Top Tasks Entrepreneurs Should Outsource

We’re living through deeply uncertain times, marked by global trade conflict, the threat of rising inflation, and volatility in the stock market. Consumer confidence has fallen a staggering 30% since November 2024, raising the fear of recession.

In short, it’s tough out there for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and start-ups.

Still, technological advances continue to march forward, and AI adoption continues at a rapid pace. Even in this challenging environment, businesses are still looking for innovations that can deliver a competitive edge. As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to fall behind.

So, how do you approach this dilemma? How can you get ahead of the competition while hedging your risk?

A growing number of businesses are finding this balance through Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). 

10 Ways Outsourcing Can Lower Your Risk Exposure

A strong BPO partnership can be a valuable source of support for a cash-strapped startup or entrepreneurial venture. When you outsource select business tasks, you are also outsourcing certain risks. Among them are the risks associated with investing in technology, building infrastructure, training personnel, and staying accountable to established KPIs.

A BPO partnership makes it possible to scale your fledgling operation, hit your targets, drive profitability, and access innovative new technology without committing massive amounts of capital. Considering that new developments are emerging every day in the field of AI, it’s tough to overstate the value of this access.

As we’ll show in the discussion below, this access makes it possible to advance, grow, and scale while hedging against risk in an uncertain economy.

1. Back Office Support

Your business may be built on good ideas, but it runs on an extremely wide array of administrative duties, including managing emails, scheduling appointments, organizing meetings, handling paperwork, and general office management. 

These duties are absolutely essential, but for a startup, they can also consume valuable time and labor. Outsourcing administrative tasks to an external back office support team can spare you the costs of recruiting, onboarding, training, and facilitating administrative personnel. This approach can also insulate your startup from risk by lowering both your spending and your level of long-term commitment to full-time back office staff.

2. Payments and Billing

Managing your company’s accounts can be a full-time job in itself. From tracking expenses and invoicing clients to maintaining accounts in good standing and preparing for tax season, running a billing, accounts payable, and accounts receivable department requires a great deal of time and attention to detail. It can be overwhelming and complicated, especially if this isn’t your area of expertise.

By outsourcing these important tasks to an external billing and accounts management department, you relieve your in-house team of a tremendous logistical burden. Moreover, handing these responsibilities over to a dedicated team can reduce costly errors, ensure timely payment of invoices, and enable more diligent billing collection efforts.

3. Customer Support

Your ability to keep and attract new customers hinges on the effectiveness of your customer service. But answering emails, handling incoming calls, offering live chat assistance, and providing technical support can stretch your small team thin. Not only that but with the widespread adoption of AI-powered chat services, customers have increasingly come to expect speed and responsiveness during interactions with customer service.

Outsourcing your customer service department provides affordable access to these AI-powered technologies and people who know how to use them. This means you can provide 24/7 customer support, improve response times, and ensure a positive customer experience without a risky investment in customer service training and tech.

4. Content Management Services

You have a responsibility to keep your community safe from harmful content on your website, through your social media channels, and anywhere else where you’ve worked to establish a positive and inclusive online presence. But this can also be a big job requiring advanced web crawling and data scraping technology.

These advanced tools are rarely in the budget for the average startup. However, third-party content management services can provide immediate access to the tools you need to protect your brand against harmful content, internet trolls, fake news, nudity, pornography, racism, and other Not Safe for Work (NSFW) content.

The right BPO partner can simultaneously reduce the risk posed by harmful content and the risk posed by a costly investment in content monitoring technology.

5. Web Page and Catalog Maintenance

For your website and product catalogs to be effective sales tools, the information listed must be accurate and up-to-date at all times. Incorrect pricing, outdated product specifications, and listings for discontinued items can diminish customer satisfaction and even lead to legal risk. Failure to add new products to your catalog in a timely fashion is simply a wasted opportunity–one that can become costly over time.

However, keeping this information current can be tedious and time-consuming, especially for startups with limited personnel and computing resources. The right third-party provider can manage your web pages and product catalogs to ensure they remain accurate and current at all times. Look for a vendor that provides a full suite of the web page and catalog maintenance services, including adding new products or services as they enter your inventory, updating prices in real-time, modifying production descriptions, and editing and optimizing product images.  

6. QA and Virtual Monitoring

Video monitoring can be a powerful quality assurance (QA) measure. Your security cameras, panic response systems, and live equipment monitoring feeds make it possible to track and respond to issues or incidents that threaten the safety, security, and continuity of your operation, assets, and people. But keeping a close watch on all of the incoming feeds, images, and data is a big job that requires constant attention.

Outsourcing virtual monitoring to an experienced provider can reduce the burden on your team and the risk to your resources. With remote cloud-based monitoring, you’ll gain 24/7 surveillance of equipment reports, charts, and notifications; instant alerts in the event of critical equipment failures; and continuous oversight of your system’s utility usage.

A professionally trained monitoring team can be your eyes and ears around the clock so that you don’t have to risk an investment in your own around-the-clock response team. 

7. Human Resources and Recruiting

Hiring and retaining the right talent are vital to your business's long-term success. However, these functions also require a lot of time, technology, and resources. From cross-posting job ads and vetting applicants to interviewing candidates and onboarding new hires, recruitment can be a lengthy, laborious, and costly process. 

Outsourcing HR functions like recruitment, hiring, and training can save your team time and money while accelerating the onboarding process. Not only that, but professional hiring services have the technology and expertise to deploy more sophisticated outreach, screening, and vetting methods so that only the best candidates end up in your hiring funnel. 

This reduces your startup’s susceptibility to one of the costliest risks of all–the cost of a bad hire. An experienced provider with the latest in AI screening and vetting technology can help deliver only the best candidates to your hiring funnel, ultimately lowering the hefty costs of turnover and replacement.  

8. Sales and Lead Generation

Today, sales and lead generation are powered by increasingly advanced analytics and more precisely targeted marketing and outreach. But implementing, adopting, and optimizing this type of technology requires a significant investment of capital, time, and labor. 

Startups and entrepreneurial endeavors can dramatically reduce their exposure to financial risk by outsourcing their sales and lead gen functions. Third-party providers are equipped with the tools and tech needed to generate more qualified leads, close deals faster, and increase revenue without cutting into your time or costing your young business a fortune. 

9. Supply Chain and Logistics Management

From inventory management and order processing to routing and invoicing, there’s a lot that goes into supply chain management. Fortunately, there are rapidly advancing technologies that make it possible to simplify, streamline, and even automate some of these tasks. However, implementing these systems in-house can be costly and prohibitive, especially for small business owners and startups.

Outsourcing creates access to these capabilities without the risky upfront investment. With the right third-party provider, you’ll gain end-to-end supply chain and logistics support, including inventory management, order processing, transportation, distribution, and compliance tracking. With ongoing support in areas like carrier selection, process optimization, and real-time stock level tracking, outsourcing your supply chain and logistics processes can translate into dramatic cost savings.

10. Data Mining

As a small business, you have access to a vast array of data, but you may not have the time or tools to locate and leverage it. If you truly wish to understand how your consumers behave online, you must make sense of data that is spread across popular social media platforms, search engines like Google, various blogs, online publications, business directories, government sites, forums, and millions of random web pages. 

Outsourcing this work to data specialists, along with tasks like data entry, data extraction, and data management, can significantly reduce the burden of labor on your in-house time and the risky investment for your business while providing a far deeper and more data-driven set of analytical insights. 

Additional Reading: "Outsourcing: The Key to Continued Growth In Times of Economic Uncertainty"

Choosing a BPO provider

The big takeaway is that as an entrepreneur, you don’t need to be scared away from pursuing your big ideas because of economic uncertainty. You just need to take thoughtful steps toward lowering your exposure to risk.

This starts by examining your business model; identifying areas where you can lower your commitment of startup capital, time, and resources; and handing off corresponding tasks to a trusted BPO provider–one with deep industry experience, advanced technological capabilities, and a great reputation. 

About the Author

Vidya Plainfield Growth Officer at Techspeed

Executive with a proven track record of driving both revenue and profit growth in B2B and B2C CPG and Health Care industries. Expert in leveraging customer, consumer and shopper insights to drive innovation that will attract and retain loyal customers. Specialize in creating scaleable go-to-market strategies that competitively position brands and accelerate sales. Strong financial, sales and supply chain experience to complement strategic marketing and research capabilities. Resourceful, fast paced, problem solver with a passion for leading teams and turnaround businesses.

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