Work for yourself and you can bring your unique set of skills and abilities to the marketplace. But when should working for yourself mean hiring someone else to do the work for you? When is outsourcing the right answer, even for a small business or sole proprietor?
The answer is: when you can delegate tasks that divert your attention from your core business. Here are five areas that all small businesses should consider sending outside:
- Accounting and payroll: Keeping track of the finances and following the laws and regulations around payroll are complicated and have the potential to cause catastrophic problems for the business if not handled properly. Businesses of all sizes, especially those with employees, can benefit from having trusted finance professionals handling the books.
- Web design: Having a professional and functioning web presence is critical to almost every business operating today. Compensating a professional to make your site look good and work well will pay for itself in no time.
- Legal: Having an attorney who can answer your questions, instead of your making educated guesses, is invaluable. If your business depends on contracts (or if you are signing a lot of contracts for the business), consider a lower cost legal services option to review the documents. A little money spent to avoid legal issues can save a lot of money down the line.
- Information technology: Some people have a knack for technology, while others struggle with their smartphone daily. Instead of having a full-time IT employee, contracting for IT services makes a lot of sense for many businesses. Think of it as private, on-call tech support.
- Administrative: This one surprises a lot of business owners, but it is possible to get quality administrative support without adding headcount to the business. Even from the very early days of a start-up or sole proprietorship, a virtual assistant can take away the burden of basic administrative functions like travel or scheduling. This frees up the business owner to concentrate on the core functions of the enterprise.
