When we think of outsourcing, what image comes to mind? A friendly worker with a headset on? Telemarketers cold-calling a list of prospects? Customer service representatives handling complaints and fielding requests?
Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. It is standard practice to farm out such functions in sales and marketing. Dealing with customers all day can be time-consuming, and is best left to professionals.
However, there’s a whole other aspect of your business that you can and should outsource before anything else. These have to do with your back office.
What Your Back Office Is and How It Functions
To put it simply, your company’s back-office encompasses its administration and support personnel. What makes it different from your front office is that these people are not client-facing.
Now, the back office is essential to your company’s operations, even if they might seem invisible. Their roles enable and equip the client-facing employees to do their jobs well as provide all business functions related to operations.
Back-office administrators are thus an umbrella term covering diverse specialisations. Accountants, bookkeepers, virtual assistants, data entry personnel, and human resources (HR) staff are just a few examples.
Generally, if a function falls under HR, Operations, IT, Accounting, or Compliance, it counts as a back-office one. Aside from their daily tasks, these employees also need to stay on top of ever-changing federal regulations, safety laws, and employment standards. Keeping information systems and bookkeeping records up to date is also a key task.
Why You Should Outsource Your Back Office Functions First
There’s a reason why many companies and entrepreneurs often outsource for virtual assistants first. (And if that’s what you need, click here for our in-depth guide.)
You see, while back-office functions are crucial, they don’t directly generate revenue. That’s what the front office is for. Interacting with customers, making cold calls, and working on marketing drive sales, after all.
However, if you’re just starting out and are on a tight budget, it might not be possible to outsource for both your front and back office right away.
So, here’s why you should outsource your back office’s functions first:
1. They require specialised skills that you might not have.
Accounting and bookkeeping can take years to study and master. The same goes for some human resources functions, particularly the ones that involve labor laws.
So, bunkering down to these things yourself would be an inefficient use of your time, especially if there’s someone out there who can do it better. It would be best to leave these things to the experts. Apart from saving time, that could also spare you from making any mistakes that could incur heavy regulatory penalties.
2. Most of the tasks are routine and won’t require major decision-making often.
Once you standardise your operations and if you onboard your back office staff properly, it should run like clockwork. Tasks like data entry and updating the books hardly require a business owner’s personal input. All you need to do is review the output afterwards so you can make the right decisions.
Outsourcing these routine tasks frees up your time and lets you focus on the other important task that only you can do: reaching out to new customers and promoting your product and/or services to them.
3. Back-office functions are especially well-suited for remote work.
With today’s technological advancements, an accountant or bookkeeper can draw up your financial statements and have them in your inbox shortly. Even if they happen to be on a different continent or time zone. Virtual assistants can manage your Google calendar, book your flights and accommodations, pay your bills, and so on from anywhere in the world as well, just so long as they have the right access.
Best of all, outsourcing your back-office functions can help you save money. Why? Because you can choose to hire remotely in places with low costs of living, where the exchange rate makes your Australian dollars go much further.
For instance, the Philippines is home to a lot of highly-qualified remote workers who happen to be quite fluent in English. Costs of living here are some of the lowest in the world, so you can save on labor costs while still providing someone with a decent living.
Are you ready to experience the next level of convenience that comes with outsourcing all those tedious back-office functions? Well, you’re in luck!
Here at Remote Staff, we have no shortage of applicants for all sorts of back-office jobs. Plus, we even take care of onboarding them for you so you can be sure that they’ll be ready when you are.
Click here and schedule a callback with us today.
Serena has been working remotely and writing content for the better part of the last decade. To date, she's written for Pepper.ph and Mabuhay Magazine, among others, and has churned out more than a thousand articles on everything from The Basics of Stock Market Investing to How to Make Milk Tea-Flavored Taho at home. Hermits, aspiring hermits, and non-hermits with interesting project propositions may email her at serena.estrella10@gmail.com.
