When you started your business, you may have done a significant amount of the administrative work yourself. This is in addition to planning, managing, and guiding your company. However, as your company grows, you can either hire individuals to take over the more administrative duties or you can outsource them. These are signs that you should investigate your outsourcing options.

You Have Highly Specialized Tasks That No One Can Complete

You may have been able to handle some of the general tasks at the start of your company, but as it grows, some of these tasks become more specialized. For example, you may not fully understand business accounting, human resources, IT and other fields. If you don’t have anyone in your company that understands and can handle the nuances of these highly specialized duties, you may consider outsourcing them to reputable companies with the experience and knowledge necessary to handle them.

Non-Core Functions Without a Competitive Advantage

During your planning stage, you probably built a corporate business plan. This plan should clearly define your core business functions. However, running a company requires many non-core-business tasks. You can keep these functions in-house if you gain a competitive advantage from doing so, but if you don’t consider partnering with another company to compete with them. For example, maintaining an internal IT department may not increase your customer base, revenues, or employees’ ability to do their jobs efficiently.

You Have Reached Your Capacity

As your company grows, your teams may find it difficult to meet their deadlines. This can cause stalled projects that may affect your bottom line. Instead of placing all the responsibility on your teams, work with them to determine what parts of their projects can be outsourced. This process relieves the pressure on your staff, improves morale, and helps you implement your projects faster.

You Are Experiencing Rapid Growth

When you first started your company, you may have been concerned with gaining market share and actually becoming profitable. However, you can also grow at such a rapid pace that you find it difficult to keep up. If you are scaling too fast, you may look into partnering with other companies that can share your tasks. For example, you may work with a company that provides customer service or can expand your production capacity. As you outsource, your capacity, production, and service provision can expand more rapidly, allowing you to better manage your growth.

Outsourcing allows you to focus on your core business functions while taking advantage of other companies’ expertise and capacity. Be open to signs that suggest this is a strategy you should consider.