Being the owner of a small business is rewarding in many ways: you get to pursue your passion, be your own boss, and work towards a goal that feels truly fulfilling. Of course, it can be a double-edged sword in that you will also find yourself working day and night, burning the midnight oil constantly. It can be hard and you will find yourself wearing many different hats in order to keep your business afloat. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Thanks to all the tools and technology available these days, there are certain services that you can outsource to a third party to help optimize your business operations and make things easier for you. If you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed and at your wit’s end, consider the following services that you can easily outsource to get some much-needed peace of mind.
1. Accounting and Financial Management
Payroll is the bane of most business owners’ existence. There’s truly no reason to deal with it yourself, given how tedious and time consuming it can be. Outsourcing payroll to experts in accounting and financial management who have extensive experience in this arena can save you a great deal of time and headaches since they will know how to implement it efficiently while decreasing costs and increasing tax compliance. You may even save considerable money in the long run, as many businesses often incur extra fees in penalties resulting from erroneous filings and late or incorrect payments.
Hiring an external accountant or financial manager to help implement details such as payroll and proper taxation can be instrumental in other ways. For example, trying to manage the annual sales tax compliance of assets yourself can be a huge mistake since it can triple the amount owed if you’re audited. Outsourcing allows different online services and automated software created by those in the know to decrease the risks and save a ton of money and time in the future.
2. Security Services
Most small businesses will need to employ security guards and the like to help protect the premises. However, as the security specialists of Perthsecurityservices.com.au will say, most managers do not have the requisite know-how or resources to properly vet the individuals they employ. The staff you hire to fill these positions needs to be reliable, trustworthy, ready trained and can pass any background check easily. As a business owner, you may not be able to bring the right person on board or have the background to train them, which is why this is an excellent service to outsource.
3. Digital Marketing
Savvy use of social media is essential to succeeding in today’s economy. E-marketing
is definitely the way to go, and it is an arena that continues to grow exponentially. Trying to create content for your online marketing strategy, responding to public relations inquiries, or requests that come through your small business’ website is not always feasible. Nor is it feasible to hire two or three people to handle your social media marketing. All in all, this has increasingly become an arena in which it is much easier to outsource a large portion of the labor in order to protect your company’s capacity and work on other things integral to its success.
4. IT Assistance
It’s hard to find time to deal with technical issues that come up in the day to day operations of running a business. Whether you need a software update, help with creating backups and LTO tapes, fixing the copier, or removing a virus, there are small things that come up all the time, and it doesn’t make sense to try to figure out how to do it yourself. Especially if you’re not all that tech-savvy. IT assistance is definitely something that can and should be outsourced to another party to help you focus on other more pertinent issues when it comes to daily operations.
5. Consultancy Services
In general, you can hire the manpower to help you deal with anything that comes up. For example, you may need to hire a freelancer to help deal with a project-based translation project. Or, more importantly, you can hire a consultant to help you draft a new strategic plan, envision different ways to grow sustainably, help you with a grant writing project, or any other key function that requires more brainpower and a facility for writing, which you do not have the time to pursue. Consultants can help you in more ways than one, and there are lots of different project-based tasks you can outsource to specialists in the respective fields.
6. Customer Support
Excellent, responsive customer service is key to ensuring that your business remains a success with a loyal customer base. However, it can take time to set-up, and require that you hire far more people than you are able to monitor on-site.
The best way to take some of the pressure off of your shoulders is to look into a reliable call center with well-trained staff. Call centers are great since all the people working there are very experienced, already trained in how to provide a professional and streamlined experience for customers, and best of all, they are ready to work at the drop of a hat. Their work is facilitated by the proliferation of different apps and cloud-based services that are also fairly affordable. So, establishing a system of collaborating with a knowledgeable third party is not only doable, it can be cost-effective.
7. Shipping and Logistics
Getting a separate drop shipping service to help mail out your business’ products is a great idea since you will not have to deal with any of the logistics at all. Outsourcing shipping and its logistics can help get the products directly to customers in little time and without any hassles so that you can focus on other aspects of running your business.
Given how hectic the pace of daily life is for the vast majority of us these days, especially for business owners or self-made entrepreneurs, it pays to realize that perhaps you shouldn’t be a one-person show. It definitely makes sense economically to outsource key functionalities when you can, so that you can have the time and energy to focus on other pressing issues that are more important to you.
