You might think that the benefits of outsourcing are only for established and large companies, but that’s far from the truth.

Startups and SMEs like yours can leverage outsourcing as well to…

• Scale faster
• Adapt quicker
• Compete better

In fact, 37% of small businesses outsource at least one business process (Clutch, 2019) for various reasons, including:

Access to Specialized Expertise Across Industries

As you scale, you’ll need more hands on deck to help you run the business. 

But as you are now, you can’t afford to allocate large resources in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and retaining new staff. It’s even more challenging if you’re looking for people with niche skills, like finance, data analytics, and legal services, who know their way around the complexities of compliance and regulations.

This won’t be an issue when you turn to outsourcing. Your outsourcing partner has a lineup of experts who live and breathe their craft ready to be part of your team. (And even if they don’t have someone for that role, they’ll find them for you.)

The expertise of your outsourced team can:

• Increase your operational efficiency since they can finish tasks faster and more accurately.
• Inspire you to innovate since they can offer new ideas and solutions to keep your business ahead of competitors.
• Help you make better decisions since they understand the industry well and can recommend proper actions.

Cost Efficiency Without Sacrificing Quality

We understand that you have plans to support the scaling of business operations, but the resources you have don’t allow you to spend. Cutting corners is absolutely out of the question.

In such a situation, considering outsourcing services can be a viable option. Your outsourcing partner can help optimize your available resources through these avenues:

• Offering pricing models that fit your budget so you can save 70–90% on labor costs (through offshoring) (Outsource Accelerator, 2024).
• Equipping your outsourced team with dedicated workspaces so you can eliminate real estate and infrastructure needs (office spaces, utilities, and equipment).
• Recruiting and training talent in the top 1–5% so you can reduce recruitment and training costs and fill jobs quickly.

You can then reinvest the resources you’ve saved into strategic initiatives that will drive your growth.

Faster Time to Market

As a small business in a fiercely competitive industry, you must be quick to introduce new products or services to the market. Timing is everything because it can decide who wins the customer.

So, by partnering with an outsourcing company, you can:

• Utilize their established expertise, workflows, and tools to move from ideation to launch faster.
• Do away with building everything in-house and from scratch, enabling you to kick off new projects sooner.
• Entrust support/secondary tasks, such as design, manufacturing, or distribution, to them so your internal team can focus on core product development.

Focus on Core Business Functions

Let us ask you: what do you think will happen if you keep all operations in-house?

Drained workforce and drained resources, which will grind away your competitive edge. With the market as it is, you can’t afford to lose your competitive edge. 

The one thing you can do is identify and segregate your core competencies from non-core ones, and then have the outsourcing partner take over the non-core for you. It will ease some of the burden on you and your in-house teams, allowing you to focus your energy where it matters most.

What’s more, you can:

• Keep up with the activities of your scaling business operations, with your in-house teams performing at optimal levels.
• Optimize efficiency by having the outsourced team support the in-house team with non-core tasks.
• Create space for innovation, focusing on expansion plans, product improvements, and customer experience.

Scalable Operations That Match Growth Phases

It’s a well-known fact that business growth isn’t a straight line but an endless, entangled loop. Some months are busy, wherein you need more people to complete, for example, customer support services or marketing campaigns. Others are quiet, where you need less.

With an outsourcing partner by your side, you’ll have the flexibility needed to adapt to changing business demands. You can:

• Scale up or down freely without worrying about the risks of hiring and layoffs.
• Keep your costs predictable, allowing you to plan the resource allocation for both in-house and outsourced teams.
• Protect your in-house team from burnout by shifting overflow tasks during peak seasons, helping them stay focused and productive.

Access to the Latest Tools and Technologies

They say that companies that embrace innovation gain a competitive advantage. The problem is that there’s always new advanced tech (tools, equipment, and systems) in the market, and it’s often expensive.

You can’t just buy these at the drop of a hat; otherwise, your in-house team will have to learn new tech again and again, and your resources will deplete. In short, it’s not cost-effective.

With outsourcing, however, you can gain instant access to these techs. Your outsourcing partner, especially IT outsourcing providers, invests in these, including their licenses, security, and upgrades, to provide the highest-quality service to their clients.

In turn, you’ll be able to:

• Utilize them, particularly the AI and automation tools, to improve operational efficiency and customer experience.
• Level the playing field so you can keep up and compete with big companies.
• Access and manage data remotely so you maintain control and have full visibility over your outsourced team.

Risk Mitigation and Business Continuity

Disruptions, whether caused by natural disasters or market downturns, can cause your operations to stand still. It can also put your business at risk.

Thankfully, your outsourcing partner can be your crisis support. They have contingency plans, backup systems, and security measures in place, allowing you to proceed with business as usual.

This setup will allow you to:

• Control the impact of the disruption, wherein your in-house team focuses on critical recovery efforts and your outsourced team handles urgent non-core tasks.
• Stabilize operations, ensuring you can bounce back from the disruption faster.
• Stay compliant with industry standards, because your outsourcing partner has experts monitoring and fixing any changes.

Improved Service Quality Through KPIs and SLAs

It’s natural for you to worry whether the outsourced team has delivered satisfactory quality and performance on the tasks you assigned them. After all, they’re working far from your place of business.

However, with the service-level agreement (SLA) and key performance indicators (KPIs) you and the outsourcing partner settled on, you have a clear and measurable way to monitor their work. These let you:

• Track progress, response times, accuracy, and overall results so you always know if expectations are being met.
• Hold the outsourcing partner accountable when targets aren’t reached, protecting you from underperformance.
• Ensure consistent service quality to maintain or increase customer satisfaction and experience.

Enhanced Global Reach and Multilingual Capabilities

You might plan to expand to other countries. To pave the way for that, you want to start offering multilingual support to make customer interactions and market penetration smoother in the future.

Your outsourcing partner can help you achieve this goal by tapping into talent who already speak the language of your target region. This way, you can:

• Make your brand feel local to potential customers, helping you grow beyond your current market.
• Gain a competitive advantage, as customers are more likely to engage with your business if they can speak with you in their native language.
• Understand the customers you want to serve better, allowing you to come up with strategies to influence their purchasing decisions and gain their loyalty.

Flexibility to Innovate and Experiment

Are your current resources enough to allow you to innovate and experiment as you see fit?

If yes, great! If not, then turn to your outsourcing partner. They have the experts and advanced tech to help you explore and test new ideas and approaches. As such, you will be able to:

• Use their niche knowledge and experience to develop new products or bring in diverse perspectives.
• Increase creativity and reduce the fear of failure by letting your outsourced team test new ideas or approaches.
• Free up your in-house team so they can focus on research and development.

Expand Your Business Operations With Outsourcing

Cost savings might still be the primary reason many businesses outsource. But more and more startups and SMEs are driven to outsource their customer service, IT, or other functions for other reasons—even if these benefits don’t bring them significant cost reduction. For example, they want to talk with external experts, mitigate risks, or improve service quality. If you believe the same, it’s important to find a trusted, established outsourcing company to partner with. They will align their services with your objectives so you can scale the business quickly and effectively.