Aren’t able to perform a task in-house? Don’t worry – just outsource it!
As previously discussed on Africa Report, outsourcing is bringing an outside team or business into your enterprise and environment to perform certain tasks that you either cannot perform at all or feel the need to have experts assist with. But what kinds of activities can be outsourced? Here’s the top 10…
1. IT is the number-one outsourced business function. IT changes almost weekly and it would simply cost too much to keep sending your own tech guru for training every month when you can just pay a company to control this function.
2. Instead of a team of accountants sitting in their offices only doing work when its tax season, outsourcing will give you more office space and let you forget about the paperwork that is being taken care of off-site.
3. Do you really want to be bothered with coming up with different menus every day? Not really. Outsource your catering and let the cooking kings and queens take care of the lunchtime menus.
4. If you’re not in the habit of sending couriered items every week, what’s the point of a full-time delivery person? It makes more sense to send the items via outsourced courier service as and when you need them than pay someone to sit around and only have work on or two days a fortnight.
5. Being creative isn’t easy. That’s what creative agencies are there for. You pay them money and they conceptualise and design your advertising campaign.
6. Research is an important part of business, but if you only do it once or twice a year, it makes sense to pay professional analysts to do this rather than have someone on-staff at all times.
7. Data capturing can take valuable hours way from an employee’s work. Rather hire a data-capturing company who have teams trained in accurate and quick data capturing.
8. Cleaning services are typically outsourced, especially by building owners who have a number of companies renting office space. This ensures that everyone receives the same quality service and that cleaning is taken care of properly.
9. Each and every building these days outsources security guards. When they go away for more training or are sick, the security company sends out an equally trained replacement that will perform the same security job that you’re used to without your safety being compromised.
10. Digital management is more important than ever these days, so instead of sending staff for training, just hire a digital media company to handle your digital needs, from website and blog design to content management and electronic advertising.
Outsourcing takes away a lot of stress from a business owner or management as they don’t need to worry about certain processes being taken care of in-house. Also, it’s often cheaper to outsource. But it’s important also to know what you should and shouldn’t outsource.
