With 2019 upon us, the time is ripe to re-strategize the goals for your small business and revamp the services to optimize the forthcoming trends. Despite the positive outlook on the economy, the majority of small business owners are concerned about addressing the impending challenges in the small business domain. It has been reported that the top challenge faced by the small business owners is the lack of capital/cash flow, closely followed by marketing/advertising challenges. Other barriers include time management, employee retention, administrative work and provision of benefits.
As such, thoughtfully outsourced business services can facilitate the mitigation of several challenges for the small business owners. In fact, a survey reveals that ONLY a marginal 15% of business owners acknowledged spending their time on the requisite business activities. Every business has its demands, and the tasks necessitating offloading may vary from one to another.
Here, though, are services that clearly should be outplaced.
- People
Small businesses need to capitalize on every available advantage to compete with the big sharks. As such, optimizing specialized knowledge from subject matter experts through outsourcing allows you the ideal access to expertise at a fraction of full-time employee cost. You can maximize the money spent on expert advice sans the stress of a full-time hire. In addition, the modern day employment is witnessing a transition towards high-skilled individuals operating as portfolio workers or freelancers in tandem with an ‘on-demand’ economy. Thus, it is a win-win situation!
- Logistics
It is imperative for a business to stay cost relevant in order to focus on continued growth and, as such, inventory management takes care of lost sales resulting from a shortage of inventory or impractical costs resulting from excessive inventory. In addition, inventory storage, movement, and delivery can be complex and time-consuming, thereby affecting the manufacturing efficiency, which, in fact, can be significantly improved through partnering with a reliable mrp software for small business. With the economies of scale, inventory management (may be complete or partial) allows for better exploration of business possibilities.
- Information Technology
Today the workplaces are digitized, global and mobile. This evolution in the corporate workforce has led to increased IT demands for the businesses in terms of security, which are accompanied by equivalent cost implications. The small business owners are faced with the challenges of pursuing cost-effective digital workspace strategies. The solution lies in outsourcing the crucial IT functions which not only buffer the company from security fails but also help in supplying end-to-end digital workspace technologies at reduced costs.
- Marketing
Personalized communication is emerging as the exclusive tool for marketers today. Business owners are increasingly acknowledging the significance of aligning with new technology in order to remain competitive. The need of the hour is to be more vigilant, however, small business owners have reported the lack of sufficient time to get everything done. Also, artificial intelligence is expected to surface as a major marketing tool in 2019. This necessitates that small business owners, save cost and time by engaging marketing vendors to simplify the complex marketing choices, specific to the business need.
- Customer Support
The on-demand economy is precipitating to more aspects of human living and customer service is already facing the change in mechanisms. The advent of machine learning and AI technologies in this space has deterred the small business owners from directly engaging in this service. In fact, the companies are trying to engage contact centers with higher efficiency margins to optimize their customer interaction and achieve a balance between best customer experience, and associated costs.
END WORD
The advantages of outsourcing have rather multiplied for small business owners with the extreme advancement in technology. This need is further augmented with associated benefits of improved resource control, better compliance, and lower risk. Access to specialized and expert advice, at the fraction of a cost, is a huge draw for the small business owners keen on maximizing their returns.
