3 Tech Tasks Your Small Business Should Be Outsourcing
If your staff spends hours learning specialized skills for one-off projects in order to save money on additional hires, it’s time to change the way you approach tech-related work in your small business. While it might seem cost-effective to keep projects in-house whenever possible, the money you don’t make due to productivity losses is often more than you’d spend on outside help. Add reduced quality due to amateur efforts, and it’s hard to justify keeping specialized projects in-house.
Unless it’s a core part of your business, it’s usually wiser to outsource tech-related work to professionals who already possess the skills to get the job done quickly and to the caliber you need.
If you’re not already outsourcing these tech tasks, it’s time to start.
Web Development, Design, and Marketing
Building a website is a major undertaking that requires a range of skills, from writing lines of bug-free code to designing a user-friendly interface. While drag-and-drop website builders make designing websites seem easy, it’s harder than it looks to create a site that reflects your brand and works seamlessly on every browser and device.
While most business websites require some degree of ongoing maintenance, the biggest expense is in designing and launching the site. Since this is a one-off project, it makes sense to contract with a web developer who can build a full-featured, problem-free site on a quick turnaround.
Web developers are a good choice for a basic business website. As the backbone of every webpage, HTML dictates the basic layout of websites, including images, contact forms, and links to other pages and social media profiles. Fortunately, small business owners can easily hire freelance web designers through online job boards.
Once you have your website put together, it’s time to do some marketing. Unless you’re a pro at the marketing game, you’ll need to hire someone to tackle this job for you — especially when it comes to developing and maintaining a presence on social media. For instance, many companies can handle important tasks such as public relations, event planning, and, yes, social media management, all of which will help draw business to your website and business.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is another tech-related task that most small business IT departments (if they have one at all) lack the skills to do effectively. When a tiny IT department spends the majority of its time managing day-to-day tech support issues, there’s little bandwidth left to monitor emerging security threats.
However, just because your business is small doesn’t mean it’s any less prone to a cyberattack or that a breach is any less devastating. In fact, the statistics point to the opposite. According to CNBC, more than half of all small businesses were affected by a data breach in the past year, and 60 percent shuttered their doors within six months of a cyberattack.
Compared to the high cost of a breach, outsourced cybersecurity services look quite affordable. However, before contracting with a managed service provider, make sure you’re taking basic cybersecurity measures like updating software and operating systems on schedule, using antivirus and firewalls, and training staff on common phishing scams.
Software
On-premise software is expensive to buy and expensive to maintain, especially for small businesses with shoestring IT budgets. In addition to the investment required to purchase software, businesses have to buy hardware to run it and shoulder implementation and maintenance costs all on their own. While this may be practical for large enterprises with highly-specialized computing needs, it’s rarely a good deal for small companies.
Software-as-a-service, or SaaS, allows small businesses to outsource hosting, security, and maintenance expenses associated with software to the software provider. In exchange, businesses pay a flat subscription fee to access the software they need. Since SaaS solutions are hosted online, switching to outsourced software also gives employees access to the tools they need from any location.
One of the greatest benefits of SaaS is that it shifts software from a cost- and labor-intensive resource to something that’s cheap and easy to maintain. Instead of needing in-house IT to manage software solutions, once you’ve chosen the right software solutions for your business, implementing them is as simple as plug-and-play.
Small business owners shouldn’t miss out on the potential of outsourcing certain tasks. If you want better results, faster turnarounds, and lower costs, outsourcing is the right solution to your business’s tech-related needs. Paying high rates for professional freelancers and third-party service providers can be a hard pill to swallow, but it’s nearly always more cost-effective than handling specialized projects in house — or worse, failing to address tech needs and exposing your company to costly risks.
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