Startups sound exciting, but it takes grit and a lot of strategy to make them successful. Photo by @austindistel from unsplash.com
Startups
Did you know that there have been 5.4 million new business applications in the USA in 2021 alone? The staggering figure even surpassed the 2020 record of 4.4 million new business filings, as the pandemic restrictions started to ease. Perhaps the many changes in employment setups during the past two years have created a cultural shift in the world and inspired many to establish start-up businesses. The realization of being laid off anytime became a catalyst for many employees that they too, can dream of having an autonomous income stream regardless of how uncertain times may be.
So, what is a startup business? According to Forbes, startup businesses are endeavors that aim to change the status quo of a certain product or service, and push boundaries and norms in their respective industries as their selling point. Hence, numerous startups are also known as ‘disruptors.’ The image that may come to mind is a small group of people in a basement, huddling and scheming on how they can change the world. Giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon started through these humble beginnings, and ignited a dream in many that they too, can someday carve out a legacy in their chosen fields.
The Challenge
Startups mean that you’re the boss, and that sounds like music to anyone’s ears! You get to do what you want, work according to your own schedule, hire your ideal team, and have all the bragging rights of being CEO. However, does it feel good to be the boss? To some degree, yes, but even though the caricature of a business owner is one lounging around in yachts and partying around the world, this is far from the reality of how it is to be the captain of the ship. Especially for a startup, it’s hours-on-hours of planning, bookkeeping, innovating, looking for investors, and navigating around the turbulent waters of the competitive marketplace. On top of that, the digital age can make or break your business if you fail to catch up to the ever changing trends and the dynamic minds of today. One minute you’re hot, and in the blink of an eye you can get left behind.
One of the main challenges of a startup is how to make sure that everything is 100% perfect. The solution that quickly comes to mind is to hire more people, or to extend your working hours and make your employees multitask. However, business owners are aware that overworking their staff would lead to a higher attrition rate, which is why they also need to be hands-on to make ends meet. This challenge is where the problem starts. The core business does not remain at the forefront of your responsibilities anymore, because your attention is now divided into trying to keep the quality, the employees, the paperwork, and the marketing all afloat, which can suck out all the energy and finances out of even the most determined entrepreneur. In the end, everybody is stretched thin–the boss, the team, and the business.
Outsourcing as a Solution
47% of startup businesses after the seeding stage can spend up to $400,000 dollars per month, if not more. While getting through the first stage is a milestone to celebrate, it’s still too early to declare victory. In fact, 90% of startups fail for numerous reasons, and one of them is poor management. The idea is simple–poor management can lead to poor results, and poor results, whether it be in the service, or the product itself, will turn away customers. In the end, they spread the word about their experience, and that eventually makes or breaks a startup.
This conundrum of wanting to protect finances and not overwork your in-house staff can be answered by the rising popularity of outsourcing. Coming from the combined terms ‘outside’ and ‘resourcing,’ outsourcing is a strategy where companies tap third-party manpower to fulfill particular services or operations while cutting costs.
Although rising in popularity nowadays, outsourcing is not an entirely new concept. In fact, the term started around the 1970s, when manufacturing companies started hiring manpower to take on responsibilities outside their core duties. Today, outsourcing has branched out from the manufacturing scene and has branched out to cater to different business functions such as sales, marketing, IT management, human resource, and administrative tasks.
Admin and Virtual Assistant Outsourcing
You may think of administrative work as easy and no-brainer routine paperwork, emails, letters, and organizing files. However, as repetitive as they may seem, they take a bulk of time especially as the business gains traction. On the other hand, ignoring them and focusing on the business can be your downfall. A simple overlooked figure in bookkeeping, a faulty marketing email, or a misused word in an important letter can cost you your startup’s future.
Collectively, administrative tasks are an essential framework that keeps the business afloat. However, startups, especially small ones, need to scrimp as much money as they can, so hiring regular employees can be too much of a financial burden especially if some administrative tasks don’t really warrant a 40-hour week or long term employment.
Administrative (admin) outsourcing is a great solution to address this dilemma. With today’s global landscape and the high rise of remote work opportunities, your next administrative assistant can be an expert outsourced from literally anywhere in the world (as long as they have a stable internet connection!), hence the term virtual assistant.
Outsourcing in the Philippines
The Philippines has now emerged to be one of the top locations for outsourcing worldwide, second only to India. In fact, the Philippine Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has a 15-18% growth rate. Foreign employers flock to the Philippines to outsource Filipinos due to reasons which mainly revolve around the country’s low cost of living, the workforce’s literacy rate at 97.5%, and Filipinos’ competence in English and their respective skills. Moreover, outsourcing Filipinos also offer lesser legal liabilities compared to when foreign employers hire staff from their own country.
Why Outsource?
To further convince you, here are some benefits of administrative and virtual assistant outsourcing:
- Outsourcing can help your startup save money. Saving money through outsourcing is possible, because assistance will be tapped only when the need arises. Doing so means flexibility in terms of work, per-project payments, and removing the need to hire a full-time employee with full benefits and a monthly salary. The money saved can be used to develop the product or the service further, branch out to new markets, or strengthen promotion and advertising. On the side of your outsourced employee, it also means greater flexibility, an opportunity for a side hustle, and more freedom to look for employment without being tied down to one business entity.
- Lesser concerns for administrative burdens, more focus on the business. Writing emails, letters, customer service, and managing content looks easy when visualized, but living it is an entirely different situation. Thus, outsourcing eases the burden of administrative work off business owners’ schedules, giving them more time and energy to focus on the business. Fewer things in mind can offer more time for sound decision-making, strategizing, formulating long term goals, and improving the quality of the product or the service that the business offers.
- No more multitasking.
Jack of all trades, master of none. This phenomenon exists because of multitasking, where overworked employees have to juggle between responsibilities in their job description and cater to the dreaded extra administrative work. As a result, they become unfocused, burned out, and unable to grow in their craft. On the contrary, when in-house employees can concentrate on their own respective duties, there is greater efficiency, job satisfaction, and fulfillment. Positive relationships between the startup owners and the staff are also fostered because of better task management, which increases productivity and good feedback for the business.
Outsourcing helps your in-house team focus on their expertise more and away from administrative ones.
- More Opportunities for Expansion. Business growth is a good thing, and it’s every business owner’s dream. Having new business partners, taking on new projects, and reaching wider markets lead to new ideas and goals, and hopefully more success. However, these expansions require more responsibility, which also affect a startup’s ability to keep all areas of the business top-notch while reducing pressure on the in-house team.To ensure that all deadlines are met and the startup’s road to conquering new markets aren’t bogged down by back office work, project-based administrative and virtual assistants can be outsourced to join the team. Thus, while the outsourced staff takes care of the routine paperwork and responsibilities, the startup owners and the in-house team can have all the time and energy to handle new business demands and take on new opportunities without compromising the quality of the product/service that they offer.
- Less people management issues. Managing people is a tough job–hiring, compensation, skills training, and payroll can weigh down startup owners and their businesses, taking up their attention instead of focusing on new opportunities and business goals. With outsourced employees, the back office demands are taken care of, there is less stress on people management, and the anxiety of neglected paperwork is gone from the in-house team’s long list of concerns.More people can also mean a bigger chance for conflict and politics. Thus, a smaller, more close-knit in-house team lessens these issues because there is more intimate communication, and team leaders can pay attention to all of their members better. Everybody can also grow in their respective niches, including the outsourced staff, because they can pour all of their energy on their roles.
- Less errors, less backlog. Imagine you’re haphazardly finishing a task because your mind is focused on a lot of different things. You tick it off your checklist once it’s finished, and realize later that there are errors, but your schedule for today is already full. This scenario happens when you try to handle too many things at the same time, and it becomes an endless cycle of “I’ll finish this later” and a growing list of “pending” tasks.Outsourcing is a great solution to this dilemma, since having project-based staff will not only save startup owners money, but also make sure that the back office is up-and-running especially on challenging days. Moreover, because admin and virtual assistant outsourcing agencies only hire the best of the best, it ensures that the outsourced staff are competent in their niche, which translates to minimized errors and maximized confidence of customers (and investors) in the startup business. Lastly, because they are fit for the job, the startup owners can spend less time monitoring and correcting admin work.
Taking their minds off administrative tasks can give startup owners more time to strategize and innovate. Photo by fauxes from pexels.com
Process Ninjas: A Prime Outsourcing Agency
Process Ninjas is an outsourcing agency run by operations experts with a team concentrated in Asia. They focus on helping address the needs of small to medium businesses, as well as startups. “You direct, we execute” is one of their main guiding principles, as they allow their clients full control of how their businesses should work while simultaneously providing them with competent outsourced staff to adapt and execute their business goals properly.
Our mission is to provide effortless and cost-effective partnerships are materialized via the following services:
- Build your own team Process Ninjas offer a unique but much-needed service essential in today’s dynamic business landscape. Have you ever heard of a company that lets you hire a team especially crafted to fit your own unique business needs? The Process Ninjas in-house team does exactly that, conveniently assisting you identify the areas you need help with and form a corresponding team that can address them. Hire ninjas with specific skill sets or train agents to carry out tasks specific to your operational needs.
- Customer Support One of the determinants of a good business is how well it takes care of a customer’s queries, complaints, or issues. Thus, whether you would prefer a ticket, chat, or social media support to assist your customers with their needs, Process Ninjas offers them all. Their in-house team can readily deploy competent and empathic customer support agents to ensure your business’ customer support is efficient, responsive and helpful.
- Game Support Games will never be out of the market, because we all need to play to be productive. If you’re in the video game or mobile game business, it’s essential that all your users can fully enjoy the game without any problems getting in their way. The in-house Process Ninjas team can provide excellent game support staff (who are gamers themselves!) to ensure your gamers have all their queries and concerns answered, whether it be technical support, purchase issues, or troubleshooting. Aside from in-game support, they can also provide social media and forum support to ensure all your communities are well-managed.
- Community Management Customer feedback is free advertising. If your product and services are good, the ones who avail them will relate their experiences to others. Nonetheless, the opposite can also be true–bad services lead to bad feedback, and it can spread like wildfire. Moreover, another thing to look out for would be social media and forum trolls who can damage your brand and harass your users.Good thing is, Process Ninjas offers moderation services to ensure that your channels are clean and your customers are well attended to. Moreover, they can take it to another level by looking at your analytics and create or tweak brand campaigns based on your customers’ feedback. Of course, the moderation guidelines you want will come first, and the Process Ninjas in-house team adjusts its gears to give you optimal results.
- Content Moderation Content moderation is a challenging job, and overlooking small details can bring your business down. Process Ninjas offer Image, Text, and Video moderation so that you can confidently show off your content without the worry of any offensive or off-brand material reaching your audiences. And because they offer human moderators instead of filters, your content goes through more stringent measures, making sure your audiences get the full experience you intend them to have.
- Outsource Your Way to Success No matter how big or small your business is, having administrative operations that run efficiently is a definite key to success. Thankfully, this age of expansive technology can now allow you to dedicate 100% of your energy to your dreams without the threat of piled-up paperwork looming over your head. Companies like Process Ninjas are ready to assist you in creating the best team to address all of your needs. Leave the back office work to the best virtual assistants in the field, as you focus on innovating the next industry titan ready to disrupt the status quo.