Most businesses’ origin stories are rooted in a passion for the core good or service they provide to their customers. The problem is, a passion for building custom wakeboards likely doesn’t come with a passion for accounting. But just because a business owner doesn’t love Excel spreadsheets doesn’t mean they don’t still require attention.
Fortunately, today’s business leaders can take advantage of technological developments and/or experienced outsourcers to handle the things they don’t want to. If bookkeeping isn’t their forté, cloud-based software can make it easier, or a freelance accountant can do it outright.
Rather than continuing to struggle with non-core competencies, many businesses are rethinking the old ways of getting work done. Read on to learn how your business can likewise make the hard things easy.
1. Put International Hiring in the Hands of Qualified Experts
Of all the things that have proven hard for business leaders in recent years, hiring qualified employees is right up there. Despite continued talk of an imminent recession, unemployment in the U.S. remains near record lows. If that fact has you casting your eyes across borders in search of fresh talent, you’re not alone. Yet hiring global workers and complying with other countries’ labor laws and regulations is — you guessed it — hard. Luckily, there are ways to make it easier.
One solution is to engage an employer of record alongside your human resources team. An EOR employs individuals on your behalf, which can be crucial for international hires. Without this support, you’d have to set up an entity in each country where you want to hire talent. This added complexity can quickly eat up both financial resources and time before you even get to hiring.
As noted, country-specific employment laws can be complex and will require a significant time investment to understand and comply with. Here, too, an EOR can come to your rescue. As your workers’ legal employer, the EOR is responsible for compliance with local labor laws and regulations. They handle payroll and benefits administration, too.
Many job seekers today are focusing on remote work roles, and companies whose infrastructure has adapted to that reality have an advantage. Your software developer role, supported by an EOR relationship, can help you attract nearly any candidate anywhere. Whether your top pick is a digital nomad or needs location flexibility due to their partner’s employment, your opportunity will stand out.
2. Leave Complex Logistics to the Professionals
You know how to make an incredible product that your customers want. However, getting it to them in a manner that meets their Amazon-influenced expectations is another issue. The pandemic solidified that online shoppers have come to expect fast, free, and efficient delivery for the things they buy. Any business that can’t match the expectations set by market leaders stands to lose customers to those that can.
Clean up your logistics flow by exploring options like dropshipping. This solution can be limited or full-scale, with providers offering a range of options for business clients. Generally, dropshippers offer warehousing for products and handle shipping products to paying customers. This relationship allows you to focus on marketing, branding, and selling products while your dropshipper fulfills orders.
Order fulfillment is time-consuming and tedious, taking valuable time away from business growth activities. Frequently, dropshipping also provides new businesses a lower cost of entry into their industry, as inventory isn’t held. Dropshippers can supply a marketplace of unique and brandable products, which can improve efficiencies across the board.
Print-on-demand products can also be fulfilled this way, extending size and styling capabilities that are otherwise hard to find. With added flexibility, you can expand your range and deliver products in alignment with market expectations.
3. Upgrade Systems and Tools to Maximize Productivity
There’s no escaping technology, even in the most off-the-grid endeavor. A solid technology stack isn’t just a way to keep up with the times — it’s an essential addition to improve productivity and protect your proprietary data.
Consider your current customer resource management system and how it connects with your other systems. If your teams are opening up multiple separate databases to do their work, you’re losing time and inviting complexity. Data transfers, file uploads, and manual work can run rampant, increasing errors and exhausting otherwise engaged colleagues.
Upgrade your systems to improve data integrity, reduce potential errors, and expose new opportunities. Once your data is centralized, you can automate processes targeted at customer retention and nurture campaigns. Sales teams will have dynamic data that lets them know which leads to focus on first instead of guessing. This can lead to cleaner sales funnels and higher sales closure rates, which everyone can appreciate.
Pair your new CRM system with productivity workflows and collaboration spaces. If your sales executive closes a sale, easily transition new clients to customer success representatives for training and support. Automated workflows can alert customer success teams to incoming work, and shared collaboration spaces give them access to critical data. Shared information can make kickoff meetings more valuable, establishing a great first impression for new clients. By offloading manual work, your team can focus on the right clients, at the right time, with the best service.
Preserving Your Company’s Focus on What Makes It Unique
Chances are, your company began to see success when your customers understood your value. What sets your organization apart from your competition is what you should protect and support. Your application development team and their refined skill sets ensure your clients’ needs are met, not your accountant’s. By investing in efficiencies outside of your core business, you can delight your customers by focusing on what your business does best.
