Outsourcing is one of the natural conclusions of the technology age.
As tech streamlines activities through things like automation and AI it becomes easier and more affordable than ever for outsourcing to take place. This allows companies to tap into new levels of productivity, efficiency, and ultimately, profitability.
This doesn’t just apply to big companies, either. Any size company can outsource things, at this point. In fact, in many cases, they should do so …right from the inception of their company.
Here are some of the best services and administrative tasks to consider outsourcing from the moment your startup opens its doors.
1. Payroll
Anytime you can automate tasks related to accounting, it’s most likely money well spent. If you can apply automation to your payroll, it can also be a worthwhile investment. Processing payroll can be complex, time-consuming, and is often a headache if you have a lot of employee turnover.
Fortunately, many affordable payroll services help to make it a pain-free process. Some are software solutions that can track all of your employee and business information, make payments on time, and even help with tax documentation. Most modern payroll solutions also have mobile-friendly user interfaces with self-service options for employees.
2. Marketing Management
Marketing used to be simple. You had the option to pick from a limited number of options, such as billboards, radio ads, or television commercials. While simple, though, tending to marketing was also time-consuming and expensive.
Now, online marketing has created a wide variety of promotional channels. Many of these are infinitely scalable and can be adapted to the needs of any size company or budget. However, this has also introduced an incredible level of complexity to the concept of marketing management.
Once again, technology can come to the rescue here. Rather than trying to cobble together something on your own, you can use tech to outsource many different marketing activities.
For instance, you can use contractor platforms to find qualified workers. These can create high-quality marketing content for a fraction of the price of doing so in-house.
In addition, you can use many marketing software programs to schedule content to automatically post on social media accounts. Third-party email marketing platforms and marketing automation services can also streamline things like email marketing. If you have the budget, you can even hire a full-service marketing agency and outsource all of your promotional activity.
3. Customer Service
Customer service is a critical part of modern business success. The ability to tend to the ongoing needs and questions of your existing customers can often be the deciding factor in whether or not they’ll patronize your business over time.
As is the case with marketing, customer service used to be a resource-intensive activity. The costs associated with setting up call centers and hiring countless employees to answer the phones can be prohibitive, especially for a startup.
The good news is, there are many customer service software solutions that can ease the burden of maintaining stellar customer service. For instance, it’s easy to set up bots on a website that can take care of initial communication with customers in a timely manner. They can decipher issues, answer basic questions, and figure out who to pass the customer off to when something gets too complicated for them to handle.
If you’re a startup with more resources and funding, you can also invest in a full-blown CCaaS software solution. A CCaaS, or contact center as a service, operates as a cloud-based customer service center for your business. It removes the need to maintain a physical space and often is much more efficient at funneling customers toward the customer service rep who can best address their concern.
4. HR Activities
Running a human resource department can take up a lot of resources. From hiring and onboarding to managing benefits, HR is a crucial activity that can be a pain in the neck to keep up and running.
However, there are many HR software solutions that streamline a huge portion of your HR activities. By using a software solution like this, you can create an HR infrastructure for your company that largely runs itself.
For instance, when hiring a new candidate, you can use your HR software to onboard them with a fraction of the time and energy typically required. You can employ things like e-signatures and automated onboarding documentation to allow your new employee to onboard themselves at their own leisure.
It’s difficult to completely outsource HR as a whole. Nevertheless, there are many ways that you can outsource HR activities right from the beginning.
Outsourcing used to be an expensive proposition that involved transferring human activities to other humans who operated off-site for less money (and often with less-than-ideal results.) Now, technology has revolutionized the concept of outsourcing.
In Conclusion
Many software solutions address both individual and department-wide activities. What’s more, they are a fraction of the cost and are able to scale to the needs of any operation. This combination of affordability and availability has made outsourcing a must for any company. In fact, businesses shouldn’t wait to implement many of the solutions available. They should make plans to outsource as much as possible right from the get-go.
