Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
Entrepreneurs are usually hard workers who don’t mind taking on extra responsibilities. When it comes to running a successful start up business, though, you will need to farm out some services to experts outside of your industry. This is true even for those entrepreneurs that use enterprise resource planning software to maximize efficiency. In these cases, taking on too much responsibility yourself can have costly consequences.
Information Technology
Image via Flickr by juanpol
Unless you have a very large start up business, you probably don’t need a dedicated IT staff. There are some obvious exceptions, such as if you own a tech company, but most businesses with IT departments are just wasting money.
Salaries alone are enough to drain your business’s budget. The 2012 median salary for database administrators was over $77,000. Once you add network administrators, information security analysts, and other specialists, you could spend over half a million dollars on a small staff.
No matter whether you own a craft business or an accounting firm, it is more cost-effective to use an IT service provider that can help you maintain your computers and develop software when necessary. You don’t need a full-time staff, so don’t spend money on one.
Execution Management
Your start up business will face hundreds of projects in the coming years. How you execute those projects will determine whether your company succeeds or fails.
Since this is such an important part of success, you should hire an execution management expert from the beginning. It will help you complete the first stages of building your business and keep your start up costs lower along the way.
When choosing a consulting firm, look for an option that can provide a wide range of delivery services, including:
- Delivery management
- Delivery governance
- Delivery assurance
If one of these aspects fails, your business will not function as efficiently as it could. Ruota Consulting uses delivery tools like EMLite, ProFolio, and HCAeasy to make processes transparent and efficient.
The sooner you invest in these tools, the more you will get out of them. First, though, you need a professional who can help you choose the right options for your company.
Marketing Consulting
Marketing consulting services are a must-have startup service for most business owners. Unless you have a marketing degree, you will not know where to begin. Marketing plans incorporate a whole different bunch of objectives and advertising strategies. Hiring a marketing consulting firm may benefit your business in the long run. It will make it easier to generate leads and establish a brand identity that consumers recognize. It will also leave you more time to establish office safety procedures, which is vital for business. That is certainly worth any amount of startup capital that you can afford.
Accounting and Payroll
The rules that govern accounting and payroll are so complex that you need a professional to do the job for you. Unless you have a background in accounting — and you are willing to keep up with ever-changing laws — you will either need to hire or contract with a licensed accountant.
Considering that a good accountant can make $100,000 or more per year, it’s usually in your business’s financial interest to use a consultant instead of hiring a full-time professional.
Saving money, however, isn’t the only benefit that you get from using a consultant. If you hire an accountant, you could be held liable for that person’s mistakes. Just one lawsuit could ruin everything you have worked to build. Since consultants are independent from your business, you are less likely to pay fines and legal bills. Hiring through the best accounting staffing agencies can help ensure that only top-tier individuals will be hired by your company. It’s an extra level of security that protects you and your business.
Startup Services
You may also want to consider investing in a book like The Service Startup. This is a book that helps to make design thinking and service design lean for business purposes. Even if that does not sound all that attractive to you, you need to realize the importance of business help books. Why? Because they give you information that you may not be able to find on the internet for free or from some video conference, at least not easily. It is worthwhile to invest in a couple top management books and start up operations guides. You can read them to prepare yourself, and then place them on a shelf in your office in case you ever need a bit of guidance or a refresher. Buying self help books for business will help to put you in the right business mindset, which will only help to set your business up for success.
The first few years of a start up business’s life offer plenty of ways to fail. By consulting with the right service providers, you can avoid many of those risks.
