Many times startup businesses find themselves facing situations where there are a lot of staffing needs, but they have limited employees or resources available to handle all job roles necessary for a successful company. As these enterprises establish themselves, they often rely on the services of third-party agencies to handle some responsibilities because they provide a trained, expert team at a lesser cost than maintaining an in-house department. For example, if you’re in a big tech-based city such as Los Angeles or Denver, managed IT services would be beneficial in ensuring your company recovers quickly in the event of an outage or a city-wide security breach.
This trend has become increasingly common for established companies because it saves expenses; outsourced agencies also tend to have state-of-the-art equipment and resources to go along with their quality services, allowing businesses to stretch their budget even further. In addition, it will enable them to dedicate their in-house team to the crucial matters of enhancing their brands and customer bases for improved growth.
When looking for help running your business, here are some of the top services to consider:
1. Consulting
Even if a company has been around for years, having an expert with fresh eyes evaluate your procedures, processes, and analytics can provide excellent insight to help you achieve greater success and enhanced efficiency. For new entrepreneurs, a skilled hand to provide guidance can make all the difference as they learn the ropes and acclimate to the fast-paced business world. These agencies work best with a specific focus as they can offer advice, develop action plans, and provide insight into what is working and areas that need improvement
2. Accounting
Budgeting, taxes, accounting, bookkeeping . . . these accounting responsibilities are some of the most important aspects of running a business. Unfortunately, they are also time-consuming and require a high degree of skill to perform with accuracy.
The advantage of having an agency of quality accountants at your beck and call is that they are already trained, know legal requirements for taxes and accounting procedures intimately, have the highest-tier software to crunch numbers quickly and efficiently, and are far less likely to make costly errors than most in-house teams.
3. Marketing
Inexperienced marketing can result in significant expenses with unimpressive results. Plus, it can take a lot of time and skill to plan, draft, and implement advertising campaigns and initiatives. With so many avenues to pursue, including social media, radio, television, and community events, determining where to focus and how much of your budget to allocate to specific efforts can be overwhelming.
Fortunately, skilled marketing services know precisely how to launch a successful campaign, granting insight and tactics throughout the process that can help educate your own team and establish guidelines for the future. They are also adept at tracking and analyzing analytical data and trends to determine the effectiveness of each campaign, making improvements as needed to achieve more remarkable results.
4. Informational Technology
The world revolves around new and progressive technology in nearly every aspect of the business world. As a result, a skilled IT department is crucial to maintain computers, software, and other electronic equipment while ensuring sensitive data is secure. From setting up new hardware to keeping everything updated and in working order, a quality IT team can be worth its weight in gold, especially if your company performs most of its transactions, record-keeping, and customer interactions online or through advanced software options.
Additionally, IT experts can provide expedient and high-quality customer service when your clients are experiencing problems interacting with your company or its products over the internet. Slow or problematic technological experiences can strike a blow to your reputation and cause consumers to go elsewhere for their needs, so having a responsive team with excellent communication skills can turn a potentially unpleasant experience into a positive one.
5. Training Services
Even if you plan on having an in-house department, these employees will need proper onboarding and training before they can perform at a high-quality level. Third-party training services within a particular field can bring their advanced knowledge into your company while imparting each team member with confidence in their new role. As they experience the training, they will also be able to teach these skills to others, allowing your department to function independently in the future.
6. Human Resources
Human resources include many responsibilities, some of which may integrate or overlap with your accounting staff. Some of the most common duties include payroll, employee benefits, risk management, recruiting and hiring, conflicts and investigations, compliance, and performance management.
Your employees are your human resource, so this department revolves around ensuring your departments are adequately staffed, and everyone has the tools they need to succeed while receiving proper compensation and perks that come with their respective positions.
7. Legal Services
There are a lot of legal requirements for business compliance, as well as others governing contracts, taxes, proper documentation . . . the list goes on. They can also represent your company if there is a dispute or lawsuit, but engaging their services as early as possible can help you navigate the highly-specialized field of law to ensure that your company avoids unfortunate legal conflicts through advanced knowledge of proper behavior and procedures.
8. Inventory Management
This service can be beneficial if you have a diverse inventory, such as retail, food distribution, and other consumer goods industries. These agencies take responsibility for determining which products to carry, ordering appropriate amounts of inventory, performing inventory scans (cycle counts), returning excess or unwanted items, and generally ensuring that products customers need are available and accessible as they need them.
The Bottom Line
More and more businesses are turning to outsourced services to help run their businesses because they provide quality assistance at a lesser expense than keeping an entire staff in-house. There are professional agencies for nearly every major department, and you can often pick and choose which aspects of those responsibilities you want that third-party company to handle for you.
Using these services is a great way to get your startup off the ground at minimal expense, and their advice and assistance can help you eventually build your own team if that is your desire. A wonderful aspect of outsourced help is that you use their services as you need them and are free to end your contract whenever you wish.