As an entrepreneur, you may wonder if you should outsource some of your business activities and if it will be safe to hire virtual employees. To make your thoughts clear, a lot of business computer activities can be outsourced nowadays. However, you should identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses to analyze which business activities you should outsource that will help increase productivity and reduce the costs of your business.
Since costs are the key reason to outsource, you also need to be careful not to work with a service provider that will drain your budget instead of helping you to increase revenue. Outsourcing is not costly, provided that you hire the right company or professional to take care of.
What Is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a practice in which a business hires a company to perform certain tasks, projects, and handle specific activities. The reason for outsourcing is to cut costs and save time on services that can be efficiently provided by other professionals. These are people who offer their services and support to help you grow. They take care of tasks and projects so you don’t have. That’s why many IT developers provide this service, or outsourcing is even a major focus of the company. That’s why people hire different developers from outside companies – from React developers to many others.
Outsourcing is popular among small businesses that need to focus on the core activities of the business management and may not have enough time, money, or experience to carry on other tasks.
Outsourcing is also a great form of delegating work so someone else can do it better and faster. Sometimes it may take just one person who will support you in your endeavors to maximize costs and perform better.
If you’re considering outsourcing, you can either hire an individual who has specialist knowledge, or a company that’s responsible for the entire outsourcing process. Both have some negative and positive aspects and the choice should be dictated by your business preferences and needs.
Moreover, outsourcing may be a great opportunity for you to meet new business owners, share experience, and create a new partnership.
Increase Productivity by Outsourcing of Business Activities
When outsourcing, you get access to skills and resources outside of your company, and are not spending time on the wrong tasks. And it’s especially important for small businesses who need to focus on the core aspects of their activity.
Here are 5 common business activities to outsource that are opted by most business owners to increase their company’s productivity and make it bigger and better.
1. Business accounting services
Managing the financial records of a company is important but a tiresome task. Keeping track of the small business accounts, many numbers, payrolls, bookkeeping, taxes, and other finances can be outsourced by seeking the help of a virtual assistant who is more proficient in handling accounts.
And if accounting in your company is more complicated and requires specialistic knowledge, It’s also worth considering to outsource a person who can give you full support in accounting and is good at financial management.
2. Social Media Marketing
Online presence is vitally important for a growing company. Regular updates, replying to queries, and following up on feedback makes it easy for entrepreneurs to engage with their existing and potential clients. It’s also a great opportunity to increase visibility on the internet without bearing additional costs.
However, the task can be time-consuming for many business owners.
A social media marketing consultant can be hired to handle the social promotion of your company allowing you to focus on other tasks.
There are many individuals or agencies whose services can be tailored to your business model. Especially that many outsourcing organizations hire dedicated employees whose work consists only of social media management. They often have the right skill set and knowledge of social media dynamics and know how to target the potential customer.
3. Customer Service
Call centers are a good way to outsource customer service especially for those businesses that receive lots of phone calls. Representatives of call centers are trained to handle numerous calls a day from people of various niches and can save you from the expense of hiring extra staff.
Customer service can also include other activities from the filed of customer support. And here, again, it’s worth outsourcing available services. For example, find people who will create and handle tickets, respond to emails, advise in buying a product or service, and support customers in their journey. That way, you will ensure that every customer is given enough attention, and people will know that your business takes care of everyone.
4. Website design and management
A successful business owner doesn’t have to be tech-savvy. They can easily hire a web designer to handle, manage, and support their company’s website who will customize presence in the virtual world according to requirements.
You may consider outsourcing dedicated service providers who will take care of your website and make sure everything works properly. It’s better to have a person who will help you create and manage a website rather than trying to build it on your own with poor results.
After all, a website is your business card on the internet, it should be professional and well-designed.
5. Time tracking software
A time tracking software allows the business owners to record the time spent by employees on the specific tasks.
By utilizing time management tools, entrepreneurs can easily check the progress of their virtual employees, see how they are working, and give feedback about the work they complete.
The time tracking software’s also help the employees to stay accounted for their time and maintain their productivity regardless of their geographical location.
But there are many more benefits that accrue from using time tracking software:
- Saving on human resource – time tracking software can help you in organizing activities related to human resource practices by gathering important information about employees
- It can help in company management – you can use the software as your project management hub where you can store all the information about your business
- Streamline accounting – financial data gathered by the software may support your accountant in their work
- Determine which activities you need to outsource by looking at the data
- Additionally, if you’re outsourcing business activities, data collected by time tracking software can help the service providers in their work, be it accounting, payroll management, or task and project planning
It’s a great solution for busy business owners who either can’t afford to outsource services, don’t want to hire more employees or want to make productivity of current employees better.
Which Activities Do You Outsource?
Outsourcing some of the business activities will not only save money but a great deal of stress as well. Hiring assistants for the tasks that you are probably not skilled at anyways will give you more time for a higher level of activities to make your business grow.
And there are activities you will need to consider outsourcing, especially if your company is not good at them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s better to outsource a specialist who can help you grow rather than waste time and money.
If you’re looking for places to outsource business activities, try some of the most popular websites where people promote themselves. They can help you grow, and you can help them get a customer.
Some of the people you outsource may become your long-time reliable partners.
Happy outsourcing!
✍ Last updated May 2020