You're Wasting Time: 4 Business Functions to Stop Doing Yourself

You don't have to do it all yourself. 

We live in a world with knowledge – and experts – about every topic under the sun literally at our fingertips. We also live in a world full of service businesses.

Don't want to mow your lawn? Schedule lawn service.

Don't want to fix that leaky faucet? Call the plumber.

Can't figure out how to organize your closet or have time to run errands? There are people for that to.

Can't decide what to cook for dinner? Hello, HelloFresh.

Name a service today, and you can outsource it so that you can spend time focusing on work or simply enjoying yourself.

It's no different for businesses. You can outsource your human resources, accounts payable, office space – if it's not core to your business, you can outsource that function. That includes your:

• Copiers and printers
• Business phones
• Data backup
• Network and security 

These four areas are critical to the success of your business. However, many companies – especially small to medium businesses – don't have the necessary in-house expertise to successfully manage all of these functions.

Even if you do, these are infrastructure tasks that can be easily and cost-effectively outsourced. That allows your IT staff to focus on using technology to improve business processes, not just keeping the IT lights on. 

Here are four managed services you should consider outsourcing so that you can focus on your business.

Your Copiers

Managed print services means someone else takes care of your printers and copiers. Your MPS partner will help you identify opportunities to streamline and secure your printing operation.

With MPS, you basically pay for each page you output. Maintenance, calibration, supplies, repair, and the other tasks no one in your office wants to do are all taken care of by your partner.

Backup

You need more than one copy of your information so backup is critical for every company. We’ve all experienced a laptop or PC crash and losing a document we slaved over for hours – and then having to spend more hours recreating it. 

That’s annoying on a personal scale. When you lose data your business relies on, that goes from annoying to potentially crippling. So be sure you are backing up your data!

But data backup is, frankly, a pain. Equipment needs to be updated and maintained. Physical media, such as tape, can break or be lost. Scheduled backup windows can be missed. Data can be corrupted and should be periodically checked to ensure that recovery of data is possible. Data backup is also a great last line of defense against ransomware.

Dial Tone

Often overlooked is that you can free up internal IT resources by outsourcing your business phone system, especially with a voice over IP (VoIP) communication platform. 

Think about the time you can save from not having to

• Monitor your bandwidth to identify bottlenecks and choke points to optimize your network for traffic
• Figure out if jitter is a VoIP problem or a sign of an overall network usage issue?
• Understand baseline traffic patterns to help plan future capacity and upgrades 

Network Management – Security and Maintenance

Small businesses have limited resources to devote to information technology. Today, an internal network is the cost of doing business, not a competitive advantage. The competitive advantage in IT comes from looking at opportunities to use IT to streamline business processes and serve customers better.

It’s better to devote those resources you do have to the technology and strategy that will make a difference, not just in keeping the lights on for your business. IT networks can be outsourced in whole or in part. A managed IT services partner can work with you to identify your needs and then either supplement your IT staff or essentially become your IT department. 

Plus, networking monitoring, keeping security patches up-to-date, and the countless other tasks that IT pros need to do weekly (if not daily) are all tasks that can be easily outsourced.

You don't have to do it all yourself. If it's not core to your business – consider outsourcing it. 

What can we take off of your plate today?