Cut Overhead and Outsource These 4 Business Tasks

Small businesses must be especially adept at finding ways to keep expenses down and profits up. One way to ensure savings is to outsource specific business tasks that can be done more efficiently outside the business rather than in-house.

A number of business service providers can easily take over specific tasks and complete them more efficiently — and at a lower cost to the business. Before you get started, take a careful look at in-house costs, then shop around and compare with outsourcing expenses.

Here are a few options to consider.

1. Payroll

   Payroll can be a labor-intensive task and take key office personnel away from more direct operations such as sales, purchasing, inventory management, and customer service. Payroll service companies can take over the job of monitoring changes in payroll taxes, computation of work hours, making tax deposits, producing paychecks, and set up direct deposit for employee compensation so you can focus on what you do best—increasing revenues and profit.

2. Information Technology

   Information technology has become a critical factor in everyday business activities. Various IT functions support your sales, accounting, and customer service operations. Staying abreast of changes and resolving problems are ongoing tasks that require personnel with the significant technical training and time. Some companies keep their own IT people on staff, but this can be expensive. Outsourcing IT work can mean significant savings for your small business. Companies like Virtual Technology allows companies to do third party maintenance on all kinds of hardware and software like oracle and other platforms. There are many third party IT options you can consider. Remember: the expense of keeping your own IT employee(s) on staff in terms of salary, taxes, training, and benefits are eliminated when you let an IT professional services company handle these matters for you.

3. Marketing

   Marketing is an area where most small business owners have little professional knowledge and can spend countless hours trying to understand the best way to market their products or services. However, most small business owners do not have room in their budgets to accommodate a full-time marketing professional to ensure they reach their target market. Outsourcing marketing can pay off in immediate results and help your bottom lines. In addition, small business marketing specialists can often take care of ongoing social media marketing, and ensure you have a meaningful presence on the Internet, as well in local media.

4. Administrative Tasks

   Determining the right level of administrative staffing can be difficult in a growing business. You can manage those periodic loads of paperwork by outsourcing them to an administrative agency that has experience in many of the common tasks that most businesses encounter. Using these services can help you to keep your in-house staffing lean and keep profits up for future expansion.

This article has been edited and condensed.

Chaleigh Glass is an NYC-based freelance writer and e-commerce entrepreneur. She writes about anything from small business marketing techniques to how to spice up your love life, or how to live off the grid. In her spare time she likes to golf, snowboard, and take lifestyle photos.

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