Outsourcing: The Solution To So Many Problems

Is your team overwhelmed with too much work? Are critical opportunities and issues being ignored because your company doesn’t have the expertise to handle them? Do you need a trusted advisor to help you analyze your business options?

If you replied ‘yes’ to any or all of these questions, the answer may be outsourcing.

Outsourcing isn’t just staffing. Outsourcing is access to highly skilled professionals with the time and talent you lack in-house.

PBO Advisory Group recently hosted a webinar about the many benefits of outsourcing, particularly in four areas of focus – marketing, IT, human capital, and accounting/finance. The following summarizes the highlights from the webinar.

Why Outsource?

By bringing in an individual(s) with different skills, expertise and perspectives to work with your company, outsourcing can be the silver bullet to many problems, including:

Workload management – too much work and not enough staff
Employee turnover – fill gaps in your workforce
Growth/scalability – helps you seamlessly get from Point A to Point B
Flexibility – utilize expertise when you need it
Innovation – adds a new dimension to your internal creativity
Expand service offerings – develop new areas of opportunities
Reduce costs/increase profitability – access to professionals who can help you prosper without the cost of a full-time employee
Freeing you up to focus on the core competencies of your business and the future

What to Outsource?

Projects that require specialized expertise that you don’t have in-house
Activities your team doesn’t have the time to perform
Tasks that are taking too long and taking the focus away from core competencies
Activities that don’t give you a competitive advantage
Projects with upcoming deadlines that you can’t meet

Red Flags that it’s Time to Outsource

Overwhelming workloads
Mistakes are being made
Can’t add new products/services/clients without eliminating some current ones
Tight budgets (Can you get the same or better work quality for less?)
Lack of specialized expertise
Can’t find the right talent to hire

PBO Advisory’s Chief People Office Nicole Devine, who moderated the webinar, asked the panelists to provide one key take away when it comes to outsourcing in their industry:

Marketing

According to Nicole Hagaman, senior marketing consultant with TW2 Marketing, one of the best times to seek outsourced marketing support is when you’re having growing pains and can’t prioritize your marketing needs. An outsourced marketing individual can help with anything from developing a strategic marketing plan to planning an event…and everything in between, including email campaigns, social media, CRM, public relations, and video.

IT + Cybersecurity

Information technology encompasses all of your data and the needs surrounding it. Cybersecurity is keeping your data secure. Both require general and specific knowledge. Grant Page, director of client success at centrexIT, suggests reaching out to an IT outsourcing company to determine the state of your IT, which will help you understand what you need to ensure reliability, security, compliance, and more. Many companies will do this for free.

Accounting/Finance

“You don’t know what you don’t know” can be especially true when it comes to accounting and finance. PBO Advisory’s Consulting CFO Francesca San Diego advises that outsourcing can give you the foundation for making better financial and accounting decisions. An outsourced professional can give you guidance as to what is working well and what needs improvement.

Human Capital

Human resources trends, as well as rules and regulations, are constantly changing so your internal HR team needs to be trained and mentored. According to Fran, an outsourced professional can fill the role of chief people officer within your organization, to provide strategy, direction, and support to your in-house team.

Francesca San Diego
Consulting CFO & Member
fran@pboadvisory.com
(858) 935-48476