How Outsourcing Can Improve Productivity
It’s not just you — many business owners find out early that they cannot juggle all of the necessary tasks needed to successfully run their business without working around the clock. One way to take some of the weight off and improve productivity is by outsourcing work. Outsourcing both domestic and offshore is increasingly common these days, as companies rely on third-party companies’ expertise to complete various services.
Outsourced tasks could be occasional, like hiring a specialist for various IT functions, including application maintenance and development, data entry, or simply hiring an accountant to do your taxes once a year. They may also be a regular part of your business operations, such as contracting a company to handle all of your customer services. Every process of a business can be easily outsourced. This includes:
- Legal
- Billing
- Website design and development
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Data conversion
- Data entry
- Customer Service
- Document digitization
- Virtual back offices
- Call center support
- Online chat and SMS
- Email responses
As your company grows, your needs to hire additional employees or outsource some of the work increases. When you outsource some of the necessary tasks, you save money, and productivity typically increases because of an improvement in workers’ efficiency. Workers can produce more effectively when they are focused on one task and not needing to multi-task for business operations to run smoothly.
So, what tasks should you outsource? Here’s what I recommend, make a list of the activities that you need to do but don’t generate revenue — try starting with those. Tasks that you dislike doing can be good ones to outsource as well. When you and your staff enjoy the work you do and are fully immersed in it, you are much more productive.
Let’s explore five ways you can improve productivity with outsourcing:
1. Delegating Tasks That Don’t Bring in the Moolah
Outsourcing administrative, customer service, and other non-productive tasks can free up time so that you can concentrate on tasks that are more productive such as marketing, developing strategies, networking, and coming up with new ideas and products.
Increased productivity has many meanings, but the best meaning to me is pretty simple, more sales and more money, and ultimately improves your company’s bottom line. When a business grows, productivity may lower as you might not have the time and resources for handling additional tasks. Although, with outsourcing, you can delegate some tasks to the experts, so it gets done more effectively and quickly without any brain power needed from you. Save that for the tasks you're a pro at.
2. Prioritize Your Sweet, Precious Time
As you know, time is something a business owner or entrepreneur can never seem to get enough of. Like really, why are there only 24 hours in a day? Effectively handling everything within that time can be a real challenge. When the basic business tasks are outsourced, you could be more productive by focusing on ways to scale your business and increase profits.
Studies show that when workers can limit interruptions, they are happier and more satisfied with their work. Here are some interesting statistics:
- 34% of employees like their jobs less when they are in a distracting workplace
- 66% of workers have never discussed solutions for workplace distractions with their managers
- 75% of employees are more productive when workplace distractions are reduced
People compensate for interruptions by working faster, but this results in experiencing more stress, higher frustration, time pressure, and effort, which has a negative emotional impact on employees. Of course, you want yourself and your employees to be happy, especially at work. Interruptions can double a worker's error rate.
Outsourcing some of your work will alleviate some of the stress, distractions, and frustration for you and your employees so you all could focus on the most important tasks.
By delegating some tasks and freeing up time, outsourcing will enable you to achieve objectives, add value, and even mitigate risks. Whether it is for individual tasks or systems management, choosing to outsource will allow you to focus on what you do best and deliver on your mission statement.
3. Experience
Do you really know how much time and money it takes to train a new employee on a specific skill that they are not already trained to do, or otherwise hire an employee with the skills you need? Let’s just say — it’s a lot. Outsourcing gives you access to a higher level of skill that’s already trained with leaders in place, making your project completed faster and more effectively, all while not breaking the bank. It’s really a beautiful thing. These people have the experience in their field, providing you with insights and ideas you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do for the cost.
The right team can also improve your customer service since you can have an entire team trained and available to handle your customer calls and emails as well as complaints. This will provide you with a lot of leverage to make customers happier and increase your service quality, which will build loyal customers that will keep coming back for more.
Let’s talk some more about training. Imagine hiring an individual to handle a specific task, spending hours, days, or even weeks training them only for them to quit the next week, leaving you stranded and in need to do it all over again!
Employees get sick, take vacations, have family emergencies, and are out of the office for countless other reasons. What happens to production when one or more of your in-house staff are out of the office? You’re stuck scrambling to get the tasks done. It’s just not any fun, nor is it productive. When these tasks are outsourced, they’re getting done for you no matter what – it’s a no-brainer.
4. Moving those new projects along quickly
Savvy business owners are always thinking of The Next Big Thing. When you have a new idea for a product or service, you probably want to act on it right away. When you have the day-to-day administrative tasks outsourced and handled, you have more free time to work on their new projects to get them off the ground and run more quickly.
5. Customer Service That’s Actually Productive
Listen, consumers face so many choices with who to do business with, you need to set yourself apart from the rest, and one way you can do that is through your amazing customer service. Although hiring a team in-house to take all of your customer service calls and emails will come at a premium, not only the salary costs but also the overhead costs — all of which affect your bottom line.
Outsourcing your customer service can result in a more pleasant buying experience for your customers, who will turn into loyal repeat customers. Exceptional customer service and pleasant buying experience keep a customer happy, coming back and referring others, leading to increased sales, more revenue, and higher profits.
People shop online at all times of the day or night. Outsourcing customer service helps with this since it allows for 24/7 support because you can take advantage of back-office services that work around the clock. This can be a huge service advantage, especially for e-commerce businesses. These outsourced teams will give you the benefit of making customers happier and increasing your service quality since it’s their main focus for you.
What are some ways you could make your customers' buying experience more pleasant with your company? Easy returns are a perk that customers love when buying products online. Free shipping?
When your focus isn’t on taking the customer service (and complaint) calls and emails, you will have more time to focus on other things that will make your customers' buying experience better to increase revenue.
Let’s Recap
Companies that try to do everything themselves have much higher expenses with research, development, and training, all of which must be passed on to customers. An outsourced company's lower costs to get the job done can give your business an important competitive advantage against your competitors. By outsourcing, you can achieve the target of reaching higher levels of productivity with ease since you’re hiring a company with a team of trained and experienced experts.
No matter what tasks and functions you outsource, you’re likely to increase productivity and save money over having that department in-house . You won’t have the expense of full-time salaries, benefits, or purchase expensive software and equipment. You will get the work done faster and more efficiently.
There is much more to outsourcing than what meets the eye, and businesses of all sizes turn to outsource for these sweet perks. Outsourcing gives you the advantage of only paying for exactly what you need. If you haven’t yet started outsourcing, try just one function. You’ll be surprised by what you save and how much more efficient and profitable your company will be!
Contact Awesomecx.com, and we’ll show you how we could help you improve productivity in your business.
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