“I thought about outsourcing, but isn’t that just for big companies?”
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I would be retired!

Historically, big companies have always outsourced, motivated mainly by cost savings. They outsourced functions that had been previously performed in-house to be more cost-effective and improve their bottom line by reducing overhead.

They were able to reduce headcount and didn’t have to pay salaries and benefits. They even benefited from fewer people taking up space in office buildings and fewer people consuming of-fice supplies!

But outsourcing isn’t just for big companies.
Fast-forward to this millennium, where small and midsize companies now have the opportunity to take advantage of outsourcing.
But I often hear business owners say things like the following:
“I don’t know if I can afford to outsource.”
“Maybe I should outsource some stuff, but in which areas?”
“How do I even get started?”

Enter Patty to make everything crystal clear!
Small and midsize businesses may not have the talent in-house in their current organizational structure to be able to cover certain functional areas or types of tasks and activities.

They can use outsourcing to access the expertise they lack as well as more management “horsepower” when they need it.

Now, all of that is available to them with freelancers and companies that specialize in outsourced tasks such as bookkeeping, payroll, HR and analytical financial activities.

Imagine unflappable experts coming in to take care of the confusing, chaotic or long-neglected aspects of your business.
Some entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know. They’ve always done things a certain way. They don’t know what they’re missing, so they don’t realize they could have risky HR prob-lems or lurking financial issues that could be easily uncovered by an expert, available to them by outsourcing.

What kinds of HR issues? Laws, regulations and sticky personnel situations that you might not even know about. An HR professional can help keep you compliant with current regulations and keep you from getting sued!

On the finance side, you may need a skill set you don’t currently have in-house, whether you don’t want to do a certain task, don’t know how or just need some support for higher-level guid-ance and strategy.

Should you outsource?
Outsourcing needs to be right for your business in two ways: it needs to make sense financially and it needs to make sense from a work flow standpoint. Ask yourself these questions to decide if you need to outsource:

• Do you get reliable and understandable financial reports on a timely basis from your bookkeeper?
• Do you understand what the numbers are telling you about the health of your business?
• Does the bookkeeper ask you questions you can’t answer? I get this a lot. Owners say the bookkeeper is asking them this or that and they have no idea how to answer.
• Are your people fairly compensated, within the industry and within your geo-graphic area?
• Do you have an up-to-date employee handbook?
• Are your marketing dollars giving you a return on your investment?
• Are you tracking and measuring your business in other ways than just your checkbook balance?
• Does your management team fully understand the laws governing your business and the people within it?

If you’re missing any of the above, you might want to consider outsourcing HR and finance tasks to experienced professionals. After all, there are many benefits to outsourcing:

• Become more profitable with an improved bottom line.
• Add value to the company by adding talent in areas where it is lacking.
• Avoid employee lawsuits by being certain you’re in compliance and have good employee practices.
• Improve employees’ welfare by doing the right thing for them with training programs and appropriate working conditions.
• Eliminate READY-FIRE-AIM snap decisions based on gut with no analysis of how they will impact your bottom line.
• Get more management horsepower when you need it.
• Get the right measurements in place for your business to understand your numbers in the long term.
• Understand what kind of return you’re getting with regard to your human capital (are you efficient?).
• Discover where you have waste in your business.
• Empower yourself to make sound business decisions as you operate and grow (so you aren’t growing yourself out of cash!).
• Gain peace of mind knowing you have experts sharing the decision-making responsibilities with you.

Outsourcing can help you eliminate the chaos in your business and grow profitably with complete peace of mind! Most importantly, it will give you time to focus on what you’re good at in-stead of what is lacking in your business.

Let’s calculate what you could be saving or earning. Click here to schedule a no-cost, no-obligation consultation with Patty.