Big business has been doing it for years, but the mom and pop shops of less than 500 employees have still yet to get on the band wagon of outsourcing professional services. The biggest barrier to entry for small companies, in my opinion, is there lack of resources dedicated to finding new partners and companies to handle outsourced tasks. Small companies do not have the means to find reliable partners. Obviously they could always pick up a phone book or search the world wide web, but the results typically do not come with an outside opinion and position on a particular company’s ability or inability to provide services at a level they say they are able to. With nothing in hand, what is a small business owner/manager to do in economic times where only the most thrifty will survive.

This article in the ecommercetimes enforced my belief in why a tool like the NextStepDirectory, of which I am a co-founder, really needs to exist–abundant and reliable business information at your finger tips.

It is time for SMEs to really take a hard look at their bottom line, and figure out how they are going to squeeze every last unit of productivity out of the inputs to their final service. Outsourcing and finding new service providers outside one’s personal business network may be the first step in the right direction