Key Business Functions You Could Outsource to Save Money

by: albansmith 2

When you are in business you want to maintain control over every aspect so that you know you are delivering a quality product or service to your customers. However, as you grow it’s not always possible to fulfill every business function yourself, and in most cases to truly expand you do need to bring in other people to help you. Luckily, this doesn’t mean you have to compromise your business integrity or brand, because there are a number of business functions you can outsource which will build your business and save you money too.

Marketing

A strong marketing and advertising campaign will ensure that your business presents the brand you want to the market, and that customers continue to stream through your door. However, when marketing is not your core business product, then you can waste a lot of time and money before you get the right message out there. That is why you should look at outsourcing marketing and advertising functions such as logo design, website design, copywriting, cold calling, online advertising and search engine optimization to the experts.

Public relations

Outsourcing your public relations work can not only save you time and money in researching how to write a press release and buying media lists, but it also has the potential to make you a lot of money in the future. For example, a public relations agency can help you recover if your reputation has been damaged or your industry has been under scrutiny, as well as help promote you aggressively in the media if you have plans for a rapid expansion.

Accounts

The books are the least favorite part of many business people’s day, and rather than putting them off and resenting the time you spend on your accounts, outsource your payroll and accounting tasks to a professional. You can usually outsource your accounting work on a per hour basis and you are not only giving yourself more time to focus on your core business and your customers, but you can also rest easy knowing that your accounts are correct, you comply with all relevant tax laws and you don’t owe anyone any money.

Administration

You can hire a virtual assistant to help you with data entry tasks, research, organizing files, transcription and any other administrative tasks in your business so you can get on with your work. You have all the perks of a personal assistant, but you don’t have to pay benefits or pay for another workstation in your office – instead you just call on your virtual assistant when you have administration tasks to be completed.

Consultancy

Hiring a consultant on an hourly basis can help your business grow and expand, or even highlight new ways you can save more money or operate more profitably. Therefore, consider working regularly with business consultants to review your direction and operations.

Human resources

Managing your employees and your contractors can take a lot of research, forms and paperwork and you can save time and have the job completed more efficiently if you outsourced these human resources tasks. For example, you can have someone manage the hiring, or firing of an employee, from outside your business if you have a low staff turnover rate, plus they can help with the administrative tasks involved in employee benefits.

Technical support

If you’re finding you and your staff are being asked a lot of the same questions about your product, or you just need someone to answer routine customer support calls you can outsource these enquiries to a call centre. This will free up time for you and your staff to work on more complex issues, as well as bringing in new customers.

IT support

When your computer is doing something you don’t want it to do, your internet isn’t working or you’ve lost important files, there is no doubt that these situations cost you a lot of stress – but they also cost you time, and therefore money in your business. Therefore, look at ways you can outsource the IT functions you don’t have the internal resources to manage. This could be desktop support, network management, telecommunications, software development or hardware support so that you just have one number to call when your IT systems play up, and the problem is fixed right away.

Health and safety

It is important for every business to comply with health and safety regulations, because if you don’t you could face fines, legal action and not to mention Workcover costs if there is an accident. Therefore, bring in a health and safety consultant who can complete risk assessments and bring your workplace up to compliance standards.

What Can Your Business Outsource?

Each business is different, and some can benefit from outsourcing particular functions, where others may not. Therefore, to help you decide which key business functions you can outsource which will save you money:

• Identify your business edge. Make sure you know what it is that makes your business stand out against your competition, because this is where you need to focus your business attention, and this is not something you can outsource. Everything else which goes on in your business can now potentially be outsourced.
• Look at current systems. When you identify business functions which can be outsourced, look at how they are being completed now. Make sure that your systems are logical, have good quality control and can maintain the integrity of your business. You don’t have to be using the latest technology for these functions, just make sure your systems are logical before you outsource them, because if you don’t you’ll simply be outsourcing a problem area, which will continue to be a problem area.
• What do you want outsourcing to achieve? Your objective for outsourcing could be to save money, to save time, to access new technology or to eliminate the dependency of your business on just one person. When you know what you want to achieve, you can more easily set about achieving it.
• Research service providers. This means you need to start searching the market to find out more about the services which are offered. This will help you define exactly the services you need, and you can then forward these specifications to a number of providers for quotes and proposals. Review these proposals carefully to make sure the service provider has understood your requests, covered all of your specifications and that their ideas are innovative, without putting your business at risk.
• Monitor your outsourcing. Once you have implemented your outsourced services, you need to continue to monitor their performance to make sure you are achieving your goals, whether they were to save time or money.

Alban is currently writing for Home Loan Finder, a home loan comparison website. Alban is also a business advisor, who help businesses to unleash the power of outsourcing.