Have you ever found yourself at a loss when starting your business? It’s like you know how to do this one aspect and create amazing outputs, but with the rest? You keep drawing a blank. That’s a normal occurrence because no person can handle all the functions of a business by themselves.
That’s why business owners hire employees to do specific tasks and functions. But when you’re just beginning your business, you might not have enough capital to fund operations as well as pay your employees’ wages. So what will you do then?
Easy. You outsource those tasks instead of hiring employees. By outsourcing, you’re getting experts to work on your specific tasks for a competitive price and an agreed-upon duration. The best part is that once that task is finished, you no longer need to pay for their services unless you need them to.
Outsourcing is a great way to get minor yet crucial tasks done cost-efficiently as you grow your business. Delegating such functions to experts will allow you to focus more on your core job, which is to oversee operations and hone your skills as a business owner.
If you’re still not sold on the idea of outsourcing workers, here are three aspects of business management that are commonly outsourced by startups:
Administration
In this department, you can outsource minor functions such as filing documents or reports, data entry, and other repetitive tasks that someone else can easily do. This can also be in the form of research and data collection, transcribing audio from interviews, or taking the minutes of the meeting.
Database building, creating weekly reports on hours and deliverables, and calendaring events are tasks that can also be outsourced. All these tasks are vital to your overall function as a business owner, but it doesn’t mean that you need to be the one handling them.
If you outsource these administrative tasks, you can have more time to focus on your core duties, whatever they may be. Besides, these tasks can be done by anyone as long as they get the proper training aligned with your preferences.
Finance
For this department, you can outsource functions like creating invoices, filing your taxes, or fixing a workable payroll scheme. You can also get the accounts payable and receivable done by an accounting firm or an individual you trust to deliver reliable outputs.
Managing your business’ finances can easily become a headache, especially if you don’t know the topic. By outsourcing these tasks, you’ll not only be saving on time and money, but you’re also saving yourself from the pain of understanding these accounting aspects of the business.
Another benefit you can get from outsourcing your finance tasks is that you won’t get stuck with unfiled taxes. Catching up on doing taxes during tax season is a hassle, especially if all the documents are scattered about instead of just in one place. Having someone do it for you, on the other hand, will make you more relaxed on focused on your business’ other functions.
Sales and Marketing
In this department, you can outsource everything from your website to your social media presence. There are different freelancers for each function, and you can require their assistance, depending on the task you need to accomplish.
For instance, if you need someone to create your website and design it in the way that you envision your image, you can hire a web developer and designer who specializes in those fields. And if you need someone to create your publicity materials or even your company logo, you can hire a graphic artist.
Handling your business’ social media accounts can be time-consuming as well when you’re focusing on operations. So you can hire a social media manager whose main task is to communicate with your potential market by keeping the accounts active and relevant.
You can also hire content creators who will be in charge of marketing your business through articles, videos, infographics, or other creative outputs that you cannot do on your own. Your freelancers can do this job on a bi-weekly or monthly method, depending on your marketing plan’s requirements.
The benefits that you can get from outsourcing tasks are almost equal to hiring in-house employees. You get qualified workers that can do the job you need, and then you pay them. But the biggest difference when you outsource is that you only pay for what you need.
Hiring in-house employees is all good for when you have enough money to give them regular wages, but it isn’t practical when you’re just beginning. By outsourcing, you can cut down on hardware and utility costs, office rental, and other expenses from an operational business.
