The earliest signs of growth in your small business should be cause for celebration, but for some entrepreneurs, the word “scale” sounds like a death-knell.
Growth doesn’t have to be scary, though—the right foundation can render your SMB scalable, elastic, and nimble. Here are some statistics from TransCosmos to get your wheels turning: 65% of organizations that outsource app hosting plan to increase that percentage, and 89% of outsourcing clients are satisfied.
Software application outsourcing has become the best way for small to mid-sized businesses to easily scale; here are some reasons why.
Spend Time Doing What Matters
As an entrepreneur, you need time to focus on business development and delivering an amazing product to your customers. If your own IT concerns are draining your time, energy, and resources, you’re doing it wrong!
While we will talk about different aspects of scalability in a moment, time is a scalable aspect of your business as well, and you likely don’t have time on hand to scale your own IT work with the growth of your business. It’s safer to relinquish control of your IT efforts in the beginning than after your business has started to snowball.
Sure, hiring managed software support is expensive, but the cost on your time and business growth are greater.
Hire Specialized Talent
By outsourcing IT, you can hire specialized experts for each aspect of your IT infrastructure; for example, if you need support or help with a migration, you can find someone who has specific experience with that issue. One-size-fits-all solutions won’t help your business reach its potential.
One lesson that came from the Amazon cloud outage disaster was this: there is opportunity for cloud platforms not named Apple, Google, or Amazon. And with this comes the possibility of outsourced hosting options by specialized providers. By next year, expect to see (and take advantage of) hosting for specific SMBs of every kind. Are you a physician starting your own practice? There will probably be specific hosting for doctor’s offices, complete with HIPAA-compliant security.
Pay Only for What You Use
Avoid paying huge up-front fees for hardware installation or a large monthly sum for services you hardly use. When you outsource software, you are 100% cost-scalable; as you need more service or support, you add to your monthly bill. This far outweighs paying for a huge enterprise-level asset and slowly growing into using it year over year.
Where Should You Get Started?
First of all, consider outsourcing with cloud-based unified communications. Depending on your provider, you may only have to pay a monthly fee (without any cost for the hardware). Many providers have a flat fee for adding users, so your cost is scalable with the people you hire.
Hosting and data storage are two more fantastic places to outsource—if there’s one thing entrepreneurs say over and over again, it’s that you should always be prepared for a surge in either traffic or data. Don’t get caught off guard when your latest piece of content goes viral!
Once you’ve invested in outsourced software, you’ll love having extra—or simply enough—time to do the things that you set out to do as an entrepreneur. Develop relationships, build your business, and invest time in your strengths, and leave the “heavy lifting” to others.
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