Posts Tagged ‘Outsourcing’

There is a lot of talk these days about hiring freelancers instead of employees. With the web at our fingertips, it is easy to find highly specialized individuals to do certain tasks, and to pay them just for those tasks. Many experts recommend doing this, and I have as well.

James Little, of the Fusion PR Group, is a fan. He says that “small business owners can be more successful and save money by working with freelancers and consultants.”

Diana Ennen, of Virtual Word Publishing, has similar advice, but more specifically about virtual assistants. She says, “The #1 thing you can do in 2010 is to hire a virtual assistant and not do all the work yourself. This allows you to not only focus on what you do best, but also allows you to get out there more in front of your clients. Virtual assistants can handle all your social media and social marketing, publicity, administrative tasks, etc. Focus on the areas that make you the most money, and let someone else handle everything else. Plus, they can help your business be consistent with blogging, tweeting, being on Facebook, etc.”

It seems the best argument for a small business to hire freelancers is that it will free up the owner to focus on what he or she is best at. There are other benefits, of course. For one, getting a highly qualified person to do a job is a plus. To hire that person full time is out of reach for most small businesses. The alternative has always been to hire people who do good enough. In today’s business world, good enough isn’t cutting it. Employees need to specialize, and small businesses need to hire specialists.

Hiring someone on contract, as a freelancer, is usually more cost effective than bringing on an employee. For one thing, there is no workers compensation or additional taxes to worry about. Sure, the freelancer comes at a higher “price-per-hour”, but you only need to use them for the hours it takes to get the job done. A freelancer can usually do the job faster and better then a general employee.

But there are things freelancers can’t do. You can’t have them help out on the production line for the day. They can’t be a fill-in. Getting freelancers to understand and embrace company culture is harder (but not impossible, especially if you hire the right freelancer). Since most freelancers work long distance, they don’t become part of your office environment. The biggest downfall here is that you don’t have direct control over the freelancer. They usually work from their perspective. This isn’t always a bad thing, but your goals as a small business owner may include building a great culture, helping employees to improve themselves, and being able to see everyone face to face. If so, freelancers are probably not the route that you want to take.

Overall, I would say that freelance employees are great when you have focused tasks that you need to complete. This could be marketing, web design (ah hem, I can help with those two), accounting, law, personal assistants, data entry, typists, public relations, or any number of things. If, however, you want to groom someone into a management role, you need to hire and train.

So look at the things you need to do for your business that aren’t core to your culture and outsource those things. Keep important tasks under closer control by hiring employees.

Here is a final example. If you use sales reps, you can go in house or outsource. If you don’t care how your product gets sold, just that it does, you can hire a freelance salesperson. If you want to provide scripts, track progress daily, and train your reps a certain way, you need to hire in house sales reps.

Freelancers can do a great job. In many cases, better than you or any of your employees. Use them in these instances. But make sure you are developing a company at the same time. You need employees for some things, people who are going to be accountable to you and who are going to be flexible to grow with your business.

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Hi, I’m Bradford Shimp. I head things up here at All Business Answers. If you want to write for this blog, please send me an email. If you have a question that you want answered, click here. If you just want to be my friend, send me an @reply on Twitter or join me on Facebook.

I build Wordpress websites and themes for small businesses. Check out my business at BroadRiverCreative.com.

A common problem among small business owners is that they don’t have enough time. You may want to work “on your business” and not just in it, but there is no time. After all the regular tasks, and then all of the emergencies, your week is just gone.

While you can’t create extra time out of thin air, you may be able to make time by systematizing some time consuming tasks. If you can take just one time-eating task that you do on a regular basis and either find a way to save time on it or systematize it so you can hire it done cheaply, you will be able to save time for some bigger picture work. And you must be doing bigger picture work if you want to grow your business beyond a job.

Identify the Time-Eaters

The time-eaters are different for everyone. I know of sales organizations that spend a lot of time filling out contracts and getting them signed. For some, its the process of invoicing. For others, its packaging the products so they look perfect. What inspired me to write this post was the task of putting together a tips post with over 80 contributors. I had to copy and paste each tip, along with a quick bio and pic, from email into a document. This proved to be seriously time consuming. The thing is, it is worth doing. Most time-eating tasks are either worth doing or necessary, otherwise you just wouldn’t do it. So, there is no option to just cut these tasks out completely.

With my time consuming task, I already know several things I will do differently next time that I compile a tips post. Instead of getting the tips sent to my email, I will have people fill out a Google Form so they will go straight to a spreadsheet, for instance. From there, I will try to find a way to auto-generate the post, using the spreadsheet as a database.

Automate and Simplify

The question you need to ask yourself is whether there is any way to automate even a portion of the task. If you are doing proposals, this might mean using a template with the basics already filled in. The same goes for preparing for presentations. Get one that works and repeat it over and over again. How much of a contract can be auto-filled from a CRM program? When you are producing or packaging, what can you do in batches? What building blocks can you create to make the task go by faster?

Systematize and Outsource

There is almost always a way to make a task go faster. However, sometimes you just can’t make it go fast enough. If it is still eating into your time, you need to seriously ask yourself if you need to be doing it. And if you do have employees doing it already, you need to consider whether it is taking them too much time, and whether you could do it cheaper through systematization and outsourcing.

One task that I have recently outsourced is online research. Getting customer information online is relatively easy, but it is time consuming. Often, it gets put off until it is needed really badly. If sales people do this task, it costs the company a lot of money, because it eats into their time like nothing else. So, I tried crowdsourcing. Using SmartSheet, I was able to get the information I needed researched quickly and much more cheaply than I could have possibly done by myself or by having sales reps do it.

Even if you are a solopreneur, you should consider getting some help on those time consuming projects. If what you are doing is easy, but time-consuming, you will be better off getting help. Through options like crowdsourcing and virtual assistants, you can get a lot done. While the task is getting done for you, you can be focusing on growing your business. Imagine yourself going out and getting a new sale while the necessary research is being done for a current client by someone else. If you have to do that research, you can’t go get the new sale. Your growth is limited by the time you spend doing time-eating tasks.

Take a moment to identify your big time-eaters. What can you do to simplify and systematize them? Maybe you can cut them down enough so that you can manage them better. Or perhaps you will want to outsource them. The first step, in either case, is to create an efficient system for accomplishing the task.

If you are ready to make your business simpler and free up some time, I might be able to help you. I know some good virtual assistants and would be more than happy to talk to you about crowdsourcing with SmartSheet. And I would love to hear about tasks that you have made simpler or that you struggle with because they take up too much time. Fill me in with a comment below.

photo credit: Junior Silva.

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow Bradford on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

Not to toot my own horn, but there are thousands of things that I know that you don’t. Not that I’m a know-it-all or anything, its just a simple fact. There is no way that you know all the things that I know. Simply impossible.

Okay, okay, as good as it feels to be able to say that, lets face reality. You can say the same thing about yourself. There are thousands of things you know that I don’t have clue one about. In fact, you can take any two people and be certain that both know things that the other doesn’t.

As a business person, you simply must embrace this fact. There are people who know things you don’t. You’re job isn’t to try to learn all of those things. Instead, it is to tap the knowledge of others for the improvement of your business.

What Other People Know

If there is a secret bit of knowledge needed to be a successful business owner, maybe its this: know how to find the right people. People, as a group, know so much more than you do.  Collectively, the knowledge of the readers of this blog dwarfs my knowledge. Its like comparing the Sun to a speck of dust. Beyond that, specific people have specific knowledge that is way beyond your own in certain areas. For instance, I can design a nice looking website, but my skill is dwarfed both by the graphic designer who is really an artist, and the coder who can make a web site do whatever she wants it to.

The point is, people know a lot. As a business owner, you should tap into this knowledge. Some of the standard people you need include a banker, a lawyer, and an accountant. But the list shouldn’t stop there. Depending on your business, you can benefit greatly from a vast array of specialized knowledge. Your job is to know where your business is going and then finding the right people to help you get there.

I Can Barely Afford Myself

Some businesses just think that they cannot afford people. Its funny, but the best advice for you if you are in this situation might be to hire someone to help you figure out how you can make more money. But, if you are not ready to put down the cash for people right away, start with a little self education. There are plenty of books and websites that can help you out. These will give you a basic knowledge, and will hopefully point you in the right direction. For specific knowledge however, you are going to have to tap people.

Starting off, work on building your network. If you have friends and mentors in business, you can often get some pretty good free advice. That’s a start.

The next step would be to hire experts in pieces. In other words, if you can’t yet hire a full time accountant, perhaps you can bring one in to consult for a specific period of time. Through that consultation, you can have the accountant look at your books, give you some tips, and show you how to better manage your finances (so that eventually you will be able to hire a full time accountant).

After limited-time consultations, the next step in paying for people knowledge is to outsource some work. This is for when you are not ready for full time or don’t need full time. In fact, for some jobs, having someone outside the business doing it may continue to be the best bet for the long term. For instance, you will probably never need to hire a full time landscaper so that you can keep your lawn mowed.

You can outsource almost any kind of work. If you are just starting out, you may want to work with a virtual assistant before you bring in a full time secretary. The professionals I mentioned earlier, banker, lawyer, accountant, are usually outsourced in small businesses. Outsourcing allows you to pay only for the work you need done.

Lots of times, it makes sense to bring in full time help. Employees are hired to get the job done. Sometimes, you don’t even consider their knowledge, and how it will compliment your own. This is, of course, a mistake. You need to hire people for what they know. You can teach people, it is true. But you can only teach them what you know. So, if you hire someone for sales and have to train them, you will only be able to take them as far as your own skills. If you want to hire someone with limited knowledge, make sure that they know how to learn and have a passionate interest in the subject. You may be able to get people cheap this way, but it can hurt you if they can’t learn the stuff.

The safest route is to hire people who already know their stuff. They should be able to teach you. And you should be okay with that. Remember, your skill is finding the right people to accomplish your goals.

What If You Are Super-Skilled

If you started your business based on your skill, you may be having a hard time with all of this. Maybe no one can bake cakes like you. While having a specific skill may be an obstacle to running a business empire, it can usually be overcome. I jest a little there. Go ahead and embrace your skill, especially when you are just starting out and when your business is smaller. As it grows, you will probably have to give something up. Perhaps you won’t be able to work with every customer. Maybe you will want to keep doing the skill work and will have to let someone else take the reins of the business.

Even though you have a super-skill, you still need to tap into what other people know. Maybe I should say especially since you have a super-skill. If you are an expert cake decorator, your business will suffer if you need to spend your time doing the books, or selling, or whatever. Find the people with the knowledge that you don’t have, and plug them in.

More Knowledge Means More Business

Do you have to pay for the best knowledge? Yes, of course you do. So you may have to take it in steps. Start by bringing in the knowledge that will give you the most bang for your buck. But here’s the thing. If you realize that you need a strong team, and start paying for one, your business will benefit.

Bring in the people who will take your business places. Be the person who gets these people together in a room and all focused on one thing, making your business a success. Do this, and you may not be the most knowledgeable person in the room, but you will certainly be the smartest!

photo credit: Ben+Sam

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow Bradford on Twitter @bradfordshimp.