When you’re growing your own business, there comes a time when you reach capacity and you need to delegate work. Finding affordable, skilled and reliable people is easier said than done, and taking on full-time staff is a big responsibility for a small business. This is why outsourcing is a common way that entrepreneurs and small business owners manage their workloads and free up their own time to concentrate on business development strategy.
Outsourced talent can provide a range of different skills including design, copywriting and programming, for example. Delegating these types of production tasks give owners and managers the time to lead the business instead of being bogged-down in executing the work.
The prevalence of internet access worldwide has spelt big changes for the labour market. More and more people are coming online and looking for freelance work, and a range of websites have sprung up to help connect business managers and freelancers with various skillsets. Sites like People per Hour, Copify, eLancer and SkillPages allow freelancers to bid on individual jobs posted by business managers. They can negotiate rates and read full briefs of the proposed work.
Smart businesses who need to grow are using these online services to find affordable talent who can help with their workload. Most work types require the transfer of digital files including documents, images, designs, spread sheets and other types of data which can be shared easily over the internet.
Outsourcing work is not without its difficulties though, as language barriers and mis-communication can get in the way. It’s important to properly brief work given to freelancers, but the amount of time spent briefing, checking and amending somebody’s work could completely negate the cost-saving reason for hiring them. For this reason most managers try only to outsource the most simple and rudimentary of tasks, as otherwise briefing adequately can sap a lot of time.
One of the most common business functions to outsource is customer service, and specifically telephone answering. Answering customer enquiries and sales calls can take a lot of time, so investing in a virtual receptionist service can help business owners to stay focused on business development. Virtual receptionists can do more than just forward messages too; they can also manage diaries, take orders and patch calls. A Virtual Receptionist survey recently found that nearly two thirds of business managers were unaware of the full range of services offered by virtual receptionists.
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