For decades, the concept of outsourcing was not something business owners and managers were able to articulate, let alone leverage for their own benefit. In the local context, outsourcing often meant contacting agencies that provided workers who did not directly affect or influence the business’s core functions.
Local SME’s rarely looked beyond their own employees when it came to performing core tasks. A key exception would be the use of advertising and consulting firms for certain projects, but using their services was by no means, the norm. By and large, outsourcing was limited to building contractors, security personnel, housekeepers, and other professionals whose work was not directly responsible for an enterprise’s bottom line.
Times have changed, however. Today, more and more local SME’s are turning to outsourcing as a way to stimulate rapid growth without the need for a large internal team or a large capital outlay. Here are a few areas for outsourcing Filipino-owned businesses should look into.
1.) IT
Implementing a new enterprise planning system, for example, can be well beyond the capabilities of your resident IT. Having them perform these tasks may be doable, but often at the expense of day-to-day operational efficiency.
2.) Social media management
Any business owner who’s tried running their own social media page very quickly realizes how much time needs to be invested in order to stay on top of your online presence. Having a full-time employee perform social media management isn’t always ideal either, especially when the visitor volume and interactions are high, but not quite high enough to justify a full-time social media manager. In these cases, outsourcing a part-time social media manager may be the answer.
3.) Media creation
Professionally-executed videos, photos, and presentations can be incredibly important for cultivating and improving a business’s branding and image. However, even with cameras and graphic design tools more accessible than ever before, you will not get professional results unless you’re willing to invest time and other resources learning to use them properly.
Even if you do have someone in your team who can use those tools, it may not always be a good use of your time and there are no guarantees the results will be worth it. It can also take months of training or trial and error before they’re able to reliably create images and videos you need. For these reasons, it’s often best to have professional media creators create the media assets you need, especially if your business currently lacks the capability to create them.
4.) SEM and SEO
While most younger business owners are now hip to the idea of search engine marketing and search engine optimization, these fields have become incredibly technical and all-encompassing in the past generation. So much so that it’s usually no longer possible for a single tech whiz in your team to do all that’s needed to for your page to rank high on a search engine results page by themselves. This becomes less likely if they have other tasks on their plate. By outsourcing this task to SEM and SEO specialists, you may very well set in motion the next stage for your business’s growth without overburdening your team.
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