Money (illustration)
Money (illustration)photo: iStock

When you first begin building your new business, it’s tempting to assume you’ll need to do everything yourself. The more you can handle in-house, without the help of another professional, the more money you can save on things like extra labor. Unfortunately, as your business begins to grow, or you decide to look for new ways of earning revenue, you’ll discover there’s only so much you can handle on your own.

One appealing alternative to simply hiring a new staff member every time you need extra support, is to outsource some of the crucial tasks you need assistance with. The great thing about outsourcing is you don’t have to commit to hiring someone full-time. You can access the services you need as and when you need them and minimize repeating costs. Outsourcing essential tasks to other professionals ensures you can simultaneously access the skills and services you need, while keeping your budget in check. So which activities are best for outsourcing?

Accounting

When it comes to finances in your business, any slight mistake can have a huge impact. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your accounting tasks are done correctly – by a professional. Whether you need to monitor cashflow and keep track of invoices, or you’re tracking your ingoing and outgoing expenses for tax and bookkeeping purposes, a good accounting professional is crucial.

Aside from making sure you don’t end up with mistakes on government documents like tax returns, accounting professionals can also help you to take advantage of tax relief options and other strategies that can save you money when running your company. You can either pay to have a professional bookkeeping specialist on your books throughout the year, or you can just hire them a couple of times each year when you need to pay your taxes.

SEO Professionals

SEO, or search engine optimization is one of the most important tools any business leader can access for growth. Your customers need to be able to find you online if you want to make a consistent profit. SEO is how you make sure you’re always at the top of the search results when clients begin searching for keywords and phrases associated with your brand.

SEO professionals, in the form of consultants and analysts, can assist you in pinpointing the right keywords you need to target, and give you guidance on how to manipulate the latest algorithms. An SEO consultant makes life a lot easier, because they ensure you don’t have to stay up-to-date on all the latest changes to happen with the Google search engine crawlers and bots. You can find a complete guide on what an SEO consultant can do here.

Customer Support

Unless you have the time to manage meaningful relationships, answer customer questions and deliver excellent service to your clients every day, customer support is essential. Outsourcing customer support ensures you can continue to compete against other companies in today’s complex world.

Outsourced customer support is usually much more affordable than paying for someone to come and assist you every day. Outsourcing this task also means you can access additional service providers as your business grows, or during periods of peak demand.