4 Jobs You Can Outsource in Your Small Business
Running a small business is a lot of work. There are a lot of things you must do in order to keep your business running smoothly. Most small businesses have a limited number of employees so sometimes you and your team have to take on different roles in order to get everything done. As the business owner, you might feel the responsibility to take on tasks that you can’t afford to hire other people to do. But this can often lead to business owners not having enough time to do everything.Â
If you’re struggling to keep up with all of the responsibilities of running a business but you can’t afford to hire in-house teams for everything, there are a number of services that you can hire to take over the tasks you can’t do yourself. This will give you more time to run your business and peace of mind knowing that everything is getting done. Here are some things you can outsource to professional service companies.
1. Customer Support
If you want your business to be successful, you need to prioritize gaining and maintaining customers. Perhaps you handle things like answering phones or setting up appointments, or maybe you’ve hired someone to take care of customer service. But oftentimes, when a business starts growing, it can be hard to keep up with phone calls and maintain a high standard of customer service.
That’s why many business owners opt for a telephone answering service small business or a similar service that can handle all incoming calls, regardless of the time of day or number of calls. This ensures that every customer gets to speak with a real person and doesn’t have to wait on hold endlessly. If customer support is taking up a lot of your time and resources, it might be time to outsource this job.
2. Accounting
Keeping good accounting records is essential for every business. If your company is ever audited, you need to have everything in order. And keeping accurate financial records helps you to see how your company is doing financially and helps you to make better decisions. However, hiring a finance team and buying accounting software can be expensive and you may not have the resources to keep an in-house team.
If you outsource your business’ accounting, you can save both time and money. Accounting services can handle payroll, taxes, and other tasks. Since you’ll be outsourcing to professionals, you can rest easy knowing that they can handle your accounts and taxes. These services can even save you money on tax penalties, as many small businesses receive penalties for incorrect filing.
3. IT
Every business uses technology in some form. The more complex systems you use in your business, the more you need a competent IT team. But an in-house team isn’t always a practical solution. It costs a lot more to hire an in-house team than to outsource your IT services.
There are a wide range of IT services available. Depending on the needs of your company, you can choose a service that has all of the support your company needs. IT services can help set up and maintain cloud and software services, ensure that your network is secure, monitor your internet usage and devices, create custom applications for your business, and provide tech support. Whether your company uses a lot of tech or just the basics, IT services can help you keep your network secure and working.
4. Administrative Tasks
It can be difficult to keep up with the day-to-day administrative tasks required to run your business. From answering emails to posting on social media, even the smallest tasks add up and take up precious time in the day. If you’re not willing to commit to hiring an office assistant, perhaps a virtual assistant could help your business.
Virtual assistants can handle just about anything an in-office assistant can. You can assign any tasks that you can’t continue to do yourself to a virtual assistant to lighten your load. From setting up business appointments to inputting data, virtual assistants have the training to complete a variety of administrative tasks. You can hire a virtual assistant for a very low hourly rate, although you might have to pay a bit more if you want someone with more experience or specialized skills.
Starting and growing a small business takes a lot of time and resources. It forces you to wear different hats and learn about every aspect of running a company. But you don’t have to do it alone. There are many services that can help take extra work off your plate. Whether it’s customer support, accounting, IT, administrative work, or something else that’s becoming more than you can handle on your own, hiring a service to take care of these tasks will give you more time for running your business.