Outsourcing is one of the most effective strategies for cutting operational costs of a business.
Small businesses often use outsourcing because quality work is guaranteed, because the work is usually done by experts in a specific field rather than one person who wears many different hats.
Before outsourcing, you should first identify your objectives and have a complete understanding of what you want to achieve and the savings you want to make.
Those savings could be financial or they could be saving time so you or a colleague can focus on something else, something you are better at for example.
Outsourcing the right parts of your business can
- Improve your work/life balance
- Provide business continuity
- Save money and mitigate risks
A study by the American Psychological Association indicates that multitasking or managing multiple projects at once could result in a 40% drop in productivity.
Outsourcing helps keep you and your team productive. #smallbiz Share on X
Continue reading to find out what five tasks every small business can potentially outsource.
1. Accounting and Finances
How much revenue did your business generate last week or last month?
It’s okay if you can’t recall the exact amount, but that number should be well documented and appropriately stored and ready for reference.
Without accurate accounting records, it is nearly impossible to make sound business decisions.
Here’s how an accountant or bookkeeper can help:
- Help you create a filing system for all your receipts
- Set up software to track all your expenses and assist you in keeping track of aging invoices
- Chase payments and answering invoicing or order queries
- Ensure you don’t miss any filing deadlines (ex. government tax penalties can be a significant blow to your business)
On a global scale, multitasking or handling multiple projects at once costs the economy $450 billion annually. From these findings, you don’t want to make the same mistakes when you manage all the finances for your small business.
Outsourcing bookkeeping will not only ensure that your profit records and other invoices are maintained by a team of professionals but will also improve the productivity of your business.
2. Content Marketing
Content development is vital to the social promotion of any business. Content helps build a reputable image of an organization and also educate the audience on the products or services offered.
Furthermore, good content helps the company create a positive relationship with its target market by providing useful, relevant and interesting information.
With content marketing, it’s important that you engage your target audience without being too “salesy.”
The objective of content marketing should be generating leads and establishing a good relationship with those leads thus increasing the chances of conversions.
According to a B2B Content Marketing Report, 75% of businesses outsource content in some way.
You can hire a freelance writer or an agency, but either way you’ll save money, and at the same time build a strong bond with your potential customers.
3. Information Technology Support
You have basic computer knowledge, right? But can you resolve any hardware problems that might arise on a busy day?
Computers and any other tech gadget in your business can go down at any time including those manic days when you need them to perform major tasks or make a sale.
If you’re not tech savvy or don’t have the right resources in your business, you can outsource IT related services either locally or remotely. You can have a monthly support subscription for either onsite or remote services.
According to a 2016 Deloitte Survey, 72% of businesses outsource some of their information technology services, while 31% plan to outsource IT services in the near future.
Outsourcing IT services can result in cost savings of as high as 40%, and that can significantly improve efficiency and ultimately the value of your business.
4. Website Management and Design
You’ve already had your website up and running, you’re happy, and your customers are visiting it. Now, what’s next?
Depending on the impact that your site has on your business, it needs to be maintained and up to date. There are all kinds of tasks that a webmaster performs including:
- Regular backups need to be scheduled, virus scans need to be run, and software upgrades need to be completed
- Information about services offered, location, your team of professionals, and contacts must be updated regularly
- Your marketing efforts need to be synchronized with your website
A website that’s not adequately managed is at best a wasted opportunity and at worst can easily be hacked, potentially costing you customers and landing you in legal jeopardy.
You want to make sure that you spend more time expanding your business instead of worrying about your website.
Outsourcing to a professional webmaster can keep your website content updated and improve the security features of your website.
5. Administrative Support
Hiring a virtual assistant can be one of the best decisions you make.
Your Virtual Assistant (VA ) can help complete administrative tasks while you’re working on something far more important.
A VA can help you:
- Maintain your personal schedule
- Prepare mailings
- Book travel arrangements
- Perform collections and invoicing
- Do voicemail and email management
You can also outsource for a niche specific virtual assistant to do receipt management and bookkeeping for you if you have no need for a qualified accountant.
Hiring a virtual assistant will not only save you money but will also save you and your staff’s time.
Hiring a virtual assistant saves you time and money. #smallbiz Share on X
This approach is especially efficient for a startup because there is no long and laborious process of recruiting and training. A virtual assistant can often hit the ground running and get you organized and on track.
Bottom Line
When you outsource tasks, you can focus your time and resources on your business.
Outsourcing adds skilled personnel to your team without adding the additional expense of full-time workers plus you can forgo the rounds of interviews and negotiations.
Ultimately by reducing employee benefit costs, accounting, payroll and associated paperwork, outsourcing will allow you to focus your time and budget on what’s important for your company.
10 thoughts on “5 Tasks Every Small Business Can (And Should!) Outsource”
Wow, saving this tab! Such a helpful and insightful post. Will be making some changes for 2018!
Awesome Renee! Hope they go well.
You have put across some very valid points. I do agree that multitasking can reduce productivity and can result in losing focua on the main goal.
Thanks Rajlakshmi! Yep, multitasking definitely does. I’ve also cut my notifications (like phone or email alerts) so I can stay focused while working.
This is awesome! I am definitely in need of outsourcing a few things: accounting namely. I SOOOO need to get a bookkeeper or accountant at some point this coming year! Thanks a bunch for this informative post! I am so pinning this!
Yep, totally feel you on accounting! That’s something important that can get done incorrectly or forgotten about. I personally like doing my own books right now, but I’m a little weird lol. Anyway, thanks so much for pinning and commenting Maliha!
Outsourcing is so tough, this helps!
So glad this helps you Cheryl!
Hey, Jack, great article!
The whole of our marketing is a team of outsourced people all-over the world and pretty much connects via Slack. Our payroll manager is an outsourced HR company based in the Philippines and many more.
My company is really big on outsourcing for the same reason you have stated that it helps owners and managers focus on bigger and more important things concerning the business.
One disadvantage of constant outsourcing though is the fact that you can have difficulty when it comes to transparency and accountability of your people and tracking daily productivity.
Our CEO and managers prevent and minimize problems like that via this: https://www.process.st/marketing-processes/. Maybe one of your readers will find this helpful along with your article 🙂
Couldn’t agree more! Business owners can then focus on the most imporant tasks to grow their businesses or do the task they are most comfortable with and leave the rest of the to their assistants.