During tough economic times, businesses often struggle to stay afloat. That’s why it’s so essential to take steps now to ensure that your business survives the next downturn. These three strategies can help you lower your overhead costs without sacrificing quality!

1. Reduce Overhead Costs Through Outsourcing

If you want to reduce overhead costs, consider outsourcing all non-essential functions. Outsourcing allows you to focus on what you do best while leaving the rest to professionals who specialize in those areas. This saves money and frees up resources for other tasks! If you don’t want to hire someone full-time, consider hiring freelancers instead. Freelance workers often work at lower rates than full-time employees, and they may be able to complete certain projects faster. For example, you may hire a virtual assistant to handle administrative tasks like scheduling appointments, managing email correspondence, and handling customer support requests. You can also find vendors that provide specialized products and services that save you money. For example, you might contract with a vendor that provides high-quality printing at a reduced rate.

In particular, human resources is often the area with the least amount of time and funds available – if it even exists in your company! When owners must undertake the full hiring process, productivity naturally goes down. That’s why an ideal solution to open positions is to hire a company like Recruiterie on a temporary basis. Recruiterie leverages its expansive candidate network with a comprehensive vetting process to ensure each candidate is ready to succeed. Their human resource executive search firm adopts a rigorous search process to meet each client’s needs and expectations, as well as evaluating various aspects of the company, including goals, mission, company culture, and more

2. Use Technology to Automate Tasks

Automation has become essential for all types of business, especially when it comes to customer service. The key benefits of automating processes include reducing costs, increasing efficiency, improving customer service, and making better use of resources. Automation helps businesses save money, and reduce human error, and allows professionals to focus on higher level tasks.  

For example, for legal and finance professionals, filing is often the most time consuming and hassle-filled task. With a platform like Filejet, you can simplify your workflow, file, and manage or automate all of your business entities and clients in a single platform. 

How about financial management? Treasury management software makes financial transparency a breeze. Integrating external market and client data within their own data warehouse, Kayenta visually represents accurate financing data with easy-to-use analytical tools. They offer a free month trial for new users! 

If you’re looking for a deeper dive into automation, consider contacting a multiservice company like SADA. For over 20 years, SADA has focused on increasing the capabilities of people and the performance of the organizations they serve. Whether you want to boost productivity and collaboration, accelerate innovation, increase efficiency and agility, build cloud-native applications, better protect your business from cyber threats, or make the most of your data, they understand the technology through and through and can help you find the right solution for today and beyond.

3. Learn about small-loan options, just in case

Better to be prepared to make a move than to scramble if things take a downturn. Hot tip: If you need funding quickly, online lenders are far faster than with banks.  

LendThrive can quickly provide funds to meet unexpected needs; deal with seasonality; or fund an expansion, acquisition, or other growth opportunities. Their Fixed Rate Business Loan provides funds in a simple way – with minimal paperwork, fast approval and zero hassle – so that you can focus on growing your business. They pre-approve with no hard credit pull and offer loans from $25,000 to $150,000. Not sure if your business is eligible for funding? Check out their criteria here!

Funding Circle is another excellent option that offers fast, affordable loan programs with a simple online process and funding in as little as 48 hours. They are proud to be a direct lender specializing in small business loans since 2010; learn more about your small business financing options, APR, term length, qualifications and more.