Saving money is not making money!
Many business owners reject outsourcing because they think its costly. However, they fail to calculate the value of opportunities lost because they invested too much time into tasks that can be best left to others.
For example, we need to spend couple of hours everyday in managing our Facebook page and posting on Twitter. If I choose to do it myself, I can save Rs. 1,000 – 1,200 (Equivalent to $20) in outsourcing fees. Or I can spend these 2 hours in figuring out ways to increase sales & earn 10x or 50x of this amount.
Lets look at 5 such business activities you can easily outsource and make more time for yourself to focus on growing your business.
1) Outsource Accounting & Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is like your morning exercise – no one wants to take the time out to do it but neglecting it can cause serious problem solver the period of time. You always have an option to hire a dedicated person to take care of day to day accounting & bookkeeping activities but nowadays it has become practical for businesses to outsource their bookkeeping activities. Lets first understand what is bookkeeping. According to Wikipedia, bookkeeping is the an act of keeping the records of all financial transactions in a systematic way. This includes recording purchases, sales, receipts and payments transactions.
There are lot of benefits of outsourcing your bookkeeping activity. You can save time and focus more on your business, you will also save money as account outsourcing is cheaper than hiring a full time accountant, you will have access to professionals who will ensure the accuracy and much more.
2) Outsource Payroll processing
If you have a small team, you won’t have any difficulty managing payroll in-house. But once your business starts expanding beyond 10 employees, processing monthly payroll can eat up lot of your time. Keeping track of employee leaves, joining & exit formalities, bonuses & loan advances and applicable tax deductions can soon become a nightmare for you.
If chosen correctly, payroll outsourcing can be less expensive, simpler means of paying your employees and filing your taxes on time.
3) Outsource Your Creative work
Everyone thinks they can do their own design work, and they can, but very few can do it well. Its better to leave it to the professionals. You can get quality results by outsourcing your artwork creation. This includes designing of website images, logos, business cards, letterhead, advertising banners, etc. Sites like Upwork connect you with the designers around the world. Its affordable and you get a huge number of providers to chose from. ,you are on a tight budget, sites like Fiverr can help you.
4) Social media marketing
Social networks are no longer limited to the personal communication. More and more businesses are using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin for lead generation. In fact, popular messaging app, WhatsApp is also being used by businesses extensively. Marketing on these social networks is not easy and this activity requires considerable amount of time. For example, our job doesn’t end with posting something on the social media, we have to participate in the conversation and respond to the users.
This activity can be easily outsourced to one of the social media management agencies. They will have a team of dedicated professionals who will monitor and grow your followers. You can use tools like Hootsuite that allows you to add team members and approve what they post on your company’s social profiles.
Most of the business think that social media can be managed by spending just 30-40 minutes a day or occasionally posting few messages but if you really want to reap benefits from it, you must invest time in growing the followers. Outsourcing this activity to professionals will definitely give good returns.
