How to Afford Outsourcing as a Small Business

Step-by-Step Guide

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   Step 1: Analyze your core mission.

   This should be identified in your business plan.
   
   Make sure your current employees are covering strategic parts of your company's plan, and then you can look to outsource the things that are not vital for day to day business operations.
   
   Outsourcing takes time to implement, and it occasionally requires some training, so it is important that you don't put your vital functions in the hands of someone with less accountability than employees.
   
   After you have your core business mission taken care of, move on to increasing the function and efficiency of your business through outsourcing.
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   Step 2: Analyze your staff's abilities before making plans to outsource.

   Call a meeting or do performance where you ask your staff what other skills they have that are not currently being used.
   
   For example, someone you have hired as a sales associate may also be adept at social media marketing, so you can appoint them to do 1 hour of it per day.
   
   Noting your staff's capabilities has 3 unseen benefits.
   
   You get a better grasp of the capabilities your company has, allowing you to increase your capabilities without adding employees.
   
   You can identify any weak areas of your labor force, and layoff employees that are not doing their job.
   
   Employees may also enjoy diversifying their job description.
   
   A new task gives them added experience, a more valuable place in the company and it allows them to break up their duties. , Prioritize these projects, according to cost and timeline.
   
   Assign new projects to current employees, if you have identified new skills and they have the time to do them.
   
   Common ways that small businesses outsource are customer service/help desk, IT, online/print marketing, graphic design, public relations/reputation management, database management, brokers, bookkeepers, website hosting, legal services and virtual assistants. , Calculate, according to hourly wage, the money spent doing projects that could be outsourced.
   
   Separate the amount of time and money according to project, to see what company money and time could be better spent elsewhere.
   
   These are "lost" hours that are rarely calculated.
   
   Choose a value for your time, as well as your employees' time.
   
   Doing a job for hours that you are not proficient at may be costing you hundreds or thousands of dollars each week.
   
   If your time can be better spent increasing sales, business contracts or more, then you can identify ways that you can save money by outsourcing. , This can be money that is not being used in current projects, leftover project money and/or the sum total of money that can be saved if you and your current employees are free to help customers or actively increase sales or services.
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   Step 3: Meet with upper management to prioritize and strategize projects that could be outsourced.

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   Step 4: Identify hours that you and your employees spend doing projects that could be outsourced.

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   Step 5: Create an outsourcing budget.

Detailed Guide

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