Small businesses can improve productivity and entrust important processes and tasks to professionals without increasing their full-time staff size by outsourcing. Such businesses can also control costs, increase efficiency and focus more on parts of their business that are most important.
Therefore, outsourcing can be beneficial in a variety of business areas.
What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing refers to the practice of hiring someone outside your business or organization to perform specific functions for your company. In most cases, these functions are not the expertise of your current employees, or the process in question consumes a great deal of time, pulling employees away from necessary tasks. You can help your workforce better focus their time and energy on tasks that benefit the company within specialty areas by outsourcing some functions.
The following are 10 outsourcing opportunities for small businesses you should consider:
Accounting
Outsourcing the accounting tasks for your business is a good idea if you have either a small to medium business. It’s also beneficial if you don’t have someone who is currently dedicated to account on your team. Compliance standards must be met and having a professional accountant handling such tasks will ensure both accuracy and efficiency as well as guarantee compliance. Bookkeeping, tax accounting, and payroll processing are among the accounting services available for outsourcing. Taking these tasks off the plate of employees can free them up to work on other things for which they are better suited.
IT: Information Technology
Another outsourcing opportunity for many small businesses is IT services. IT outsourcing can handle information technology-related tasks for your company. Staying on top of IT requires an abundance of knowledge pertaining to many elements including security, integration, and troubleshooting. Consequently, it can be a great outsourcing opportunity for your business.
Customer Service
Outsourcing customer service will often look like hiring an outside call center or online chat service to handle your business’s customer service responsibilities. This can be a good idea if you don’t have staff currently committed to customer service. It’s important to note that sales are directly affected by the quality of customer support your business provides. Therefore, it’s important to clarify your preferred customer service strategy as well as any specific expectations with your outsourcing partner.
HR
In-house HR departments can be both inefficient and expensive. In addition, you can successfully reduce your workload while improving your employee relations through HR outsourcing. An HR firm can provide a wide range of HR services, which can include hiring, training, payroll management, and benefits administration. Furthermore, they can manage insurance and benefits, recruit, and enforce compliance.
Marketing
Another outsourcing opportunity you should consider is marketing. Obviously, marketing plays a key role in growing any business. Marketing agencies can produce the output you need rather than relying on a single employee to handle this matter in-house. Keep in mind that successful marketing campaigns often involve many components.
A skilled marketing agency will take care of your ad design, content creation, social media postings, branding, and campaign execution, freeing up your team to focus on running your business. Many business owners simply do not have the knowledge of marketing strategies necessary to keep their brand seen and heard. To ensure that your business is not left behind by not utilizing innovative marketing strategies, it’s important to hire someone who is an expert in the field.
Sales
The development and execution of an effective sales process, including lead generation, sales funnels, and closing deals, requires a specific set of skills. Creating a sales workflow and closing deals is a skill that can be outsourced if your business lacks people with such expertise. In some cases, it takes the weight of making sales off your employees and allows them to focus on other elements of your business like providing a good service or superb product.
Administrative Work
Small administrative tasks can often get lost in the shuffle. Therefore, outsourcing administrative work can be advantageous to the growth of your business. This can include tasks like making appointments, handling office logistics, answering the phone, creating travel itineraries, and more. Executives can hire either a virtual assistant or outsource to a firm for the day-to-day administrative tasks that are necessary to keep a business running smoothly.
Payroll
Staying on top of payroll can be a bit daunting for many business owners and administrative teams. After all, employee onboarding, exiting and tax returns are just a few of the many things that can demand a lot of time and energy. Thankfully, outsourcing payroll can ensure that your business meets all compliance standards for government requirements along with providing additional security as payroll outsourcing service providers handle employee payroll administration along with overseeing compliance issues on your behalf.
Research
Research with regard to your business is important when trying to understand industry trends and relate to customers. Unfortunately, the process of collecting and organizing said data can take a great deal of time and resources. You can scale your business more efficiently by hiring an external research and development team.
Shipping and Logistics
Outsourcing the shipping and logistics elements of your business can be a good idea, especially if these are problematic areas for your business. Shipping and logistic companies can help you deliver goods on time and without damage to your customers or their purchases.
There Are Many Benefits to Outsourcing
Outsourcing certain business functions can help you increase your workforce’s productivity. When you outsource tasks that do not correlate with your company’s core functions, your employees are freed up to focus on what they do best and are highly skilled at completing. Therefore, through the process of outsourcing, you will save your team time and increase their efficiency. This means your business will benefit greatly if you decide to outsource some needed functions.
