7 Functions Your Small Business Should Outsource
As an entrepreneur, you probably already know that the best way to go about business is to make money work for you. This is where outsourcing comes in. If you’re unsure which parts of the business you have to outsource, read on.
Besides managing business operations, you also have to look after things at the backend of the business such as accounting and bookkeeping, marketing, and more. These are things that you can’t ignore without suffering serious consequences.
In this article, we’ll share with you 7 functions your small business should outsource.
1. IT Services
IT services come in many forms. It can be through software maintenance, website maintenance, software development, data security, and more. These are important especially if your business relies heavily on technologies such as software maintenance and data security.
IT aspects of the business can be crucial. Unfortunately, this is part of the backend unless IT services are what your small business offers. If it’s not the core task of your business, it’s ideal to outsource these IT tasks to professionals.
There are a lot of benefits to outsourcing IT tasks. If you outsource IT services, you know that the people who will be working on it have the technical expertise. This means that you already have the best people for the job.
Outsourcing also doesn’t mean that you spend an unreasonable amount of money. In fact, outsourcing businesses can be the more cost-efficient option. This is because you no longer have to hire your own people for the IT services in-house.
Even if hiring professionals may be a bit costlier, the benefits of hiring them far outweigh the slight difference in price. With professionals, you can have 24/7 support, access to the latest technology, scalability, and efficient troubleshooting.
2. Marketing and Digital Promotion
In this day and age, it’s almost suicide not to involve marketing in your business. Small businesses that make use of marketing will always outcompete small businesses that don’t do marketing. If you are taking your business seriously, marketing and digital promotion are a must.
Your business will not survive without it. People want to support businesses that they see on social media. Often, that’s how people discover businesses. In fact, today, people rely more on the internet when looking for something to purchase or avail than by stumbling upon business establishments while out on a walk.
The internet is now the best place where people can find your business and if it’s not there, you can’t hope for your business to really thrive. However, marketing isn’t always easy. It comes with a lot of challenges as the marketing world itself is very competitive.
Apart from being able to have more time to focus on your core business process, being able to delegate marketing to expert strategists allow you to be sure you’re visible on the internet, especially on social media platforms.
This doesn’t just mean that your business has a website or different pages on social media but that they way it is marketed makes use of practices such as SEO to ensure people see you more easily. Moreover, marketers are great at creating content and as mentioned, know the best online marketing practices.
3. Customer Service
Another core aspect of a business is customer service. Even if you only manage a small business, doing customer service is a lot of work and can be a major distraction from managing your business. Customer service allows you to have customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer service is something you have to delegate especially if the quantity of customer inquiries is high. Otherwise, you’ll end up using much of your valuable time entertaining queries instead of working on and improving other business processes.
With small business outsourcing, you get people with the experience and skills to better handle your customers. This can result in better customer satisfaction and loyalty for your business.
Moreover, you can better focus on your business. This allows you to be more competitive at both the front end and the back end of your business.
4. Administrative and Back-Office Tasks
Running a business involves so many things. A couple of these are administrative and back-office tasks. These are time-consuming but very important matters that can’t be ignored or undone. It’s the nervous system of your business and not giving it the attention that it requires can be fatal for your business.
These tasks can also require certain skills such as being good at organization and dealing with people. If these skills are not your strength, they can impact your business negatively. Moreover, these tasks can involve countless of subtasks such as data entry, scheduling of appointments, keeping records and so much more.
By outsourcing these crucial business tasks, you can free up yourself from the hassle, time and stress by delegating them to professionals. Moreover, having experts working with you on these tasks can potentially allow you to even improve the current systems that you may have.
5. Accounting and Bookkeeping
Accounting and bookkeeping are crucial aspects in running a business. Without these two, you can end up having no clear financial direction. And there are worse things that can happen if you don’t have proper accounting and bookkeeping.
You can end up facing legal consequences if there are issues with your records. Managing the accounting and bookkeeping of your business can be very tedious. Not only that, but there’s no space for error with this. Otherwise, you can face serious legal consequences.
Moreover, it can be complicated and confusing to do accounting and bookkeeping especially if you’re not too familiar with how it’s done. With outsourced services, you enjoy the assurance of accuracy and compliance.
Moreover, you can have peace of mind not having to worry about ensuring all records are kept and organized correctly. This all means that you can better focus on your business potentially making it more lucrative.
6. Creative and Design Services
Procedures that involve a lot of creativity and design require the skills of an artist. While anyone can just have a go at doing designs for a website, social media poster, or whatever it may be, they may not match the quality that’s expected for the brand of your business.
Even if what you manage is a small business, it does not mean that you have to compromise the design of whatever requires it. Especially for your logo, website and marketing materials, you would want to have something that at least looks professionally done.
Otherwise, your business won’t seem like it’s being taken seriously. By hiring professionals for creative and design services, you are certain to get professional-looking materials. Moreover, you no longer have to stress about racking your brain into creating designs that you’re having a hard time coming up with. Let alone bringing those thoughts into reality.
By tapping into the expertise of external creative professionals, you can elevate your brand’s aesthetic appeal, establish consistency, and make a lasting impact on your target audience. Be one of the companies who outsource to enjoy these benefits.
7. Staffing
While it can be easy to look for people who can work for your small business, you can’t just hire anyone who inquires for a job. Also, will you have the time to interview and do the onboarding process?
A bad hire can have serious consequences. This is the challenge with hiring. It takes skills to determine whether a person can be fit for your organization and its culture. It also takes having a network of skilled people to tap into to get people who have the genuine qualifications for the job.
By delegating this task to a staffing company, you get to partner with an organization that not only can help you get the right people, but they can also take care of the entire onboarding process for you.
This not only frees up your time but also allows you to have a high-quality team to work for your small business. Workforce can be everything and with a team that are skilled and have the experience and knowledge, you can have a significant advantage over your competition.
How Do You Know Which Functions Should Be Outsourced?
This is a great question. Just because you can outsource services, it doesn’t mean you should. Having the option to delegate doesn’t mean that you should delegate everything right away. Doing so might actually be bad for your business and ruin it.
Your focus with your small business should be growth. If there are tasks that are keeping you from doing that, those are most likely the tasks that you should delegate. However, you should also mind the cost versus the profits.
If outsourcing activities may free up your time but will negatively impact your business financially in the long run, perhaps its better to focus on cash flow first before outsourcing. However, if outsourcing proves to make you earn more, then by all means, do it.
Make sure that the team you hire for outsourcing is at the same page with you with everything. That way, they know and understand your goals and how they can achieve them.
Elevate Your Small Business With the Power of Outsourcing
It’s not true that only large businesses need to utilize outsourcing. Small businesses too can benefit from the incredible benefits of outsourcing. However, you need to be smart if you do decide to outsource business services.
Perhaps the greatest benefits of outsourcing is being able to have more time to focus on growing your business, having professionals that specialize on the tasks you outsourced them for and the potential growth in profit.
In the dynamic landscape of small businesses, outsourcing has emerged as a strategic tool that empowers entrepreneurs to achieve remarkable results. From boosting operational efficiency to expanding capabilities, the benefits of outsourcing are undeniable.
Consider partnering with Help Resource, a leading outsource staffing solutions provider, to take advantage of a wide range of services that can transform your business. Your entrepreneurial dreams are within reach – harness the potential of outsourcing and elevate your small business to new heights!
