On April 4, 2009, a young teacher and 17 of his friends sat in his apartment in Hangzhou, China. They were about to set up a company that would revolutionise the e-commerce industry. The business growth that would follow was grander than their biggest expectation.
Within the first four months, they had secured seed funding from one of the biggest banks and investment firms in the world – Goldman Sachs and SoftBank.
And this investment set off the journey of Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer, and e-commerce company.
Alibaba has since then grown beyond being an e-commerce company to becoming a top multinational specialising in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology.
If your curiosity is piqued to know precisely how big the company is, three of its e-commerce sites record 674 million active users each year.
In 2019 alone, Alibaba’s revenue was $56.152 billion. This is a beyond-incredible feat for any e-commerce company to achieve.
However, the question you should be asking is, how was Alibaba able to attain this height? Was it by having the right product? A capable marketing team or access to enough funds?
In the next paragraph, we will take a closer look at one of Alibaba’s key business strategies and how it impacted the business growth and its success.
In the early stages, when Jack Ma and his friends were looking to set up Alibaba, they realised that developers in China didn’t have the technical skills required to set up an e-commerce site that could navigate the strict internet restrictions in China.
Knowing how this could affect growth, Alibaba outsourced its website design and development to a US firm.
This single manoeuvre set the tone for how fast the company would grow given that the founders were able to focus resources and efforts on other aspects of the business as they had access to top web design and development experts in the United States.
Source: Alibaba
Just like Alibaba did, many growth-focused organisations leverage outsourcing as a strategic tool;
– To increase productivity and optimise their value
– For ensuring focus on the core business areas and resources are prioritised accordingly
– To improve organisational efficiency and productivity
Still not convinced that outsourcing is the SECRET weapon high-performing organisations, like Alibaba deploy to remain market leaders?
Continue reading below for five more reasons why companies choose to outsource their non-core functions.
Five Reasons Why Companies Leverage Outsourcing for Rapid Business Growth
Improved Efficiency
Outsourcing your business support functions to a trusted outsourcing company leads to an increase in productivity.
Asides from being able to gain access to a trusted, reliable and dependable resource pool without having to make huge investments that you would have otherwise had to expend to acquire these resources on your own.
You also significantly reduce risks that come from making the wrong hiring or business process decisions.
When you do not have to worry about planning and executing your recruitment exercises, payroll, people management or other time-consuming business support functions, you are better able to concentrate on becoming efficient and efficacious where it truly matters.
As Alibaba did, when it tapped into the booming IT industry of the United States to gain the skills it needed to set up its website.
Outsourcing the support functions of your organisation to a company whose expertise resides in that field, is the fastest way to gain world-class capabilities and immediately improve your business growth and outcomes.
Reinforced Core Competencies
With the distractions of handling routine, administrative and non-critical tasks taken off, business owners and executives are then enabled to focus on developing and strengthening their core competencies by channeling energy and resources appropriately to core business areas.
As a wise man once said, “Where focus goes, resources flow”. Directing your focus away from your non-core competencies to the strategic in-house capabilities needed to stand out in the crowded marketplace, is the most crucial decision, any organisation can ever make.
Faster Time to Market
The importance of releasing new products ahead of your competitors in a rapidly changing market environment cannot be overemphasised.
Outsourcing production to a product development firm will help you successfully and quickly bring your product to the market.
The external collaboration you access by outsourcing will speed up your product development process, and enable you to stay ahead of the competition.
Like in the case of Alibaba, Jack Ma tapped into the budding software development market in the United States to get the Alibaba website up and running in record time.
If he had relied solely on the IT talents that were available in China at the time, Alibaba would have taken a much longer time to launch.
The website provided a platform where Alibaba could sell its advertising and promotional services to other businesses and in turn, generated a lot of revenue.
Leverage Built-In Expertise
You no longer need to make a huge investment in the recruitment, training or administrative management of your employees for performance.
A trusted and dependable outsourcing partner will have a vast pool of highly skilled professionals to function in various competency areas across your organisation – from the back-end staff to front-facing.
Because this is their core function, they would have garnered much expertise and experience that can be leveraged on for your continuous business growth and development.
Likewise outsourcing to a reliable risk-sharing partner, is a multi-level strategic play.
Asides from being able to leverage their tested and trusted capabilities and in-depth experience, you also get to benefit from having an unbiased listener and friend who can provide you with fresh insights and perspectives to sort out any business quandary.
Because they deploy an outside-in approach, they can offer valuable insights you might have easily missed, because you were too close to the context/situation.
Cost Savings on Investment in Infrastructure
Your outsourcing services provider takes responsibility for your business processes and provides you with the resources required for implementation, thereby helping you to eliminate the need to invest in redundant infrastructure and technology.
With outsourcing, you can significantly lower both your start-up and running costs, without breaking the bank or compromising on the quality of your results.
Get the Workforce Group Advantage
With over 15 years of documented industry and practical experience, we are the leading provider of outsourcing services.
We have over the years, partnered with clients across all major sectors of the economy using a unique approach that enables seamless execution of agreed-upon deliverables.
We especially understand the peculiarities of the business terrain and have consistently demonstrated this ability to deliver positive returns to our clients’ investment.
At any time of the day, our partners trust us to enhance their business performance and optimise their shareholder value.
We are everywhere you want to be; operating in all the states in the country to ensure prompt service delivery.
Supported by our contingent workforce of over 7000 associates across different industries, we are able to engage with our clients as their preferred outsourcing services provider in Nigeria.
Let’s Create Value for You
There is no better time to rethink your operating model than now. Whether it is your people management, one-off recruitments, and placements, payroll management, human resources outsourcing or IT outsourcing; you can count on us to help transform your business.
Partner with us today and achieve all your desired business goals in the fastest time possible at a fraction of your planned investments.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help, please schedule a consultation today to speak to us about your needs.
But if you are still not sure Outsourcing is right for you, download this PDF to learn four more reasons why you should consider outsourcing today.
