If you’re just starting out in the world of business, it can be very tempting to do everything yourself. Everything costs money, and you can become acutely aware of just how much you’re paying out, especially if there’s precious little coming in at the same time.
But while there’s a cost of everything there’s also a value. And it’s the value you have to consider when deciding what to outsource. There are some areas where doing it yourself just won’t cut it, and the value to your business is most certainly worth the cost.
Marketing
Telling customers to buy your product sounds easy, but it really isn’t. Unless you happen to have a marketing background, you should probably think about budgeting something towards getting professional marketing advice.
Different markets require different tactics, and a professional will help you home in on your targets, and perhaps even suggest some more demographics to approach. Geographical knowledge can also be important, for marketing agency Cheshire companies such as Zool know you need a certain approach that probably wouldn’t go down well in the center of Edinburgh, or abroad. When you outsource your marketing you get all that experience at no extra cost.
Accounting and payroll
Managing your money requires time, planning and in-depth knowledge of how the financial system works. The sort of experience that an accountant will have spent years studying. You might be able to pick up basic bookkeeping, and you can undoubtedly computerise your accounts, but ultimately you need to outsource and let the professionals keep your bank balance healthy.
You’ll probably also want to outsource your payroll. Making sure everyone is paid what they’re owed, when they’re owed it and taking into account taxes, NI, pension contributions as well as ensuring that your employer’s obligations are met is another area that benefits from calling in the professionals.
Reception or Personal Assistant
If you have offices in a shared block, you may already be outsourcing some of your reception duties. Many office buildings have a central reception desk that greets and field visitors, and you’ll probably have to pay something towards this provision.
It is possible to employ a virtual receptionist or personal assistant to fill in the rest of the job. A remote worker acting as a virtual assistant can answer your phone as though they were in your office, and transfer calls or take messages as required, make appointments, arrange meetings, manage your diary and all those other tasks that might not really make up a full-time role yet but need to be available to you full-time.
IT Services
Even if your business is very hands-on – running a shop or manufacturing clothing for example – you will rely on your IT systems a lot. From bookkeeping packages to workflow management, invoicing to payment gateways IT, and the associated hardware It Systems are a vital part of your company.
You probably don’t have the background necessary to do it yourself, and you almost certainly won’t have the time to do it properly. Outsourcing your IT systems means you can rest assured that your systems will work when you need them to. Increasingly, with the adoption of cloud-based SaaS solutions, you’re already outsourcing a lot of your IT provision, so it makes sense to outsource the rest. Whether you need hardware you can rely on that will be switched out if it breaks or software development to create an app or website for the quality you can access it’s usually cheaper to outsource good talent than employ poor talent directly.
Outsourcing may seem expensive, but when you compare the cost to the value added to your business, you may well see things differently.