Your business budget is stretched in every possible direction. Your IT staff is demanding new servers, your human resources department doesn't have a single working printer, and your assistant's phone is on the fritz. With so much on your financial plate, it's tempting to choose the lowest price professional service provider, but you may end up paying more in the long run if you take this route. Here are 3 reasons you should always choose the more experienced service provider, even if you think it's going to strain your budget.
- Experience gets you results faster - The cheapest service provider is low priced for a reason. Sometimes they have the resources on hand to drive a competitive price, or they are aggressively building their client base. In many situations, however, they accept lower pay because they are not as experienced in the industry. They don't know what standard pay is, or how long a project realistically takes. The hourly rate may be lower, but the total amount of hours it takes for a less experienced company to handle your project could make it cost significantly more.
- Access to better technology - Experienced professional service providers, such as outsourced bookkeeping services, often have years of experience in the industry, resulting in a stronger infrastructure for their core services. They aren't in the building phase of their business, which often has a significant amount of trial and error that their early adopter clients deal with. An experienced service provider is long past their growing pains, giving you a consistent and reliable experience. A more established service provider may even develop their own unique applications and hardware to deal with the challenges faced by the businesses they partner with.
- Hands-on experience - When you bring in a consultant, you often seek the help of a professional who has specialized skill sets and knowledge in areas like outsourced controller services, for example. One way a consultant refines their skill set is through a variety of real world experiences, especially dealing with major shake ups and disaster recovery. A less expensive service provider may not have as much hands-on experience, so if something goes wrong with your accounting or another service, they may have no idea how to start fixing the problem.
The key point to take away from this is that, while the hourly rate of outsourced service providers may seem highly from any hourly perspective, the wealth of knowledge and experience that they bring to any project will not only result in a more efficient execution of business objectives, but will likely save money in the long run.
