When you are trying to grow your company, whether with staff or with output, you will inevitably face many challenges, more so if your money is a bit tight!
Luckily, there are many alternatives to simply taking out a huge loan to build your company up more. This is why in 2023, more companies are choosing to outsource some of the tasks they need to oversee, which can help their business to grow long term.
Many companies offer the option to outsource areas of your business, depending on the tasks at hand. One of the most common ones is HR, but these are also popular if you need help with maintaining an IT system or your accounts.
There any benefits to outsourcing as well. For example, you can benefit from a flexible and agile workforce without the cost of needing to hire an entire team. It’s worth noting at this point that outsourcing jobs are not the same as offshoring! With outsourcing, you aim to get as much work off your desk as possible or hire a team with the specialist skills you don’t have to benefit your business. On the other hand, offshoring is all about lowering costs to your company and transferring certain aspects of your business abroad to increase profitability. So, best to have that distinction cleared up moving forward!
Therefore, if you’re looking to reduce a specific task in your workplace and don’t have the money to put another person on the payroll, what are some of the things that you can outsource? This article aims to explore that question in a bit more depth, so read on to learn more!
Human Resources
One of the most common areas that businesses will outsource is human resources or HR.
Why? Well, there are many advantages of HR outsourcing for growing companies. For one thing, these specialized task forces can help your business to expand in areas such as recruitment, the admin of the benefits system of your company, as well as the performance management of your team. They can also put in and utilize an HR structure for your company and oversee your staff’s general compliance, thus getting some rules in place. That way, you don’t have to worry about payroll, staff hiring, or payments at the end of the month, and you can focus on maintaining a positive work environment.
Accounting and Finance Based Tasks
In a similar vein, many businesses opt to outsource accounting and financing tasks, including that end-of-year tax return! This has the obvious benefit of your company being able to access expert financial management to ensure that you are not breaking any laws inadvertently relating to tax, which could lead to fines from the IRS.
So, what are some of the most commonly outsourced services based on accounting and finances? The key one is bookkeeping, financial reporting, tax preparation, payroll processing, and, of course, accounts payable.
IT Support
Many companies can attest to the fact that as any company begins to grow and develop, the IT needs will become more complicated, simply because you may have more staff coming in who will need to have a computer setup, as well as access to any software processing that your company has. Outsourcing IT and the associated services can provide you and your company with access to a team of skilled professionals without needing to find the space requirements of building an internal IT department. Their overseeing can include things such as network maintenance, monitoring of cyber security (very important if you have customers’ financial information or patients’ personal information), software development, and technical support for when the system goes down.
Customer Support
Customer support or customer service has undergone many changes in the last few years, primarily due to the invention of chatbots on websites. However, if you are an online company that is large enough to do so, it can be worth outsourcing the task of customer service to a separate business. This can involve outsourcing things such as phone, or e-mail support, live chats, ticket management, and even social media monitoring if needed. If somebody posts a complaint or issue to your social media page, customer support can jump in and aim to resolve the issue. This can help when your business is growing, as it will help you manage an increasing volume of customer inquiries while also focusing on your core business.
Remember, many growing businesses will utilize both customer service as well as chatbots. The benefit of chatbots is that, unlike customer service, they are accessible to customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, in order to ensure that your customers receive top-notch customer support, it is best to have both.
Marketing and Digital Marketing
Even if you have an online business that doesn’t have a physical storefront, you are going to need to attract people to your business. The best way to do this in 2023 is to invest in marketing, specifically digital marketing. This usually includes areas such as search engine optimization, SEO, e-mail marketing, and social media marketing.
As its name suggests, search engine optimization is all about getting your company page onto the first page of Google search results. That way, your customer base will expand, and more people will choose your services. Social media marketing, on the other hand, is important for engaging with your target audience and showcasing your product, as well as informational blogs about what you can offer. As you can see, this is all very technical. So the majority of businesses will hire a marketing team to oversee this for them, usually on a monthly basis, with the added bonus of having their marketing and SEO plan updated for free as the Google algorithm changes.
Also, you will need to stay relevant, so having a social media account that is responsive and fun is something else that marketing teams are trained to manage, allowing you to focus on handling the customers that the SEO and marketing attract. Perfect!
