Running a successful business has many aspects, including marketing, accounting, sales, HR, and more. If you don't have the skills or likely don't have the time to do all those things, then your choice comes down to hiring fulltime help or outsourcing to a third party.

Outsourcing
This is a strategic approach which should be a considered alternative from day one. You only need to decide which functions to outsource that will benefit you the most. When you are trying to decide the advantages in outsourcing certain services, look for these following factors:

• It's a routine function that nevertheless takes too much time and effort.
• It's an activity required only temporarily or at certain intervals.
• It's cheaper to pay outsiders than to hire and maintain employees.
• It requires a specialized skill that means high salaries and fewer candidates.

What to Outsource
There exist 3rd-party services to perform many common tasks such as payroll management, order fulfillment, IT services, accounting, and many more. The chief advantage of using these services is that you are handing over the responsibility, and headaches, to a team of experts who specialize in doing that function.

IT
Many smaller businesses are struggling to protect themselves against hackers, system failures, and other issues. Computing is a broad field, but a managed Ottawa IT services provider can maintain security and network support while also providing project consultation, system design, software integration, and more. Doing all this in-house would require supporting a large staff with a range of skills.

Accounting
This may also cover bookkeeping and payroll tasks. All of them require a certain level of expertise, accuracy, and effort. Inept bookkeeping results in costly mistakes. Smaller companies that don't need fulltime staff to keep up with these issues are better off outsourcing to the experts.

Benefits Management
There comes a point when hiring more employees puts a burden on HR departments who are tasked with managing benefits such as retirement plans, insurance, and more. Then you need more HR staff just to keep up with the paperwork. But there are services that perform these functions more quickly and affordably, so that human resources can focus on more immediate issues.

Some companies resist outsourcing because they feel they need more control over processes. But when you find a services provider that understands your business, and can do the specific function better and more affordably than you can, it only makes sense to take advantage.