3 Tasks Small Businesses Should Outsource

Editor’s Note: Here at Dispatches, we are always looking for ways to help our readers do things. For some of our readers, that means helping navigate the working world, for others, it means assisting in the ever challenging question, “what’s for dinner?” For still others, it means figuring out how to balance family life with everything else. In an effort to aid in all of these endeavors, we have collaborated on this article written specifically for our readers.

When you’re still small and new to the business game, maybe even a solopreneur, you need to focus on saving money. More than anything else, startups tend to fail because they’re simply not able to manage the budget the way they should – and, instead of allocating tasks to somebody else, they try to do everything themselves.

While it may work out well in the beginning, you run the risk of not having enough money saved up in case something unexpected should happen.

Below is a list of three tasks you may want to consider outsourcing. It won’t just save you money, outsourcing these tasks may also save you time.

#1 Repetitive tasks

Before you do anything else, you need to think about your specific business and the strengths it has to showcase. You don’t want to outsource your strengths, of course, and you should keep the task you specialize in inhouse almost without exception. 

Repetitive tasks, on the other hand, are those that your business continues to do each and every month. These tend to be the same for many businesses, though, such as payroll, general accounting services, data entries, inventory management and everything else you can possibly think of that repeats itself.

Keep in mind that you can always hire a full time employee for these in the future if your business grows enough to support one. 

#2 Specialized tasks

While most businesses need IT services, it’s not really necessary to keep an entire team of tech professionals in-house unless your business actually specializes in this field. This is one of those tasks that most small business will choose to outsource as hiring someone or training an existing employee costs a lot of money – and, if you don’t train them properly, you risk paying someone who isn’t competent enough.

Have a look for managed IT services for businesses instead and you’ll be able to enjoy the expertise of an entire team of qualified professionals rather than just one or two. It’s the kind of stuff that both saves you money and helps your business out in case it should experience a more complex IT problem in the future.

#3 Your weaknesses

Again, in order to outsource the areas you’re not as strong in, you will have to assess your startup first. For many business owners, an important area they’re not as strong in as others tend to be social media management. The platforms are new, the tone-of-voice may be a bit different, and they simply have too much on their hands already to spend time on understanding and managing a variety of social media platforms. (We would LOVE to help you come up with a tailored social media plan to help you achieve your goals!)

It is still important to be active online these days, though, so consider outsourcing this and any other processes you’re not too competent in. That way, your team will be able to focus on their strengths and you can hire someone in-house a bit later down the road.