Losing passion for your business? Try outsourcing.
As a small business owner, it’s easy to lose your passion for your business when you spend more time worrying about money and less time on what excites you in your business. Another motivation killer is working harder and harder without realizing the same return in profit.
The solution to this can lie in outsourcing the admin and finance management aspects of your business.
One of the greatest barriers to outsourcing is the perceived cost of outsourcing, especially if the financial health of the business is already taking a turn for the worse. But there are options. Cindy Evans-Finney of MoreCore Business Services explains how one of their clients, a small manufacturer of handmade soaps, could not afford an ongoing outsourcing fee so instead opted for a lump sum investment upfront. This would get her finances in order and provide her with the proper training she needed on the systems the business already had in place.
As Evans-Finney points out, systems are only as good as the people that use them and very often small business owners don’t completely understand the systems they have in place or utilize them to their full advantage.
The cost of outsourcing can also be offset by the immediate and long-term savings you make by getting your financial house in order. One extreme case in point is an R4 million fraud that MoreCore uncovered which had gone unnoticed for over 10 years, even though the business had used the services of bookkeepers over the years.
If you already have a bookkeeper or regularly use the services of a bookkeeper, then consider just outsourcing the finance management function of your business with a provider who’ll go beyond just writing up the books.
As Mark Klinkert of MoreCore points out, many business owners don’t know what their financial statements mean. He says these are the gauges that provide a fair warning if your business is running into trouble and you need a bookkeeper that will give you that insight rather than just write up your accounts. A proper review of your financials can, for example, reveal errors in your pricing strategy and help you realize better profit margins.
The right outsourcing partner will do two things: spend time getting to know you and your business and give you the information you need in a way you understand. In the case of the client that was victim to fraud, MoreCore restructured their bookkeeping system and implemented new administration systems. They even prepared a schedule for the business owner to stick to so that checks could be done on a regular enough basis to pick up on potential problems.
Outsourcing can help businesses at any stage – the business that’s growing rapidly without a chance to find its feet or put good systems in place and the business that’s just starting out. It’s also a good idea if you’re considering a new extension to your existing business.
The best time to get your business’s admin systems in place is at the beginning. Luckily, however, if it didn’t work out that way for your business, there are people like Klinkert and Evans-Finney who love to get stuck in and fix things.
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Take out: Outsourcing can help your business be more profitable and give you back your time so you can spend it on the parts of your business that excite you. Choosing the right outsourcing partner is important so that you can get an outsourcing solution that is shaped to your specific needs. Outsourcing can be done at any stage of the business, even at the idea/development stage.
Author: Nicky Grandin
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