When you run a business, you do need to consider whether you should run services in your business in-house or instead, decide to hire an outsourcing service. To understand why you might choose to outsource certain services in your company, it’s crucial that you are aware of the benefits.

There are a few possible choices for outsourcing and typically, you should be targeting the areas of your business that are either expensive or complex. By doing this, you can make your business model cheaper and indeed simpler to run. So, let’s run through a few of the areas of your company and figure out which you need to outsource and which should be on staff.

How To Know When It’s Time To Outsource In Your Business

Legal – Outsource

Legal is an important aspect of any business. But, it’s also expensive. Legal professionals can and will charge an arm and a leg for their services. If you don’t want to be caught with a massive bill to pay, it’s time to think about outsourcing. You can outsource anything from HR to a full legal advisor.

Now, you might say, wait a minute, HR are needed at all stages of a business, aren’t they? You do need to keep a constant check on your employees, don’t you? Well, yes and no. Yes, they are needed, but no, you don’t actually need the full team of staff. Instead, a lot of the aspects of your HR team can be automated. Essentially, this means that you don’t need to worry about always having the team with you. They can set up the software, and everything can happen automatically which is exactly what you want. Great news right?

The only issue here is that you do want to keep a check on quality. As such, when you do outsource HR and other legal areas, make sure that you hire the right team and a company that you can trust. Otherwise, you can end up in a serious mess. You don’t want to get a shoddy service in the legal area of your business.

Accounting – In-House And Outsource

Now accounting is a little different because depending on the size of your business, you may need two different account teams. The first is an individual or individuals to manage your books. This is important to make sure that your records and such are being kept up to date and in order. That’s why you want to make sure that you have these guys on your staff full time because it’s a daily job. It’s something that needs to be constant.

But you also need a chartered accountant. A chartered accountant will handle other areas of your business including managing your taxes. That’s definitely an important aspect of your business that you need to take very seriously. Get in trouble with the taxman at your own peril.

Accountants are like lawyers, and chartered accountants can be very expensive. So, you don’t want them on the payroll. But you do want them to be there when you need them and that’s exactly what hiring an outsourcing service will allow.

Logistics – Outsource

The next issue is logistics. Logistics are another area of your business that should be outsourced. Thankfully plenty of companies provide ecommerce fulfillment as a service option and that covers a lot of issues in logistics which is what you want. With logistics, you need to think about where you are storing your products and this will usually be in a warehouse. You need to think about how you are going to deliver the products be it by lorry, truck or possible aircraft carrier. You need to guarantee that deliveries are going to be on time for your customers as well. You can probably see how this is going to take a lot of time and effort when you’re running a company.

With an outsourcing service, all these issues can be taken off your hands. That’s going to save you a lot of time. But more importantly, you’re going to save a lot of money. You don’t have to worry about problems with the paying for the warehouse, the vehicles, the team of staff and much more. Everything is taken care of, which is fantastic news, and it will make your business budget far easier to manage.

Website Management – In-House

Website management is a team that you want in-house. Why do you want this team in-house compared to others? It’s all about the how much of your day will be spent on web management, and the answer is… a lot. You need to update your website by the hour with fresh content, exciting new information, and media that will make customers click. You can do this with an outsourcing service, but there are two issues here.

First, the content needs to be of high quality. With outsourcing, this is never a guarantee. You’re not getting the best writers because the best writers can work for themselves and find a solid job working independently with a company. You’re also not getting the quality service that you need. There are exceptions, but usually, this service will come with a high price tag. If you’re going to need them constantly working on your site anyway, you might as well just bring them in on the payroll.

It Support – Outsource

Finally, let’s consider IT support. IT support is an essential part of any business. You need to make sure that you have the team to keep your business going in the wake of a disaster. And that’s the key point to remember here. IT support will only really be relevant during, after, or in the middle of a disaster. This means that you don’t need them on staff full time. You just need them to set up your IT systems and fix them when they go wrong. This isn’t a team that you need on the payroll.

Instead, you can think about outsourcing as long as you have a company that you can trust on the other end of a phone line or an email.

We hope this helps you decide when you should and shouldn’t outsource.