More and more businesses these days are outsourcing key in-house tasks to outside professionals. We have had our own experience with this and thought we’d put together a list of the work we think translates best into outsourcing. Getting these jobs out the door can really save you time, stress, and money, and get you focused on mission-critical tasks that drive your business forward.
Basic Admin— Checking and responding to emails, keeping up on general correspondence, planning trips, setting a schedule for the week, sending out company-wide memos… all basic administration tasks that are also very time-consuming. With the “remote” office being what it is these days, you can have a virtual assistant who can cover all these basics without the additional overhead of an in-house, full-time employee.
Appointment Scheduling— If you don’t want to go all the way and open up all the intricacies of your business to a virtual assistant, you can at least outsource your appointment scheduling. There are plenty of individuals and services that will take care of your schedule for you, eliminating a tiresome and distracting chore from your task list. They can do everything from contacting all parties to finding an appropriate meeting place and time. One less headache.
Invoicing/Accounting— Remote accounting services can answer your bookkeeping needs while saving you thousands a year in overhead costs. They can give you all the dedication and detail of an in-house department at a much lower cost. If your business is smaller in scope, you can consider hiring an individual freelancer to take over these duties, as well, and save even more on your bottom line.
Payroll— Outsourcing your payroll not only saves you money, it also helps to ensure that you’ve done everything above the board when it comes to the IRS. Statistics show that 40% of small businesses in the States pay a penalty to the IRS for mistakes on payroll. An outsourced payroll professional is much more likely to make sure that everything is kosher than you and your team might on your own. As a supplement to outsourcing your payroll, consider upgrading to a web-based employee time clock— it will streamline payroll and make it easier for you to share and access timecards with your external payroll service or provider.
Marketing and PR – Putting on a good public face for your company isn’t necessarily about throwing down a big retainer at a marketing or PR firm anymore. Both marketing and PR have become more fluid and more accessible, and there are plenty of independent professionals and freelancers that can get the job done. Instead of having an in-house department or even farming the work out to a large-scale firm, keep on the lookout for an independent freelancer who can leverage the Internet effectively and get the job done for less.
Lead Generation – You can also consider outsourcing your cold calling and lead generation to a freelancer. These preliminary efforts in sourcing and collating leads can easily be handed over to a competent outside professional; when the stakes get higher, you can step in and take over the sales cycle to make sure that it progresses in the way you want. You can find great phone professionals at a minimal cost who can run a high volume of calls and drive in a lot more leads than you and your staff could cull on your own.
So, those are our ideas? Got any of your own you want to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Outsource These 6 Tasks From Your Business ,
