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Outsourcing Now or Later? Outsourcing Now or Later?If you have a business, there are probably a number of day to day functions that could be outsourced to great advantage right this minute. Here are a few examples. Outsourcing your sales efforts can be great for your business on several levels. First, by outsourcing to independent agents, you do not have to worry about salaries, benefit packages or taxes. Structure the agent program properly and you will not have to pay commissions until you receive payments from the customers your agents bring into the fold.
Everyone knows that the invoicing process can eat up a lot of resources. Outsource your invoicing to an independent firm that specializes in doing the billing for small businesses. Make sure they use a program that is compatible with the software you use to track your AR and AP reconciliation, so you can upload everything into your system when they close out a billing period. You can also get the service to handle the distribution of the invoices to your customers. For a modest fee, they will even handle emailing your invoices as PDF documents or print and mail them for you. You can use the electronic files you get at the end of the billing cycle to upload into your system and then post payments as you receive them. Customer care is another important function that you can outsource. Make sure you get people who know your business and also have a background in provided excellent customer service via the phone and online methods. They use their own computers at home, which mean you do not have to maintain a large inventory of equipment in an office somewhere. All you do is point a toll free number to them, set up access to a central customer service email box and you are good to go. Keep in mind that when you outsource for just about any function within your company, you do not provide full-blown employee benefits. Your outsource provider is an independent contractor and as such will be responsible for handling their own taxes, insurance and vacation time. You supply them with work and whatever compensation the two of you have agreed upon. All the money you would normally sink into benefits for full time employees can be funneled into other aspects of your company, which ultimately will benefit everyone.
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