Ridhi Shah
Ridhi is an Australian MPA who has done her Diploma in Financial Planning and excels in various financial and accounting services.
If you’ve been in business for long you may already be aware of the advantages that outsourcing your business processes can bring. From cost savings to time efficiencies and the ability to utilise a skilled pool of resources to meet your backend processes, everything adds up to allowing you to focus on the heart of your own business. After all, that’s what you do best.
The only problem is that it’s still a change. Even though you made the decision to outsource your processes, you keep putting it off because change takes time and effort. Plus there’s always that nagging doubt that things could go wrong. So you keep working on your business and putting off the step towards outsourcing your business support.
As time passes your resources continue to stretch. You get busier and busier trying to keep up with the day to day operations while your staff feels the same pressure as they try to fill in for multiple roles to help the business function. When it comes to making the decision to bring in more help it just seems easier to hire someone else. After all, this is how you’ve done it in the past. You know how that process works and you understand the time, the costs, and even the risks of bringing in a new employee. Taking that move to outsourcing your business somehow seems bigger and harder to do.
What you don’t realise, at least at first, is that your office responsibilities are piling up. More suppliers are starting to worry as you miss payments here and there, or make last-minute rush orders to meet your needs. Some of your staff are feeling the strain and becoming disgruntled. You can sense it, but you can’t put your finger on it. You’re not yet at the point where you can justify employing more staff again. After all, you’re still busy training the latest recruit and fixing up the errors they are making as they find their feet.
One day a new opportunity arises. It’s a great opportunity. But you’re simply not prepared for it. You can’t get yourself organised quickly enough to respond, and the opportunity slips through your fingers. Your business meanders along, still doing ok, but feeling the strain. Your story hasn’t ended yet. But instead of wondering when it grows, your business will either stagnate for a while, stumble more and more, or just suddenly implode. The future isn’t clear, but without a major overhaul, it doesn’t look great.
With the advantage of storytelling, let’s rewind, right back to that first time that you decided to put off outsourcing your business processes.
This time, instead of putting it off, you take a chance on the change.
It seems like hard work getting everything organised. You have to improve your structures, put your policies and procedures in place, learn new systems, figure out how new technology works, and manage communication with people who are not physically located at your premises. Sometimes you wonder if it’s worth the trouble, but you persevere.
As time goes by you don’t even realise all of the little benefits that your business is now feeling. You are feeling energised by an ability to concentrate more and more on the heart of the business. Your trust in the outsourced team has continued to grow as they take care of the backend processes, that you now realise that you didn’t really have time for. When you need a new sales staff you are able to hire someone who can just focus on selling. They don’t have to divide their time between customer service and providing additional support to the office. The staff have clear boundaries and expectations, and there is no pressure on them to put in extra effort to help out in areas that they are unfamiliar with.
One day a new opportunity arises. It’s a great opportunity. All your paperwork is up to date and your policies and procedures are clearly written out and followed, so it’s a simple matter to get organised and jump in at the right moment. Business booms and the pressure on your backend processes increases. Fortunately, you don’t need to worry about meeting this need because you’re already outsourcing. They have everything in place to meet the increased workload for you and it doesn’t even occur to you that there may otherwise have been a hassle.
Your story hasn’t ended yet. Whether the future looks bright or bleak depends on how well you prepare. It may feel like a risk to take a chance on doing things differently, and a hassle to change. When you look at the big picture over the long term, it’s clearer to see that this is a change that is worth embracing.