Hiring people to work in your business can be time-consuming and stressful, but delegating work is essential, in order to grow your business. Many services can be staffed over time, which allows you to spend time on more critical work.
Consider each of these important components of a business, which can be delegated in exchange for increased productivity.
Accounting
It’s important to stay on top of your accounting transactions because you always need to know where you stand financially. Many small business owners buy accounting software and post the accounting activity themselves. As your business grows, you’ll have more transactions to post, and you may fall behind. If you don’t post activity each week, you can’t generate useful accounting data, such as a balance sheet and income statement.
To find accounting help, start by hiring a bookkeeper to post sales, purchases and other data into your accounting system. Fortunately, there are many job websites where you can find qualified candidates. You might enter a job website and search using “QuickBooks accounting CPA St. Louis” to find a bookkeeping candidate who can use QuickBooks software.
Payroll
While payroll is considered part of the accounting function, this work is far more complicated and time-consuming than your day-to-day accounting work. Managing payroll requires you to collect data from each employee regarding withholding for taxes and company benefits, and each worker’s payroll data is different. In addition, tax laws regarding state and federal tax withholdings change frequently, and you also must deal with changes due to employee turnover.
Given the level of complexity, many small businesses outsource the payroll function to a third party firm, such as ADP or Paychex. A payroll company can maintain and update payroll data and manage the frequent changes in the tax law. You’ll find that the fees you pay for this service are far less than the time and expense you’ll incur to process payroll on your own.
IT services
A cyber attack can have a huge impact on your business. If your IT system is attacked, you may lose both customer and business data, and a computer outage will prevent you from doing business until the problem is resolved. Also, lost customer data, such as credit card numbers or other personal information, may be grounds for a legal action against your firm.
To protect your business, hire an IT expert to address the risk of a cyber attack. These experts can ensure that antivirus software is installed on each computer, and set up firewalls to protect your data. You may hire an IT expert on a part-time basis, and then shift to a full-time tech employee as your firm grows.
Marketing
Successful marketing requires a consistent effort because prospects must be exposed to your brand several times before you can get their attention and interest. In order to market consistently, you may need an outside marketing person to help you.
The marketing expert can brainstorm with you about how your product is different from your competitors. Those points of differentiation can be worked into your website, email campaigns, and your advertising. In order to communicate your message to customers and prospects, you need to invest in a marketing staff person.
Fulfillment
Fulfillment refers to the process of getting your product or service into the hands of your client, and some of these tasks can be easily staffed or outsourced. If you’re a manufacturing company, for example, you can pay a third party to warehouse your inventory and ship orders to clients.
Any routine task that you perform repeatedly should be delegated to someone else as soon as possible, so that you can focus on more important aspects of your business, such as sales and product development.
Managing a small business can be challenging, and you’ll need to hire people to help you run your operation and grow your business. Make smart decisions about the types of work that you can delegate, and you’ll work more productively.
