Australian businesses turning to outsourcing as a way to beat Global Financial Crisis

Written on the 1st of July 2010 by Michelle Carr

More and more Australian businesses are outsourcing key administrative support services such as bookkeeping, payroll, marketing and IT to reduce their headcount and save costs.

As the economic downturn is really hitting home for some businesses many SMEs are opting to close their offices to eliminate rent and set up virtual offices instead for a fraction of the cost.
The past 12 months has seen small-to-medium businesses, and even larger companies, choosing to outsource a number of their administrative functions so they can reduce costs without downsizing their business or downsizing operations.

Businesses are realising they can effectively reduce their costs by using external providers rather than paying full-time wages to keep certain roles in-house and watching as the cash flow improves as does the bottom line.

A case study of this is one of SBE's customers, which previously had four administration people in-house, covering functions such as accounts and marketing.
"They have recently outsourced three of these roles to us and only have one administrative person on wages. As such, for the three roles that they have outsourced, they are now paying less than the equivalent of one full-time wage per annum for a whole team of people who are handling their bookkeeping, phone calls, recruitment, IT and marketing."
Another area of strong growth has been in virtual office services, where small business can pay a relatively small monthly fee to have an office address and to have their calls answered and forwarded on giving their business a bigger business presence and the business owner more time to focus on growth and development.

We have also seen a sharp rise in the number of businesses that have opted to move away from having a physical office so they can save on rent and discover a pool of people trained and well established in business practices at their disposal and because they are sharing and leveraging the services they only pay for a fraction of the cost.

More than half of our clients no longer have the need to actually have office space. They can streamline their entire operations and mobilise their business, but still have that professional business front. You can be a one-man band, but for a small amount you can have a big business presence, with a receptionist answering your phone.