When you’re looking at your business processes and trying to find ways to streamline for better efficiency, one option is to get rid of tasks by giving them to someone else.
There are three ways to entrust tasks to someone else: Delegating, outsourcing, and automating.
Delegate Tasks to Your Employees
If you are operating as a true solopreneur, this option is not currently open to you – but don’t skip ahead to the next section. Keep reading and you may just see an opportunity to grow your team by at least one person.
Delegating involves finding someone in your organisation who can take over the task for you.
It requires taking a regular task and mapping out each step so that anyone can learn to do it.
The advantage is that someone within your organisation already knows you and understands your business goals.
A good example of something you can delegate is social media activity.
Social media requires you to be there every day, posting, monitoring, commenting, and interacting.
You can easily get someone in your company to take over this activity rather than doing it yourself.
Other tasks that are easy to delegate include accounting, administrative tasks, data entry, IT, marketing tasks, customer service, and content creation.
For more great ideas how you as a small business owner should delegate effectively, I highly recommend you read Michael E. Gerber’s excellent book The E-Myth
Outsource to Someone Outside Your Organisation
There are several reasons you may choose to delegate to someone outside your organisation.
You may not have the staff on-hand or you may not have staff that can handle the task you need to delegate.
Instead, you can outsource to a virtual assistant or service provider outside your business.
In addition to the same tasks as above, you can also outsource things that require specific skills like graphic design, copywriting, programming, and other skills you don’t have the time to learn or resources to handle yourself.
For example, you may need to design eBook covers, advertisements, websites, and other visual content. It would take time to learn, so a better use of resources is to pay someone to do it.
When outsourcing, take some time to research and compare service providers before you choose one.
The most efficient way to outsource is to hire a virtual assistant who can become familiar with your business and handle a great deal of work in one place.
See also: 15 Ways Busy Soloprenuers Use Virtual Assistants
Automate with Tech Tools
Software tools and apps can take over a great deal of routine tasks that don’t involve creative thinking or problem solving.
With improvements in AI technology, there are more and more things that computers can do for us.
Things that can be automated include:
- Email replies
- Some social media activity
- Monitoring and analytics
- Signups and registrations
- Accounting functions like bill paying
- Customer management
- File back-up
- Organizational tasks.
Explore automation options and determine which of your tasks can be automated.
Take advantage of free trials and use software before you make a purchase.
Don’t automate any area of your business that requires the human touch.
All of the above options require some time and effort on your part to set up.
To delegate or outsource, you need to map out business processes so someone can learn them.
Automating involves some time choosing the right tech option.
But this is time you will save later once you have it set up and running smoothly.
Do you want to learn more about streamlining your business processes? Check out our productivity tool training courses.
