A Manchester company is betting that Britain’s growing SMEs are ready to outsource their entire back office as it sets its sights on £1 million turnover within 12 months.
Aurelian has launched with a new whole-business outsourcing model covering HR, finance, compliance, technology, marketing and operations, targeting companies which are growing but do not want to build a separate team for every function.
The company is seeking to tap into what it sees as a growing problem for businesses around the cost and complexity of building the infrastructure needed to support growth.
Aurelian estimates that a single SME attempting to replicate its full range of services through an equivalent in-house team could face around £300,000 a year in salaries alone, before taking into account employer National Insurance, pensions, recruitment, software, office costs and other employment overheads.
Ash Rashid, HR director at Aurelian, said: “Growth shouldn’t mean spending hundreds of thousands of pounds just building the machinery needed to run the business.
“An SME can need HR, finance, compliance, technology, marketing and operational expertise long before it can justify employing a specialist in every one of those areas.
“We created Aurelian to give businesses access to that expertise without forcing them to build six separate departments.”
The launch comes as Britain’s smaller businesses face pressure to grow while dealing with increasing regulatory, administrative and tech demands.
In June, the Government established a Small Business Regulatory Taskforce to examine the regulatory and administrative burden facing SMEs, acknowledging that complexity, duplication and uncertainty can place a disproportionate pressure on smaller businesses.
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The company’s services span People & HR, Finance & Bookkeeping, Marketing, Operations & Administration, Audits & Compliance and Technology Support.
Rather than hiring separate employees or managing multiple external consultants, clients can access several functions through Aurelian, with a dedicated account manager providing a single point of contact.
Rashid added: “The traditional approach is to solve every problem by hiring another person.
“That can work for a large corporate, but for an SME it can quickly become incredibly expensive.
“Our model gives growing businesses the expertise of a much larger organisation without requiring them to carry the salary bill of one.”
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