When you first open the doors of your temporary recruitment agency, it leads to a hectic few years. As you build up your database of skilled workers, and find the clients to set them up with, time will fly.

But while you’re focusing on growth, your back office can suffer if you’re doing it all yourself. Now is the time to think about whether you’re holding yourself back, and learn how we help fast-paced agencies just like yours.

 

The Best Approach to Back Office in the First Few Years

During the first 12-18 months of running your agency, you’ll be keeping a close eye on your budget. Even with a business loan and some other startup funding, your budget drains away quickly while you find your feet.

One of the ways you save money is by keeping your team small, a dedicated group of professionals, ideally with plenty of experience. Naturally you want to make your agency scalable, but you also don’t want too many permanent members of staff, just in case some parts of the year are quieter than others.

Another way is to keep as much work ‘in-house’ as possible. By handling a lot of the admin yourself, you can once again keep your team tight-knit, and save on having to bring in third parties.

However, as things get busier, this delicate balance begins to shift. With a large database, multiple systems, and plenty of clients to look after, suddenly all the admin becomes too much to handle. If your team is still doing it all themselves, that’s multiple hours out of the day where they aren’t doing what they do best.

This is what we call DIY back office. It works for a time, but eventually you need to bring in some help.

 

The Advantage of Third-Party Support Over Permanent Hires

One of the more obvious solutions to your admin problems is to bring in more staff to handle it. On paper this works great, you share the load and free up your other team members to focus on client support or working with your existing systems, all with the goal of growing the agency further.

However, as we mentioned, adding more staff is a costly business, and if scalability is a concern you need to tread carefully. And although you know the usefulness of temporary workers better than anyone, when it comes to admin support, they aren’t what your agency needs.

By using a third party back office provider, all the admin will be handled for you by people fully qualified for the job. Unfortunately, there are a lot of providers who won’t do your agency justice, and their work can do more harm than good.

 

The Disadvantages of Third-Party Support

Many agency owners are reluctant to work with third parties because they don’t like to relinquish control to someone outside of their agency. This makes sense, you’re sharing valuable information and data with a company whose representatives you may never meet.

There’s also your reputation to think of. If your third-party provider does a poor job, it reflects badly on you. Effective communication with clients is also a crucial part of their role, if they aren’t doing it well enough there will be frustration on all sides.

These issues have created a lot of stigma around third-party support, some of which is perfectly valid. But we’re working hard to show you what happens when your provider puts you first.

 

A Back Office Support Provider you can Trust

We keep things simple by offering a service that covers all bases. For a single fee, your agency will receive:

Everything you need to succeed from a team you can trust. No need to rely on multiple companies communicating with you and each other, you can crack on with running your agency and let us do our thing.

If you sign up with a third party provider, in most cases you’ll be one of many agencies that they look after. That means less time spent helping you, and you could easily be a low priority or have your questions ignored.

Not the case with us. We’ll set you up with two points of contact: your credit controller will keep a close eye on the credit limits of your clients, and your payroll account manager will work closely with your client, helping them and building a better relationship that will encourage them to continue using your temporary workers in the future.

Unlike other providers, these two professionals will be fully dedicated to you. They’ll provide regular updates to keep you in the loop, and are always contactable if you have any questions.

 

Keep Things Running Smoothly with Back Office Support

When things are busy, having a lot of admin to handle only restricts your growth. Working with us releases your team, and because it’s what we do best, you’ll notice fewer errors in your invoicing and more regular communication with clients.

If you’re looking to take the next step for your agency, don’t let the admin hold you back. And if you’re currently unsatisfied with your back office provider, there are better options out there!

To find out more about us and what we do, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.