Whether a startup or an established company, small businesses remain much more vulnerable than their larger counterparts.  A slight change in their industry or dip in the economy can significantly impact existing operations and future sales.  While there are no guarantees in business, there are some essential steps that should be followed.

First of all, you need to stay focused.  Most businesses were started by owners who did something well and liked what they did.  Whether that was manufacturing a product or providing a service, they served their customers well.  However, as businesses grow, it’s easy to become distracted by other aspects of the business, mainly the administrative tasks.  These distractions divert your time away from what is really important: servicing your customers. 

So how do you stay focused?  It’s simple, do not try to do everything yourself.   Whether you are a builder, lawyer or a manufacturer, your customers hire you because you are better at what you do than they are.  If not, they would just do it themselves.  However, if you are a builder, they are hiring you to build, not maintain their IT network, perform their accounting or process their payroll.  So while these things need to be done in any company, along with many other administrative jobs, do not try to do them all yourself.  There are only so many hours in a day and you will either burn out from working to many or start sacrificing client service time to address them.  According to Harvard Business Review study, this is the primary advantage that large businesses have; operating divisions can focus entirely on their production and sales while large back office departments handle the accounting, human resources, finance, tax and technology requirements.

Sounds easy enough.  Focus on your operations and keep customers happy and do not try to do all of the administrative jobs yourself.  But who does them then, if not the small business owner?  Well you can hire employees: an IT person to oversee your systems, an accountant to maintain the books and records, an HR person to process payroll, administer benefits and oversee compliance matters.  The problem is, in most small businesses these are not full time jobs so you are either paying people to sit around doing nothing a lot of the time or struggle to find someone willing to work part time as needed.  Also, even if you can find a good part time employee, they may not always be available when you really need them, like when your system crashes.

Therefore, until you grow to the point where you need full time administrative staff, the real answer for small businesses is outsourcing.  You only pay for the services you utilize and they are there when you need them.  Also, with outsourcing you are also getting an expert in that field who can do it better and more efficiently than you could yourself.

So if you are running a small business and find you are losing your focus because the administration is eating up more and more of your time, call Total Team Solutions.  We are a local company that provides a full range of HR Outsourcing services including payroll, benefits administration and HR compliance that can be customized to meet your company’s needs and budgets.  Plus, we work closely with several IT and accounting firms that we can recommend to help in those areas as well.

For more information, contact John Morlock at 800-836-9678 or jmorlock@ttspro.com.

ABOUT TOTAL TEAM SOLUTIONS:  Total Team Solutions is a full service Human Resources Outsourcing company helping small business manage their payroll, employee benefits and human resources needs to reduce expenses and save them time so they can focus on running and growing their businesses.  Based in Trumbull, CT, Total Team Solutions serves clients in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.