7 Business Functions Best Outsourced to Improve Workplace Productivity

 

Maintaining a productive workplace can be challenging, especially when employees are expected to perform tasks beyond the scope of their knowledge. Outsourcing is a business practice in which a third-party organization is hired to perform certain functions within your company that would otherwise be consuming the time and energy of your workforce.

Naturally, our productivity increases when engaged in tasks that we are not only passionate about, but specialize in. Under these favourable circumstances, workers find themselves immersed in their daily duties, improving their efficiency.

 

These are a few commonly-outsourced business functions that have proven beneficial to enhance workplace productivity:

1. Accounting
2. Payroll processing
3. Tax filing and preparation
4. IT management
5. Event management
6. Shipping and logistics
7. Research

Seven Business Functions Best Outsourced to Improve Workplace Productivity

1. Accounting:

The benefits of hiring an accountant:

• It is cost effective;
• Accounting agencies use automation technologies;
• Fraud prevention and reduction;
• Professionals have extensive accounting knowledge;

Handling a business’ accounting needs can be a challenge unless you have the required skills to manage the burden. Many entrepreneurs are faced with the struggle of hiring a qualified accountant while also meeting their salary demands—which is not always feasible for a new business. However, outsourcing your accounting can be tricky, and hiring a professional accounting agency would be the most cost-effective solution to this problem.

When hiring an accountant outside of your company, you only have to pay for the services you need. Most professional accounting agencies provide scalable options that can be tailored to your individual business. Having the ability to upscale or downscale your requirements enables you to save money if your business only needs limited services. In this scenario, you would also save on the expenses to purchase the necessary equipment and software, as well as the different business costs that come with hiring part-time or full-time employees.

Mistakes are natural and are bound to happen when taking on the meticulous tasks of an accountant. The automation software used by professional accounting agencies not only saves time and energy, but reduces the risk of discrepancies and other mistakes caused by human error. When outsourcing your accounting needs, you can be assured that everything will be completed in a timely manner and with negligible errors.

Without a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) on your team, mistakes such as abnormal transactional and billing data activities can go unnoticed. For this reason, outsourcing your accounting needs becomes imperative as you will be able to utilize the accounting agency’s CFO and mitigate internal financial fraud within your company.

Without a proper team of accountants to manage your business, it becomes nearly impossible to manage your own accounts unless you have the required skills to do so. Hiring professional accountants grants you access to their comprehensive knowledge of tax code, laws and all else related to their profession, and your business will benefit greatly from their expertise.

2. Payroll Processing:

The benefits of outsourcing a bookkeeper for payroll processing:

• Increased productivity and time management
• Use of leading industry technology
• Exceptional data security

Payroll processing is a time-intensive task that requires meticulous care for every detail. As an entrepreneur, nothing is more valuable than your time, and payroll can consume a great deal of it. Outsourcing your payroll process to a bookkeeper will alleviate the burden from your workforce and can increase the efficiency of systems, improving workflow and the overall performance of your company.

In-house payroll processing can lead to a multitude of problems, the risk of identity theft and lack of server safety among the list of concerns that come with mismanaged bookkeeping. Outsourcing your bookkeeping needs to a professional bookkeeping firm ensures the safety of your records through their use of the latest technology and best safety measures for their clients.

3. Tax Filing and Preparation:

Like those of accounting and payroll processing, the advantages of outsourcing tax filing and preparation to an accountant are:

• Risk mitigation:
• Time savings:
• Tax consultants are experts in their field:
• Services are tailored to your specific needs:

The responsibilities of tax filing and preparation can be too laborious for many, and your taxes are certainly something that should not be rushed. When it comes to filing your taxes, any mistake can be disastrous. Many small businesses have suffered from employee fraud and negligence resulting in extensive losses, both of which could easily have been avoided by outsourcing their tax needs to an accountant. By hiring a professional accounting agency to care for your businesses taxes, you can rest assured that they are running internal audits to ensure accuracy, and that all finances are being maintained properly.

Depending on the scale of your business, outsourcing your tax filing and preparation to an accountant can be useful as they can tailor their services to your business’ individual needs. With their comprehensive knowledge on tax code and law, professional accounting agencies can maximize the tax advantages for your business.

4. IT Management:

IT outsourcing can be used to achieve:

• Freedom from tedious hiring process:
• Access to global talent pool
• Reduced expenses

As a business owner, you may find it tedious to hire developers and IT specialists. Software development, infrastructure support, and day-to-day management of IT systems and hardware are some of the most important aspects of your company that must be managed properly. By outsourcing your IT management, you will not have to worry about hiring the wrong professionals. Reputable IT outsourcing companies will provide you options between cooperation models to best suit your needs—staff augmentation and outsourcing a dedicated team being the most popular.

Outsourcing your IT management also grants you access to the global talent pool. There are capable professionals across the world, and outsourcing disregards limits of region and nationality. By doing so, your company will be able to outsource from a country with lower production costs while still adhering to your business’s budget and needs.

5. Event Management:

Outsourcing event management allows for the following improvements:

• Saves Time:
• Improves productivity
• Smooths execution:
• Increased risk management:

Events and ceremonies can quickly become an essential part of your organization as an entrepreneur. Whether it be the staff holiday party or an investor meeting, management of said events will need to be executed by your workers. The responsibilities incurred can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, potentially resulting in loss of productivity, performance and quality of work within your company. If you want to save time and focus more on your company’s performance, you should outsource to an event management company. This way, you’ll only have to spend time selecting a suitable event management organization, and the rest will be taken care of by them.

Organizing an event is no easy feat. There are many aspects of event management that, if executed poorly, could ruin the occasion entirely. Outsourcing an event management team relieves the stress of enlisting the necessary help for your event, utilizing their preexisting internal network to ensure your event runs smoothly.

6. Shipping and Logistics:

Here are the benefits of outsourcing shipping and logistics:

• Little expenses are handled by shipping and logistics firms:
• Improves customer experience:
• Real-time tracking of shipments:

If you enlist the help of an accountant or accounting agency for your business, they are most likely going to take on the management of shipping and logistic costs. Outsourcing your shipping and logistics tasks to a dedicated firm would alleviate the responsibility from your accountant and free their time for more pressing matters.

Customer service is paramount when running a business. Nobody enjoys expensive shipping costs or the uncertainty of package arrival, which is why shipping and outsourcing companies are experts in their domain. They know how to reduce shipping costs for your customers and make product delivery a happy experience for them. These companies also use real-time tracking systems that can help you know the location of the shipments any time you want.

7. Research:

Finally, all companies begin with effective research, and the advantages of outsourcing research are that it:

• Delivers valuable insight;
• Saves money;
• Saves time and reduces stress;

Whether you are developing a new product line or performing customer surveys, your business will depend on its research for future success. The quality of the research performed by a business is essential. If a team which is not specialized in research goes and collects data for you, some of the data will be invalid and of no use to you. This is why outsourcing your research is so important; those who specialize in research functions have different tried and tested methods, strategies, and resources to gather valuable data in the minimum amount of time.