Important Business Functions to Outsource as Your Company Grows

Outsourced teams and third parties are used by companies across industries all over the world. There are plenty of compelling reasons for them to seek out trustworthy partners to assist them in developing a product, developing a new service, or improving their present performance.

The financial component of outsourcing, however, is almost always the primary motivation for doing so, along with expertise that you may not have in-house. As you grow, you will need to decide what to do in-house and what to contract out to a third party. With that said, below are some of the important business functions to outsource as you scale and grow.

1. Social Media

Experienced social specialists can deliver unbelievable outcomes for your organization like you would engage an SEO expert to boost your search rankings or a sales rep to complete more deals. It can be common to hear inexperienced business owners mistakenly state that social media is an "easier" medium and that every marketer can handle it. Given the importance of social media in terms of lead generation and client retention, you can't afford to ignore it or entrust it to inexperienced hands.

Outsourcing your social media helps you do two things, first and foremost. It lets you examine your present social presence for potential flaws, and it helps you produce or increase specific results (e.g., more leads, quicker responses, and more brand recognition).

Another advantage of social media outsourcing is the ability to use some really effective digital marketing tools. Premium analytics, reporting, and advertising solutions are generally out of reach for smaller businesses. This is due to the fact that they need either a large expenditure or specialized skills to handle it.

Agencies, on the other hand, rely on powerful solutions like Sprout Social to help their customers develop. In a way, when you work with an agency, those tools become "yours." As you grow, outsourcing things like social media becomes a viable way to leverage powerful tech that you might not have the capital for at the moment because it is tied up elsewhere.

2. SEO

There are many reasons why small businesses should outsource their SEO. One reason is that it can be very time-consuming to do SEO yourself. Another reason is that it can be challenging to keep up with the constantly changing algorithms of search engines. A third reason is that an experienced SEO agency can provide a higher level of service than most small businesses could provide on their own. Agencies like Online Marketing Gurus' marketing services are designed to help small businesses improve their online visibility and attract more customers.

3. Web Design

Every initiative, from startups to veteran companies, has a budget, and budgets have constraints. If you need to minimize costs in order to meet your business objectives as you grow, outsourcing is often an excellent option.

When it comes to web design, the hourly prices of developers in different places might vary significantly. For example, in the United States, you might find you are paying $150 per hour, but in Eastern Europe, you can find people who will do the same work for $35-$50 per hour. That's without sacrificing quality. Did you know that Poland has some of the top developers in the world?

Outsourcing provides you access to programmers, UX/UI designers, project managers, and creatives all around the world who can help you complete your project. They will help create custom logos, achieve customer success through design, and work on your brand elements. To put together a team like that, you'd have to spend a lot of time and money recruiting the proper people, onboarding them, and putting together a real team out of people who had never worked together before. Recruiting the right IT professionals can take months, and the average time for recruitment procedures throughout the world is increasing.

Even the smallest businesses nowadays require a good-looking website that also operates smoothly, and you cannot expect to achieve this without the help of design and marketing specialists.

Many web designers and marketing specialists use website design tools because Web design is about more than just creating a storefront for your company that customers can visit from anywhere in the world; it's also about building your brand and establishing a trustworthy reputation that will create positive associations in the minds of your customers and provide you with the means to realize your branding goals. Setting this up and maintaining it on a regular basis is time-consuming and requires expertise that a lot of businesses don't have in-house.

4. Digital Marketing

Staffing issues or yearly leave can affect your marketing. Consistency is one of the cornerstones of effective marketing, and people need time off to recharge and get back to productive work. Of course, the difficulty is that marketers aren't robots; they're humans, and people need to rest. Marketing suffers when employees are ill or on leave or when a major, all-hands-on-deck internal event puts everything else off course.

Content creation is an excellent illustration of this. You can't just stop blogging for a few weeks around the holidays. If you do this, Google will notice, and your organic search rankings will suffer as a result. When you hire an agency, you won't have to worry about staffing shortages or delivery gaps. That is, to put it frankly, their issue.

You are provided with the services of a group of professionals. Instead of paying a single person's salary, you'll hire a team of digital marketing specialists to study, plan, and implement effective marketing strategies. Essentially, you are paying for outcomes, and it is much less expensive than hiring an employee.

5. Customer Service

There are enough managers to tackle every customer service issue, whether you're a small startup or a giant corporation! In addition, try integrating chat APIs in your business websites and mobile apps help you provide great customer service.

By outsourcing customer service to a reliable call center or comprehensive services provider, you can ensure that this vital aspect of your company is well-managed and supported to handle both minor difficulties and difficult situations. This frees up your own management to focus on other matters, allowing you to make better use of your human resources. It's just a shrewd use of your capital as you grow. You can also incorporate things like chatbots which, while not outsourcing per se, can be considered part of a larger cost-saving and UX automation strategy.

To a large number of businesses, outsourcing customer support seems almost like cheating. For years, their leaders have been taught that this must be kept close to the breast in order to be effective. The truth is that when done well, it's just good business. It provides your company with low-cost access to highly trained personnel. Take note of that combination! Not simply one or the other, but both highly talented and cost-effective.

6. IT

One of the most unexpected advantages of IT outsourcing is that it may save you money. Because IT workloads may be extremely varied, in-house IT staff can be very expensive to acquire and train, and they may not be used properly. You get the help you need when you need it by choosing staff augmentation services or outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider, and you only pay for the services you utilize. Finally, the best IT outsourcing agencies can help you save money and budget more successfully for your company.

A managed service provider understands how to make your company work more smoothly. You may have state-of-the-art technology to help you run more effectively and keep up with your peers and competition by helping you restructure workflows, automate jobs, and upgrade equipment.

Conclusion 

Saving money isn't simply a good idea; it's a must for growing businesses if they are to make the best use of their available capital and execute a successful growth strategy.

This is critical as you grow, especially if you are growing alongside competitors who are trying to outcompete you on price. Fortunately, this is where outsourcing may help you save a lot of money. Outsourcing frees up cash by transforming fixed (and sometimes substantial) outgoings into variable or lesser costs. Keep the above business functions in mind as you grow and put together your outsourcing plan based on a solid cost-benefit analysis.