The 7 Sectors you can outsource and how they can help your company
Outsourcing can be a fantastic method to maintain your business quality through expansion, keep your customers satisfied during high demand, and allow a continuous flow throughout your business as a whole.
However, many companies are afraid to jump into this problem-solving solution because they are unsure of how it works.
Today we will explain how outsourcing can benefit 9 sectors of business.
Although your business might technically fit into just one of these categories, you may find helpful information within every sector.
Before we start, we want to welcome any readers from ModernEsse.com. We have recently acquired the website and hope you find our content useful.
Real estate
Outsourcing real estate is when you give a task to someone outside of your organization. These tasks are normally on a contract basis and are used for a variety of purposes.
Generally speaking, there are 5 main reasons to outsource real estate.
Reduce staffing costs
If you go through patches of high demand in your job, you might consider hiring more people to cover that peak.
However, if this peak only lasts for a couple of months, you may end up with a saturated workforce that isn’t needed during the rest of the financial year.
Instead of hiring new employees, you can consider outsourcing the employment with a short contract.
This contract can match the expected days of demand, so you don’t end up with more employees than your business needs.
Diversifying your workplace
Diversity is needed in your workforce to give you more ideas to overcome problems, develop skills, and prevent falling behind in the business sector’s advances.
If your business is advancing towards a new goal, you can hire a world-class remote team to educate your employees on how to succeed.
Outsourcing this team will give your business new skills and a new perspective.
The alternative to this method is to create a research team.
This team will take longer to gather the information a special team already has, and they will not have the experience needed to consider future problems and solutions.
Using an outsourced team of expert knowledge will save you time and money in the long run.
Use your experts for expert work
Your business should contain employees that are specialized in their work. When you have these highly skilled workers, you don’t want them bogged down with tasks that are below their skill level.
Not only does this waste their abilities, but it can also lead to boredom.
A bored or underappreciated worker is more likely to look elsewhere for employment, leaving you with one less expert in your company.
To prevent high turnover, you can outsource menial tasks to other firms or contract-based employees. This can free up your skilled workers’ time, and allow them to focus on the tasks they specialize in.
Hiring experts for the short term
If you need to hire an experienced and skilled worker for a specific task, but only need them for that role and nothing else, then you should outsource them.
You may need a temporary manager to help redirect your businesses, or a once-a-month accountant who isn’t required often.
No matter what the job is, you can find the staff you need using our directory. You can hire these outsourced employees for one-off jobs, or recurring tasks.
Either way, you don’t need to waste money giving these skilled workers the high salary they deserve, as you will only be hiring them for a short term.
You will still be paying them their high fee, but the smaller time frame makes it more manageable. Outsourcing makes expertise affordable.
Outsourcing reduces expenses
When you hire an employee, you aren’t just paying for their wages. You are also paying for their desks, their office space, their expenses, and any other minor cost associated with working in your offices.
When you outsource, these costs are no longer needed which means you’ll be saving money on wages but also on space and equipment too.
Financial services
Now we are getting into the less generic reasons to outsource.
Outsourcing your financial services is when you hire either an individual accountant or a financial management team to benefit your business.
Generally speaking, there are normally two reasons for outsourcing – one is to use an accountant and ensure your taxes, invoices and payments are achieved correctly.
The second is when a large-scale mistake has been made, and you need a team of people to fix the error without putting the workload on your current workforce. We will explain both.
For more specific reasons, click on this link to find out why outsourcing finance services is an ideal strategy.
Hiring an accountant without hiring them full time
When you hire an employee, you normally need to vet them.
This means ensuring their qualifications are relevant, they have the experience they need to complete the job, and they have the ability to take on your workload.
Once they are hired, you need to shadow this employee to ensure they are taking on the tasks as needed and not making mistakes.
All of this means you need an employee who is already trained to oversee this new starter.
If you haven’t got the time to learn about these finer details, it can be easier to allow another company to take on this burden for you.
With another company responsible for your financial details, you can feel confident that an expert is working on your paperwork.
They will also take on this work at a lower price than a full time accountant, as you will only need them for a couple of days a year.
Hiring a team to correct mistakes
If a large group of your clients or customers need a refund due to an error, you have three options.
The first is to stop production and use your current workforce to contact these customers, explain the issue, and send out a refund.
This means a lot of retraining, while at the same time you won’t have any income from your normal business, as most of the production will have stopped.
As you might expect, this option isn’t normally viable for most businesses.
The next option is to hire more people. These people need to learn about the issue at hand, contact the clients and send out refunds.
Although this option is better, the trainer needs to understand the laws and regulations involved and your company will be liable for any further mistakes.
The last option is the best option. Hiring a recovery team who specializes in your refund issue allows you to pass on the responsibility to that team.
You can be confident that your processes are being followed correctly, and can receive updates monthly. Most importantly, your current workforce can continue to function as normal.
Although large scale refunds might seem unusual, they are very common in big financial businesses. A simple computing error could put the incorrect interest rate onto a large population of credit card users.
To ensure every customer receives their refund, a recovery team is often needed to focus on the task at hand.
Hospitality
Outsourcing hospitality-based aspects of a business are extremely common.
You may have a large meeting in a local hotel, and hire the hotel’s catering services instead of producing the snacks and beverages yourself.
Organizing your catering needs in this way can create 3 advantages.
High quality
A hospitality business’s main aim is to produce high-quality food and drinks.
If you outsource the catering company to a business that specializes in this service they will produce high-class food which reflects the high caliber of your business.
Risk sharing
With every business sector, there are laws and regulations. Your company will be well aware of the rules they need to follow, but they may not be aware of food safety regulations.
Passing on this responsibility to another team can help you reduce the risk of liability and ensure the food standards are being kept.
Keeps your business on task
Your employees aren’t chefs. They aren’t waiters. They aren’t dishwashers.
Outsourcing the catering of a business allows your employees to stay on task and prevent them from completing jobs outside of their contract.
Although it might seem cheaper to ask employees to “help out”, this will go against their job description.
Legal processing
Legal processing outsourcing is when you send the more simplistic aspects of a legal process to another company to allow the mundane tasks to be completed quickly.
This allows your in-house team to work on the more complicated information now that the information has been cleaned and organized.
This process is one of the fastest-rising outsourcing sectors in the industry, as more legal teams need help with mundane tasks.
Saving money, reducing costs
In any job, there is the technical element that a worker has to accomplish and the more routine aspects that they have to push through.
If you give the routine aspects to an outsourced team, you leave your workforce with just the complex elements.
This allows complicated work to be completed faster than before.
Working on mundane tasks doesn’t need the same qualifications as complicated tasks. This means you can hire more people for less money.
You may think that hiring two people to do one person’s job cannot reduce costs, but in reality, you will be allowing your highly skilled worker to produce more complicated content.
This speeds the process producing double the outcome for less than double the cost. To break it down, you’ll be saving more money and creating a faster turnaround time.
Telecommunications
Outsourcing telecommunication is a great idea for large companies that have connections across the world.
This is because each country will have its own social expectations that are very difficult to explain if you aren’t in that country.
Different cultures need different attitudes
Even though the US, UK, Australia, and Canada all speak English, each country will use the language in its own way.
In the US, you expect businesses to act professionally and acknowledge that the customer is always right.
While in the UK, if a call center conversation was too strict and not personable, the person on the phone will feel like they haven’t been understood.
The balance between professionalism and personal connection is delicate, and best produced by someone from the UK.
Outsourcing telecommunications to a company that resides in that culture can help build stronger customer service for that country.
Opening times match local area
This benefit is for the workers. You can expect the telecommunications center to be open during the 9 – 5 working hours of the local area.
However, if your workers live in a different time zone, they will not be living the typical 9-5 life. This can make your workforce uncomfortable, as managing their personal life may become difficult.
If a workforce cannot manage their personal life well, you can expect a high turnover of employees. To prevent this, place the telecommunication center in the area they will be calling/receiving calls.
Healthcare
Outsourcing healthcare is a unique niche that is slowly gaining traction in the non-emergency transportation service industry.
For example, if your business is a care home, you may outsource a NETS company of disabled-friendly taxis.
This allows you to contact the taxi service to hire a vehicle that can handle your client’s needs without having to buy the vehicle outright.
Short-term hire of equipment
When you work for disabled or elderly patients you may need help hiring equipment or specifically skilled staff members, but may not need them for a long period of time.
This is where outsourcing can bridge the gap between necessity and short-term commitment.
Equipment is extremely expensive, and you can’t opt for a cheaper version as this can harm or dramatically impact your client.
However, instead of buying quality equipment outright, you can hire it instead.
This way your client gets the tools they need, but you don’t need to hang on to something that is only used for a couple of years.
Transport
Outsourcing transport is commonplace in manufacturing businesses. Small companies and larger ones alike will hire a transportation company to ship their goods across the country and even across the world.
Small businesses can focus on their products
One-person companies that have an internet shop front, such as the creatives on Etsy, still need a way to send their goods to their customers.
Local shipping companies can take on these delivery jobs allowing the single workforce to focus on creating their unique items.
Medium businesses and long distances
Instead of using a local postal service, a medium or large business could create an outsourcing contract with a transport company to reduce the cost of long-distance shipping.
If a collection of stock is moving across the states on a regular basis, it can be cheaper to create an outsourcing contract to secure an accurate time scale for the delivery.
Summary
If your business has areas of work within these sectors, then you may find a benefit in outsourcing them.
Outsourcing transport, hospitality, and telecommunications are the most common, as most businesses need outside help to manage these areas while they focus on their main business.
With their help you can ensure that your customers and clients receive their products in time, are comfortable within your establishment, and receive great customer service in their local area.
However, you should consider outsourcing your finances and legal areas too.
Allowing qualified teams to work on your behalf allows your business to focus on its main task instead of spending money on a full-time accountant.
With the bookkeeping outsources, your company can spend more time growing as a business.