If your startup is failing to take off because your team is over stretched but you can’t afford more permanent hires, consider outsourcing some of the more draining parts of your schedule. Offloading some of your more time-sapping tasks could allow you to spend more of your precious energy on growing your business.

But where do you start? This list of the most widely outsourced services for business will help find the ideal solution for you.

Find Your Dream Freelancer

Three out of four SMEs claim that one of the things that gave them the edge over their competitors in the early phases of starting their business was hiring freelancers for once-off, critical projects. Tapping the immense wealth of skills and talent available on the ‘gig’ economy means you get the benefit of desirable skills and expertise for projects that matter to your business, but you won’t be stuck with more full-time employees than you can afford once the demand dies down. Hiring freelancers is a great way to increase the number of workers in your team when you really need it, but you can easily drop back to your core staff once you’ve got those crucial projects off the ground and things once again settle down.

Managed IT Solutions

According to a recent study by one of the world’s most renowned financial institutions, IT is currently the biggest growth area in global outsourcing services. IT Support & Consulting is literally booming, and for good reason: on top of a 40% reduction in operating costs (compared to hiring your own dedicated IT department) managed IT have the added benefit of making your operation much more flexible, giving you the agility required to scale your IT capabilities as your business grows. One of the main challenges for expanding companies is being able to add to their IT infrastructure without necessarily having the time to do so in-house. It’s no wonder that over half of growing businesses report that outsourcing plays a vital role in their IT operations.

Payroll

Many SMEs are opting to outsource their complex payroll procedures rather than managing monthly payroll within their organisation. Calling on experts to manage this task, or investing in state-of-the-art technology for this purpose, has been shown to offer significant reductions in both operating costs and accounting errors. In fact, deciding to outsource your payroll procedures puts you in line to save an extra 20% on your operating costs compared to companies that keep their payroll in-house. Outsourcing payroll offers another important benefit apart from the potential savings. Reduced incidence of errors in your accounting means your valued staff won’t have to put up with incorrect pay. Bolstering faith in you as an employer aids your efforts at employee retention, thus avoiding having a high staff turn-over.

Outsourcing can be a major boost to your business, especially if you identify the most productive areas to hand over to specialists. If you’re spoiled for choice in terms of outsourcing services available in your industry, these widely selected options could help you narrow down the possibilities and choose the best outsourcing service for your business.