outsourcing

6 Things to Consider When Your Business Expands

June 29, 2017 by Tim McMahon

When you are considering expanding your business – that is always a cause to celebrate. Sales might be doing well and you decide you need to find a bigger space so you can hire additional employees. So far so good. But, are you really ready for the expansion? The decision to extend the scope of your business must be a result of thoughtful consideration of various factors, including the financial, logistical, even your emotional readiness. Many successful small businesses have faltered or even failed because they expanded too quickly before they had worked out processes and procedures that were scalable. Forbes lists the following cautions when considering expansion.

Once you get to a certain sales range, above $5 million or so, it’s harder to keep track of your financials.
Unfortunately, more sales does not always equate to more profit.
Once a company is really growing quickly, the quality of the people you hire becomes a big issue.
When you’re growing quickly, it’s harder to be sure your customers are happy.
Fast growing companies often see their accounts receivable run faster than their sales or their ability to collect.

The rule of thumb is that you should only expand when there are untapped opportunities that can benefit your business. You need to think about the following points before embarking on business expansion: [Read more…] about 6 Things to Consider When Your Business Expands

The Most Outsourced Jobs

April 8, 2017 by Guest Contributor

The term outsourcing represents a business partnership between a company and an individual (or company). In this partnership, they agree that the company will contract services from an outside provider who will be paid an agreed upon fee for their services. This type of business partnership can be long or short term.

An important detail of outsourcing is that the company that does the work doesn’t become an employee of the company that hired them.

In general, businesses look to outsource their processes to some other entity for a variety of reasons:

Because they can save money
Because some other organization can do that job better
Because the need is short term and hiring is time consuming and expensive

This is a good arrangement which helps both parties benefit and enables them making money. This trend has grown so fast that today, you can find professional companies that outsource their services. This is their business model, and it works.

Here, we will talk about some of the most common outsourced jobs since the start of 2017.

Call Center Services

Call centers provide various services such as [Read more…] about The Most Outsourced Jobs

Business Process Outsourcing (Infographic)

June 25, 2016 by Tim McMahon

What is Business Process Outsourcing?

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the external contracting of services such as data management, accounting and creative design with a service provider. In contrast, manufacturing outsourcing involves businesses arranging for production of goods through a contract manufacturer.

This straightforward distinction can be more important than it might seem at first glance — while only companies engaged in producing goods will periodically use manufacturing outsourcing, all organizations in the private, public and government sectors can benefit from outsourcing various services to an external provider. For example, businesses of all sizes have functions like payroll and human resources that often require expert help from outside the organization.

Outsourcing is becoming more common as companies [Read more…] about Business Process Outsourcing (Infographic)

Can Small Businesses Benefit From Outsourcing?

September 11, 2012 by Marie Into

Small Business Outsourcing-

Outsourcing is largely thought of as a corporate practice, but the truth is that any business of any size can benefit from hiring agencies to take care of various things. Very few tasks need to be done on-site anymore, and it’s almost always cheaper to let someone else handle it than it is to hire more staff. Even hiring independent contractors is usually more cost-effective than taking on more employees, and it can even produce better results.

Let Everyone Do What They’re Best At

The things that outsourcing shouldn’t be used for are the things that are most essential to the core of a small business. In a lot of cases, these are things that can’t be outsourced in the first place. A coffee shop can’t outsource the brewing of coffee; that would defeat the whole purpose. It can outsource accounting duties, and that’s a good idea regardless of how capable the business owner is of doing it himself. People who don’t do accounting for a living are far more likely to make errors, and the tax code is so complex that someone who isn’t constantly brushing up on it is bound to miss a few things on that end. There’s nothing that someone could do in-house that couldn’t be done better by [Read more…] about Can Small Businesses Benefit From Outsourcing?

Outsourcing Business- Tips to Reduce Overhead

August 8, 2012 by Guest Contributor

Outsourcing in Business

Few situations are more unpleasant in business than finding yourself faced with the dreaded spectre of insolvency. Unfortunately, this situation is by no means uncommon. On the contrary, recently released figures from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have revealed that the number of insolvency court appointments has been on a steady rise from as early as the 2007-2008 fiscal year. However, while there were 9,200 such appointments in five years ago, 2011-2012 saw over 11,700 such cases. To call insolvency a plague of the national business scene would be to spread pointless panic, yet the growing trend is apparent at first glance. So what can a business owner do, to reduce expenses? There are several simple solutions available to any company, but especially appropriate for small enterprises in the modern information age to reduce business overhead and Employment Costs .

Don’t Be Afraid of Outsourcing

Many entrepreneurs and start-up owners prefer to keep everything in-house, out of a poorly understood need to oversee every small step of their business plan. While precaution and daily updated insights are valuable commodities, it is results that matter. An efficient manager should know how and when to delegate responsibility—what is more, they should also figure out how to avoid having staff costs running through the roof. More simply put, there are aspects in any business (account keeping, IT maintenance and legal consultancy spring to mind as prime examples) that are better off outsourced. As online presence is becoming increasingly important for current business-making, it is an equally viable option to pay an expert for handling your website, blog and corporate Social Media accounts. Don’t spend a small fortune on a permanent employee, but rather employ freelancing, while enjoying lower overall costs for possibly better services. In addition to personnel, in the 21st century, it is possible to outsource equipment rentals, and even real estate. [Read more…] about Outsourcing Business- Tips to Reduce Overhead