For the busy business owner, outsourcing can be an excellent option when you get it right and outsourcing your non-strategic business processes can allow you to quickly grow your business and save costs.

However, if you get it wrong, the experience can quickly turn into a nightmare, and you could end up making costly mistakes that can quickly lead to business failure.

When it comes to outsourcing tasks to freelance or independent contractors, there are five fundamental mistakes many small business owners make that end up hurting their business.

Here are the most common mistakes business owners make during the outsourcing process with tips on how to avoid making them.

Mistake #1 – You Outsource Tasks That are the Core of Your Business

Some small business owners think they can save more money by outsourcing everything that lands on their desks. When you’re first getting started with your business, you may make the mistake of outsourcing your core business tasks.

However, you should only be outsourcing tasks that are outside your core competencies and those functions that can be managed with qualified deliverables and checkpoints.

While this might be fine to do in the later stages of your business, it can turn into a nightmare when you are first starting out. The core tasks of your business are your responsibility, so you never want to rely on a freelancer to complete these tasks.

Mistake #2 -You Fail to Provide Enough Guidance

Believing that you don’t need a project manager when outsourcing to freelancers can lead to disaster. While independent contractors and freelancer workers can manage their own internal processes, this doesn’t mean you should assume they can or will manage your business.

You don't want to micromanage your remote workers, but you can't expect them to manage your business in the way you know best. So take the time to write out detailed guidelines and put a standard operating procedure in place that all freelancers are required to follow.

Managed Remote Solutions (MARS) by SHEROES can help you outsource your remote processes without having to learn how to manage remote workers, monitor remote employees, or conduct team building for remote teams.

For organisations that don’t want to spend the time or resources to hire remote staff, managing a remote workforce and supervising remote employees is easy with a project manager from MARS by SHEROES.

Mistake #3 – Overestimating the Cost Savings

While the remote workers that you hire will be using their own equipment and tools, you will still need to spend money on different IT tools to communicate and collaborate with your team.

You will also need to invest more training in your team and increase your capital budget so you can purchase new hardware and software.

If you’re offshoring a process, you want to offer compensation that is slightly higher than the market price in the country where you are outsourcing to, but less than what you would pay in your own country.

But, if you’re not able to keep your virtual team happy the time and money that you end up saving with outsourcing may end up being less than what you hoped for. When your remote team is unhappy, the work will suffer, so going as cheap as you can is not a good idea.

Mistake #4 – Not Vetting Your Remote Workers

It is essential always to take your time when hiring a new remote worker. You never want to rush the process, making sure you have thoroughly vetted the freelancer.

You need to make sure that you look at what their previous clients have said about their performance and look over their portfolio of work.

Companies like MARS by SHEROES only provide highly-qualified and experienced MARS Certified Remote Professionals (MCRP) that are best in class and already serve top companies with processes including inbound sales, outbound sales, customer support and operations.

Mistake #5 – Not Building Redundancy Into Your Remote Team

As a small business owner, you should never view outsourcing as an inexpensive and easy way to offload work. It should be used to build an efficient, lean, and competitive business to help you save time for strategic focus.

You need to build a reliable network of freelancers so you can quickly find a replacement if a freelancer decides to end their working relationship with you.

MARS by SHEROES is an end-to-end process on-cloud platform that enables significant improvement in quality and efficiency and can help you scale up your processes without worrying about attrition or loss of time and productivity.

Outsourcing your business processes is an excellent way for you to focus your time and effort on the important aspects of your business.

Avoiding these five common outsourcing mistakes will allow you to quickly and easily outsource various non-essential business tasks so you can focus on tasks that move the needle for your business.