rightful.
Digital marketing involves complex and varied types of work. These days, companies must have online presence and this means having a website and social media counterparts to reach a massive population of internet users.
A startup company can benefit from outsourcing to a remote worker or outsourcing firms to handle your social media presence and strategies. There are skilled web designers, social media managers, effective copywriters, and professional blog managers who can be contracted when creating your own virtual social media team to handle these functions.
Legal
The legal function does not need to be a full-blown department within the company. It just needs one or two legal consultants who can process the legal aspects of the company and provide advice concerning legal matters that the company might encounter from time time. By having these tasks attended by outsourcing companies, you can focus instead on your startup’s core competencies in producing and distributing your products or services.
Smart Benefits of Outsourcing
Focus
By getting the service of a BPO company or a virtual worker, a startup can delegate non-core projects, and then concentrate on the more complex aspect of management, strategic planning and execution concerning core products/service.
Cost Effective
A startup with smaller budget can benefit from freelancers as as much as hiring an outsourcing company since they are more cost effective. The company can save much than employing a full time staff that usually demands a standard wage and above. However, there are also some disadvantages to consider such when considering hiring an independent contractor from a reputable outsourcing establishment.
Efficiency
Online home-based job platforms that gather a pool of skilled and diverse freelancers like Upwork usually impose deadlines to ensure the efficiency of each freelancer.
Such approach to ensure timely delivery of output has been found to be favorable for their clients, particularly for startups which have to operate nimbly and produce or ship their products or services faster.
When the virtual worker is ineffective, the company can easily look for other freelancers with a more impressive work history and qualifications that match with the client’s requirements.
Also, third party platforms usually impose policies to lessen the statistics of delays and cancellation of projects.
High Quality of Work.
Quality of work is high standard and sometimes goes beyond expectations since freelancers are inclined to protect their reputation by producing/performing high quality works. Virtual outsourcing worker attract clients by building an impressive portfolio and work history.
Also, startup companies can easily find competent and highly-skilled outsourcing staff who can perform better than the ones they might employ full time and needed further training.
While outsourcing functions can be done easily, managing the workframe involved in the outsourced functions must still be considered by the company.
They should still hold control with the critical functions involved in the operations particularly with quality control.
Also, it is important for startup companies to identify the core business functions and never outsource them. Getting the service of outsourcing agencies, be it a large scale company or a freelancer, is a smart move to consider in establishing the startup’s brand. It also shows your support and commitment of empowering the virtual staffing market and BPO industry.
However, it is significant to determine a competent or incompetent outsourcing services. A competent and efficient outsourcing firm can deliver results at a lower cost than hiring an established and big agency.
Startup companies can choose a specialized outsourcing company like Big Outsource in the Philippines or hire freelancers to do the outsourcing works.
