SME Survey

Do you outsource services to support your business?

The intention of this survey was to find out what services are outsourced by the businesses that undertook the survey (71 respondents) and if there were any services that people were considering outsourcing in the future. Often the concern for most small business owners is the additional cost of outsourcing to a third party; particularly the case if you are new in business.

However, engaging someone else, which in turn frees up your time to focus on what you are good at and redirect the time you get back to undertake marketing* and increase sales to cover any additional costs, can be a significant benefit to any business. (*Something else that could be potentially outsourced!).

The other barrier is releasing tasks and having the confidence that they will get done when, to an extent, they are out of your control. Again, most reputable services will be more than

capable of delivering the service they offer; more than likely doing it to a higher standard and more efficiently versus it being done in house.

Unsurprisingly, accounting was the service that was most outsourced by businesses; followed by website. 6 people who responded to the survey didn’t outsource anything and 29 had no intention of outsourcing further.

The next question was around the services that people are considering outsourcing. In this case social media and marketing were the leading services as these didn’t feature significantly in what was currently outsourced. Small businesses are notoriously poor at marketing and engaging on social media, so the fact that this is being considered as something to hand over to someone who knows that they are doing, has to be a good thing!

Encouragingly, the vast majority of survey takers – at least 66.2% - are using outsourcing as a strategy to support their business.

It is definitely worth looking at those things you are not that good at, don’t like doing or where you don’t have the necessary competence or capacity and hand over to an expert!

Get involved

To take part in the next survey about business planning – visit here: https://forms.gle/ V37arHdEuanLF5JB6. The results will be shared in the next edition of this magazine.