These platforms can improve operational efficiencies, save time and enhance marketing efforts.

As is the case with any business, your primary goal is to generate growth and to make money.

Many companies abide by the philosophy that the way to improve their bottom line is simply to sell more of their product or service. But successful business leaders know better. There are many things a company can do to augment the strategy of “just selling more.”

One strategy to improve your business and increase your bottom line is to incorporate third-party platforms into your day-to-day operations.

Here are three ways taking advantage of third-party platforms can boost your business and make your life easier.

Efficiency

Most people would agree that “time is money.” It may be more accurate to say that time can either make you money, or it can cost you money. It’s up to you to decide which.

Third parties can provide either a product or a service (or sometimes a hybrid of both) that simplifies your business processes and saves you time, making your operation more efficient and more profitable.

Often, a third-party platform comes in the form of a piece of technology, either an application suite like Microsoft Office or a cloud-based service like a project management application. As an example, think about how technology applications like Word or QuickBooks have streamlined business workflow and added flexibility to countless business operations. With the speed at which technology evolves, we’re experiencing near constant improvement in business systems (theoretically, at least) and, subsequently, the speed with which we’re able to produce results.

There are also many examples of third-party investment platforms that increase operational efficiency without generating a significant expense. The companies behind these financial platforms have already conducted thorough due diligence on the products they offer. Some even provide a back office to support servicing and the other functions associated with the investment opportunities they offer.

Aside from operational support, some third-party platforms provide investment capital or augment your own fundraising efforts. Using these platforms can result in an enormous time savings for businesses in the financial sector.

Third-party platforms can be beneficial to a company’s marketing efforts. The most obvious examples of this at work today are advertising campaigns on social media or services with broad capabilities to incorporate social media management, email marketing and other individual functions into one platform. Some platforms offer industry-specific marketing services. Such platforms exist for real estate agents, private lenders and financial advisors. If all the companies in those verticals had to develop their own platforms themselves, the capital outlay and operational expenditures could be cost prohibitive and would require an abundance of time and resources.

Peace of Mind
Third-party platforms can also bring peace of mind to the companies that use them.

An investment platform, for example, implies a certain level of reliability. Having served numerous businesses, third-party financial platforms will have been tested, refined and improved over time. Because it takes years to build a platform and streamline its functions, a firm that offers such a platform has put in the time and effort to ensure its reliability and that it meets client expectations.

Another way that a third-party platform can offer peace of mind is through security. This is particularly relevant in the financial industry because of compliance standards. Anyone in the industry is familiar with the headaches that team(s) responsible for achieving and maintaining compliance standards can face. Any financial platform bears the liability for ensuring that those standards are met, relieving some or all that burden for businesses using the service.

Compliance in the financial industry obviously includes an immense amount of legal expertise and due diligence. Rapid technological advancements increase the urgency and need to satisfy data security protocols. Information security is especially paramount in the financial industry, where vast amounts of financial and often personal information is collected and stored. If you run a business with a dedicated IT department, you already understand the costs and complexities that accompany the technological requirements of maintaining adequate data security measures. That’s why it’s valuable to avail yourself of a third party —whether it’s an application or a full financial platform—to absorb some of that cost and to help improve the bottom line of your business.

Variety, Perspective and Expertise
Great things are rarely achieved in a vacuum. They are often the product of outside collaboration with others who have differing experiences and areas of expertise. For example, if you’re a private lender, you might have knowledge of only a few specific markets. But if you want to boost the growth of your business by expanding into other markets where you may not have the foundational knowledge you need to operate confidently, you could probably use some help. By engaging the right platform, you can expand your business and your options.

A third-party platform can provide a lot of operational benefits as well. For private lenders, this is where engaging a platform with additional back office support can bring some substantial value to the table. Even if your company has a staff with experience in underwriting and servicing loans, you can almost certainly benefit from the outside expertise that comes with using a third-party lending platform. Additionally, if your goal is to grow your lending operation, you likely will need the additional bandwidth a third-party platform can provide, at least in the short term.

Finally, working with a third-party platform can provide a disinterested and unbiased perspective on your own operation. Perhaps a service that provides underwriting services declines to fund a loan that your company would normally fund. What might you be able to learn from that feedback? Maybe they know something you don’t.

The same goes for something like loan servicing processes that differ from those of your own company. This outside expertise may serve as a safety net and provide a broader foundation upon which to grow your business.

The Past Is the Proof
Businesses have a lot to gain from pursuing strategic partnerships and taking advantage of third-party platforms. No matter what your goals or your needs are, you can get there more quickly and with less effort with a little help from the expertise and efficiency that third-party platforms provide.