Around 68% of US companies now outsource some services, buying them more time to focus on other time-consuming considerations or, in the case of mompreneurs, making it far easier to juggle the family-work balance.
Certainly, few moms would think twice about trusting things like marketing, IT management, and finances to someone else if it meant that they could finish before the kids were in bed. Unfortunately, despite all of its promise, outsourcing done wrong can quickly backfire, making it even harder to free up time for the kids, and in some cases, making mompreneurial enterprises almost entirely impossible to manage as you struggle to reverse or rectify costly mistakes.
This is why many entrepreneurs prefer to keep outsourcing to back-of-house processes that don’t directly impact reputation or consumer interest. For mompreneurs specifically, however, making sure of outsourcing that truly frees up time requires a far more specific approach to third-party onboarding. In this article, we consider what should feature in that approach, and how each can ultimately ensure that outsourcing is saving you time rather than costing you yet more of it.
# 1 – Always seek to retain control
Some outsourcing services boast of a set-it-and-forget-it mentality that supposedly makes your life easier by taking care of everything for you based on brief one-off outlines. Unfortunately, while this might seem great on the tin, outsourcing that removes even minor elements of control on your end is almost guaranteed to end in escalating and ultimately time-consuming problems. After all, even the best-outsourced marketing agency can’t understand what you’re after better than you can. As such, all of their efforts are going to pale in comparison to your imaginings, and will always struggle to live up to the reputation that you truly want to build.
Instead of entirely handing over the reins, true time saving therefore relies on your ability to seek managed outsourced services that keep control in your hands. From enabling you to direct projects through to giving you the final say before anything goes to press (or is alternatively published online, etc.), this guarantees that you can avoid mistakes that are difficult and time-consuming to rectify. What’s more, knowing that your third-party services are running smoothly the way that you intend them to enables you to sign off for the day that bit earlier without worrying that things will ever fall apart in your absence.
# 2 – Invest in comprehensive solutions
Few things in business are isolated, meaning that outsourced services that operate in a silo are never going to lead to the results, or time-saving, that you ultimately require. Instead, you’ll either have to put in the same amount of hours covering for performance gaps or seek outsourced providers who can do so for you, which again costs time and money.
Once again this is especially true of marketing services that now need to make way for everything from social media campaigns to web content and PPC efforts. A provider who only takes care of PPC marketing, for example (e.g. keyword bids, ad copy, etc.) is never going to save you time if you then have to take care of web content that converts. Instead, you want more comprehensive services, like those you can learn more about here, that also take care of the peripheral considerations for you. That way, you can enjoy the full returns of your efforts here, without once having to compliment those third-party offerings with sometimes equally time-consuming efforts of your own.
# 3 – Seek services tailored towards you
While you might assume that any third party will tailor their offerings towards your brand, that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, offshore or particularly low-cost outsourced companies will generally operate on a set framework that leaves little room for things like personalized brand experiences or understanding. While that might not necessarily be a problem for something like IT, everything from HR through to marketing and customer services is going to struggle as a result of this. And, when it does, you’ll either need to pick up the reputational pieces or again boost those offerings with efforts of your own.
This is once more a sure way to increase costs that don’t necessarily offer the time benefits that should come alongside them, and it’s something you can avoid by seeking providers that offer solutions tailored towards your need. Companies that offer brand-specific employee training and the ability to tailor packages according to your requirements are particularly valuable in this sense, ensuring results that suit, rather than that you have to work around. That way, you can rest easy that even outsourced customer services operate with your values and focus at the forefront, thus avoiding reputational fallouts and freeing you to spend stress-free time with the family.
# 4 – Always look for flexibility to grow
Flexible services that enable not only ongoing management as mentioned, but also changes in moments as and when you need them, are an invaluable way to ensure time savings now and into the future. The ability to onboard one outsourced partner for the entirety of your business journey thanks to on-demand scalability and responsiveness will especially help you to keep your business going from strength to strength, and to ensure that your family relationships do the same!
Outsourcing can certainly save you time, but it can also leave you more tied up if you aren’t careful. Make sure that this mompreneur really can juggle it all by avoiding that fate with these pointers in mind.