Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Many small business owners tend to make the same mistake when they first start out: they try to keep complete control over every aspect of their work for too long. This is understandable. When you create your own business, you’re in complete control. You work for months on end alone to get things off the ground and up and running. It’s also likely that you will be reluctant to ask for help with their venture, as they consider third parties and outsourcing agencies a needless expense when you can take on the extra work yourself. But as you start receiving more and more orders or contracts (and consequently more and more responsibility), you’ll soon grow to realise that you’re not a robot. If you try to go it alone, you’ll end up burning yourself out. What’s more? Your business will suffer for it. You need to focus on areas such as product development. You need to be deciding how you’re going to push your business forward, what you’re going to bring to the plate for the marketplace, which demographic you’re going to target next… You can’t do all of this if you’re constantly tied up with administrative tasks, correspondence, and market research. In short, you need help to succeed. However, when you do decide to collaborate with a third party, it’s important that you find the right one. After all, their work will automatically reflect on your brand, so you need to ensure that they are reliable, professional, and avoid controversy at all costs. So, here are a few ways to go about finding the perfect partner!

Carrying Out Audits

First things first, you should carry out an audit that will give the potential partner c tpat certification. This will ensure that you can assess and enhance security measures throughout the third party’s business and supply chains. You can also carry out further audits to ensure that they have the same ethical and moral policies as your company too!

Set Out a Contract

To ensure that you and the third party know exactly what is expected of one another, you should set out a contract that can be signed before getting to work or exchanging any money or services. This means that everyone is completely clear on what to do!

Monitor Progress

When you collaborate with another individual, agency, or company, things may start out swimmingly well. But things might slide as time goes by. So it’s important that you monitor progress to ensure that everything the other party is doing is beneficial and positive for your own brand. The best way to do this is to measure productivity (ensuring that orders and tasks are being completed on time, every time), and that they are still complying to the rules and procedures that you laid out in the first place months or even years down the line.

As you can see, you’re going to have to put a fair amount of thought into avoiding controversy when working with third parties. But the above advice should help you to make a great success of your partnership!