Outsourcing is a great way for companies to get the help they need without hiring internal teams or taking resources from day-to-day tasks. Whether it’s content creation, social media management, tech support, or HR, taking over tasks that you as a business owner don’t have the time or skills to do can help your business move forward.
Before you start hiring agencies or contractors, it’s important to identify the tasks that make the most sense for your business to outsource. Below 14 members of businesskinda.com Business Council shared the tasks they believe business owners should consider outsourcing to maximize their own productivity.
1. Non-Core Competencies
Companies may only outsource those tasks that are not part of the core competency. Core competence ensures a sustainable competitive advantage. For example, hiring or accounting may not look like a core competency for a product company. However, when done right, these two things can help product companies build better, faster, and bill faster. Core competency strategy must decide what to outsource. – Puneet Gaur, next quarter
2. Cold calling
Cold calling potential customers is a proven strategy that works. However, it can be very time consuming for your team to do this. By outsourcing your company’s cold calling efforts, you can take advantage and ensure your team is working as efficiently as possible. – Greg Welborn, First financial advice
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3. Technique
Outsource when your engineering capacity is peaking and sales are slowing down, but be very careful how you handle outsourcing. It takes a lot of research, data and due diligence to make the right choice. – Sean Languedoc, Global Talent Accelerator
4. Social Media Management
I think the answer will be different for every company. To us, it seemed like a good solution to use an external call center to rent storage units. Unfortunately, it created more challenges than solutions for us, so we took the calls back in-house. However, one task that we have successfully outsourced is social media management and marketing. Hiring a professional has saved you a lot more money than the cost of hiring them! – Chris Clear, Clear Storage Group, LLC
5. Operational tasks
Outsource operational tasks that are outside your core competencies and that don’t necessarily need context about your business. This creates space for your employees who are more in touch with your culture, business and strategy to focus on things that add value and contribute to your ultimate goals. – Karim Zuhric, Cascade strategy
6. Marketing Efforts
Marketing is a full-time job and it’s impossible to run my business while I’m also marketing it. I tried, but it was impossible to run a medium-sized business, stay focused on quality control and lead our marketing. – Tammy Sons, Tn Nursery
7. Jobs That Don’t Require Deep Brand Knowledge
Outsource anything that doesn’t require brand or cultural emotional intelligence. This will likely mean different things to different organizations and maybe things like IT, accounting or legal. If you think the person in that role would make better choices because of their personal or deep knowledge of your team, don’t outsource. – Noah Mishkin, CraftJack, Inc.
8. Brand building
When building a brand, you need the real help of professionals with connections in the media. It takes forever to reach journalists yourself. Relationships are everything when it comes to expanding your media presence, so don’t waste your time getting published on Techcrunch yourself. – Valeriy Makovetskiy, Everything
9. Salary
Outsourcing your payroll allows your team to focus on core activities, improving overall productivity and time management. It takes the internal focus away from compliance and administrative payment issues, while also giving you access to the latest technology and better data security. – Chase Flashman, ShipSigma
10. Repeatable Tasks That Cannot Be Fully Automated
If you’re doing something low-touch or repeatable that can’t be fully automated, it can be outsourced. I have five VAs who perform these tasks, as well as graphic design, social media planning and management, executive support and also accounting. It has been incredible for me, my companies and the outsourced talent because they love to learn and also appreciate making a difference. – Natasha Miller, Whole productions
11. Server Infrastructure Management
Outsource to the cloud first. Do not manage your own server infrastructure. There are too many managed services associated with them that help optimize activities and offers. Then outsource anything that is far beyond your expertise, but be careful. If someone else can turn it into a business and make a profit, you may be wasting dollars and profit margins while not learning how to manage it internally. – Anthony Dohrmann, Electronic Caregiver, Inc.
12. Administrative Duties
It depends on what industry you work in and what tasks you most need help with. For example, people in the legal field may need help with administrative tasks such as research, archiving, making appointments, etc. In my case, I started making appointments because I used to need the most help with that. Outsource a function tailored to your business needs. – Pavel Stepanov, Virtudesk
13. Copywriting and PR
Outsource positions that have flexibility in areas such as hours or time spent in the office. For example, if your main marketing strategy involves social media, every word counts. Hiring a copywriter can bring your vision to life with the right text. If you need help pitching your concept during strategic times like product launches, hiring a publicist can be helpful. – Kelley Higney, Bug Bit Thing
14. Areas Where You Don’t Have Expertise
Outsource expertise. When you call on another company to help optimize a job, you get not only that result, but years of experience in that field. As much as you want to tackle things internally, self-awareness about your team’s limitations is a skill worth gold. – Veronica Buitron, Tango Code Inc.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.