SME Management: Top Business Functions to Outsource

Small to medium-sized businesses need to focus their attention on core business goals, income generation, and profitability in order to grow. Business owners need to manage their time efficiently and spend it on the activities that will help scale their business, and ensure that their members of staff are working as productively as possible. Although it is natural for many owners and managers to lean towards the ‘do it yourself approach, offloading certain business functions to third-party providers will enable you to get more done. You will not need to worry about acquiring knowledge or picking up new skills to carry out certain functions, and you won’t have to splash out on new employees to do these tasks either. Here are a few services and business functions SMEs should outsource.

Human Resources

Whether you employ a handful of workers or your workforce is composed of a couple of hundred employees, human resources is an integral part of all organisations. There is a plethora of functions within HR, and it is essential they are all carried out by HR professionals. These functions include recruitment, employee relations, benefits administration, training, and payroll. Although many SMEs may view HR tasks as menial yet manageable, they require a lot of concentration and time. Outsourcing HR functions to a specialist provider can help you save time and money. HR Dept in Swindon employs a team of qualified HR experts who can provide an array of high-quality services. They offer a number of HR solutions to suit specific business needs and can help you with one-off projects or with all of your HR services. Employing an HR professional will ensure your company remains compliant, and it can also raise employee job satisfaction rates.

Accounting and Finance

For small businesses, accounting functions are the most commonly outsourced. They require a high level of expert knowledge and taking on accounting services yourself can lead to a decrease in cash flow, incorrect financial reporting, and non-compliance. Making an error in accounting and finance can lead to serious penalties and heavy fines. Offloading accounting and finance tasks to third-party specialists, or using specific software, can increase compliance and cash flow and decrease costs.

Marketing

A professional marketing team can make a significant impact on the growth of your business. They can take care of your PR, web design functions, content creation, social media, and digital marketing and help improve your business profile. Marketing is another area that many owners decide to manage themselves or delegate to existing employees. However, tackling these functions in-house can take away focus on internal business functions, resulting in inefficient time management and poor use of resources. Marketing companies specialise in coming up with creative ideas to transform SMEs and drawing up marketing strategies that can build brand awareness and improve profitability and revenue. Marketing experts can help you create an effective campaign for your target audience, and they will ensure it is delivered efficiently.

IT

IT functions are vast, and they require a great deal of specialist knowledge and expertise. Services include network maintenance, data center services, internal and external IT help desks, and cybersecurity. With a high level of skill needed, SMEs need people with specialist knowledge, or cloud solutions, to take on their IT services. Outsourcing to an IT managed service provider (similar to IOTEC) can ensure your IT and cloud functions are handled professionally. Moreover, it also gives your company a technical advantage over competitors. Furthermore, your employees can benefit from high-quality support from IT providers who use advanced software and systems.

Customer Support

Small businesses with a small team may not have the resources to provide adequate customer support. Not only does recruitment and training take time, but some businesses simply do not have the capital to employ the necessary amount of people for a customer support team. Many businesses ask their existing office employees to handle this service, in addition to their regular role. Not only does this mean they have less time to focus on their primary business goals but spending time doing a job they are not trained for can be demoralising. Outsourcing customer support to a third-party vendor will ensure your customers receive high-quality support from a professional customer support agent. Their enquiries will be addressed quickly and efficiently, and your existing team can focus their attention solely on their main duties. From external call centres and chat services to shared agent solutions to cloud-based services, SME business owners can choose from many different types of customer support services.