While cost reduction is an obvious benefit, it should not be the primary concern to you as an entrepreneur. Many startups suffer from lack of resources for various business functions and skills gap. An entrepreneur needs to look at filling those gaps with talent from outside agencies for a limited time during the growth period. Let’s look some benefits of outsourcing

Talent from anywhere: You can find talented freelancers that can do any business related work. Several peripheral tasks such as graphic designing, branding kits, digital marketing, website development etc can be outsourced. Hiring permanent staff for such short term or one-time work doesn’t make any sense. You need to analyse the remaining functions related to your core business and create a plan about what can be outsourced, when and where to outsource. Among the ongoing business activities, you can probably outsource the marketing, bookkeeping, accounting, support etc. This strategy lets you concentrate on your core business and activities. You need to carefully weigh your options such as training some of your staff, hiring new staff and outsourcing.

Simple and Flexible: Outsourcing is quite simple and flexible once you got to know about how it works and where you need to look for outsourcing partners. There are neither long term commitments nor huge orders that could prove to be a burden. Remember not to get into long-term relations with any outsourcing agency. Always break your work into smaller and manageable tasks and commission work only when required. You need to be agile and fast while defining your priorities. When it is required to scale, you can depend on your experience with one vendor to start with a new vendor. This way you can have a good number of suppliers ready to help you grow, and you can negotiate better and better.

Low-risk: There is no better method than outsourcing if you want to test your ideas or build something to see if it works or not. If you want to gather data via surveys, or need data for research, want to build an MVP, build a prototype, or check if there is a technology to support your ideas or product testing, taking help from freelancers will save you a lot of cost while giving immediate results to you. You can discard your ideas without the need to invest a lot into them. As a startup you can relate to this quite well.

Fresh perspectives: sometimes, you may even get useful insights which you never knew before, from your outsourcing agency, if you choose the right one.   Agencies that did a lot of similar projects may have a few things to share with you, which could enhance your product offering or improve your business processes.

Outsourcing models: There are several methods of outsourcing, and you can negotiate for the one that is most convenient to you. Some examples are setting up, offshore development centre, hiring entire remote teams, hiring on hourly or monthly basis, profit sharing basis, joint ventures, on project basis etc. There is every chance to minimize your risk to the lowest possible level while attracting the best talent to your business. You need to be aware that labour laws differ from country to country, and you have to stay away from such complications by negotiating for the best hiring model with your outsourcing agency.

As you can see the aim of outsourcing should be accessing the best talent, reducing costs, minimizing your risks and concentrating on your core business. You should plan your outsourcing activity accordingly.