Running a successful business is hard, and it’s even harder when your time, energy, and resources are being consumed by non-value-adding tasks. All too often, businesses find themselves spending their days trying to keep up with responsibilities that probably shouldn’t be on their plate in the first place.
As a general rule, if it’s time-consuming, repetitive, and/or important, and it can easily be handed off to someone else, then it’s worth exploring the option. In this post, we’ll run through just some of the tasks that might currently be on your plate, but which probably shouldn’t be.
Digital Marketing
Marketing is deceptive. In theory, it’s more than possible for businesses to manage marketing themselves, since all the systems you need to put together campaigns — such as Google Ad Manager — are free and accessible.
In practice, it’s a different story. Even if you can get a campaign up and running, putting together an effective campaign nearly always requires some level of expertise. The competition for eyeballs is simply too intense, and you can’t expect to get ahead without a well-planned strategy. For that reason, it’s generally better for businesses to hire a marketing agency rather than trying to do it themselves. There’s a cost, but provided you select a good agency, then the expense will come back to you many times over in the form of a good ROI.
Payroll
Businesses can manage their own payroll when there’s only a few employees. Beyond that, things can quickly become complicated. Not only is managing payroll using manual processes time-consuming, but it’s also much more likely to result in errors — and if there’s one thing that annoys employees, it’s being paid incorrectly. Payroll outsourcing services offer a convenient, affordable way to have full peace of mind that your payroll systems are watertight, without having to worry about completing the time-consuming task yourself. Once done, you’ll be able to dedicate more time and focus towards core business growth strategies.
Accounting
You can understand why many businesses would overlook the need to outsource their accounting to a third-party company. With some time and focus, it’s usually possible to get a grip on incomings and outgoings, especially if accounting software is used.
But the merit in outsourcing your accounting isn’t in the day-to-day benefits it provides. It’s what it offers on a long-term basis that really counts. The majority of businesses that fail do so for cash-flow reasons, which might have been avoided if they’d had a good accountant. It’s an investment that can prevent the problems of tomorrow, basically.
IT Support
Cybercrime is on the rise, and unfortunately, it’s small to medium sized businesses that are disproportionately affected. A single cyber breach can have catastrophic consequences, often resulting in huge financial losses and the loss of customer trust. IT and cybercrime support is pretty affordable, which makes hiring a company even more logical. Even if the IT support company you hire saves you from even one cyber attack, they’ll already have paid for themselves.