Should I hire or outsource? It’s a question that most early stage enterprises must grapple with as they seek to scale up rapidly on the lowest possible costs. Hiring is generally a time-consuming, expensive business and it involves risks that cannot be easily mitigated should things go wrong. Outsourcing could imply organisational and communication challenges, especially when it is for a senior role or leadership position. When a strategic role like marketing is at stake, a wrong decision can have far reaching implications that may make or mar a company’s fortunes. We are convinced that it's a good idea for a smaller business to outsource its marketing director or VP level role.  Here are four reasons why. # 1 – Cost The biggest advantage of outsourcing , the reason why organizations globally are resorting to the ‘ shared-resource ’ model, is that it helps them put a lid on costs. The all-inclusive CTC of an average marketing director hired by less than two-y...

Ask any CEO the one thing he would kill for and he will say automatically: “fast growth on low cash and even lower risk.” Of course even as he says this he would realise that such stories belong exclusively to the realm of make-believe fiction. In real-world business ‘cash-burn’ is a bad but unavoidable word. The predicament for every business manager is that growth without large marketing spends, which includes a top-dollar business development team, is simply not possible—not thus far, anyway. “It’s a risk I must take or simply perish,” is what most CEOs will tell you. The problem is that as markets get increasingly crowded, competitive and disruptive the chances of such risks paying off are diminishing all the time, particularly for start-ups riding on a bubble of investor cash and valuations. In the new-age of business (regardless of its nature) CEOs need to constantly think out-of-the-box for gaining every square inch of mind and...