Running a business, especially a small business, by default, comes with a lot of responsibilities. It’s easy to find yourself stretched thin if you try to take on every aspect of managing your business yourself. Instead, delegating time-consuming tasks to staff or even a third party can be a game-changer. Suddenly, you’ll have a whole lot more time to focus on strategic decision-making and doing what you do best – making your clients happy!

In this article, we’ll explore key areas where delegation can significantly benefit your business the most.

Accounting 

Carefully handling financial matters is essential for any business, but it doesn’t mean you have to be the one crunching the numbers. Delegating accounting tasks like bookkeeping or tax preparation to a professional not only ensures accuracy but also frees up your time to concentrate on your business. 

A professional account also saves you from having to bear the brunt of worrying about tax compliance yourself. Additionally, you won’t have to worry about integration and fees for accounting software like Xero or MYOB yourself.

Marketing

Effective marketing is important for any business, established or new to the market, to consistently generate new leads and build brand awareness. However, an effective marketing strategy takes time to plan and implement, as well as multifaceted experience in content creation, SEO, copywriting, and more.  If you’d like to learn more about the ins and outs of marketing strategies, we’ve got an insightful article on how to create your own marketing strategy.

Delegating these tasks to a digital marketing agency can help grow your online presence without you having to spend 100s of hours on it yourself. Professional marketing experts are also better equipped, both in terms of tools and expertise, to navigate the ever-changing algorithms on social media and search engines.

Web & Graphic Design

Your website and logo design are often among the first impressions potential customers get of your business. These first impressions are vital to create a positive brand image. 

While it can be tempting as a business owner to handle something so important yourself, web and graphic design are often a lot harder than they look to an untrained eye. Delegating your design work to someone with plenty of experience helps ensure you have a user-friendly website that matches your branding and a logo that stands out.

Website Maintenance 

A well-designed website is a powerful asset for your business, but its effectiveness relies on consistent maintenance. We recommend running maintenance on your website at least monthly to keep it fast, secure, and functioning as it should.

Website maintenance includes tasks like updating plugins, fixing bugs, and checking for broken links. Not running frequent maintenance can negatively affect your search engine ranking and even cause your website to go down.

These tasks, essential as they are, can be tedious. Website maintenance requires a high level of expertise and large amounts of your time, both things that are hard to come by as a business owner when you’ve got other aspects of your business to focus on.

You’re better off delegating web maintenance tasks to another member of your team or subscribing to a monthly website maintenance plan from a qualified web development team. This will save you time and keep your website running smoothly.

Data Entry & Filing 

Data entry includes tasks like updating customer information, logging sales, scanning documents, and a lot more. While these tasks are important and need attention to detail, they’re also incredibly time-consuming and repetitive.

Data entry doesn’t require a high level of skill – this means almost anyone in your office can do their share of data entry, and there’s no need for you to do so when you could instead be focusing on decision-making.

If you have a small team and no one else in your business has the time to do data entry, consider outsourcing it to a data-entry service that can take care of all the nitty-gritty details. 

Packing & Sending

If your business involves shipping products, the logistics of picking, packing, sending and rerouting orders can be overwhelming. Although making sure all your products are packed and sent with care is an important part of the sales and customer experience journey, it can very quickly take up a lot of your time.

Your time is better spent on expanding your product line or improving customer service. Consider training or hiring a staff member to do it instead. Alternatively, you can outsource inventory management and order fulfilment to a reliable Third-Party Logistics (TPL) partner such as ShipBob, Shipmonk or even Amazon. 

By outsourcing this task, you can rest assured that your orders will be handled professionally, and it will also reduce the likelihood of shipping errors and delays if you’re already stretched too thin to focus entirely on packing and sending products yourself.

Cleaning

While cleaning seems like a task of lesser importance for your business when compared to other things like accounting, maintaining a clean and organised workspace is important so you and your team can maintain focus and stay productive. It’s also important to boost staff morale and leave a positive impression on any clients or customers that come to visit your office. 

However, if it isn’t delegated to anyone in particular, it can very quickly fall completely on your shoulders or not get done at all. As soon as you have an office space, you should consider hiring a regular cleaner to ensure your professional space is always presentable. 

For the smaller tasks like unpacking the dishwasher, wiping down eating spaces and keeping the office kitchen tidy, consider creating a chore chart for your team to make sure everyone carries the load, not just you. Chore charts are also a great team-building tool – they foster a sense of community and give your team more responsibility for the physical space they share with their colleagues.

Office Administration 

Office administration comprises a million different tasks that, although small, help to keep your office and business running efficiently and effectively without any hiccups. These tasks can include anything from ordering more printer paper and office supplies to troubleshooting broken equipment to liaising with your office’s landlord. 

If you have to focus on growing your business, increasing revenue, and project management, office administration tasks might quickly fall through the cracks if you try to do them yourself. Hiring an office assistant or manager can keep your office running smoothly and save you a lot of stress. 

Teamwork Divides The Task And Multiplies Success

It sounds like a cliche, but it couldn’t be more true when it comes to running a business. As a business owner, it can sometimes be hard to let go of the reins and trust that things will still go smoothly, but trying to do everything yourself is a surefire way to burn out and lose sight of the bigger picture you should be focusing on.

By outsourcing time-consuming and repetitive tasks, you can focus on what truly matters—innovating, strategising, and growing your business. Evaluate your business needs, identify tasks that can be delegated, and watch as your efficiency and productivity increases tenfold.