Starting a new business is trickier than a Pen & Teller performance.

Before you open your physical or digital doors, you’ll have to build prototypes, test market demand, raise funds, hire staff, procure premises and create marketing campaigns.

After all of these efforts, it’s no wonder that some entrepreneurs lose focus on their budgets and start to splash cash like Lil Wayne ordering diamond grills at the dentist.

One of the tricks to sustainable startup success is staying trim and agile, so here are three services you should outsource to succeed.

1. Perks

You might launch your firm with a small, tight team that’s highly motivated by a shared business vision.

But as you expand, you’ll need to embed the type of culture that rewards high-performing staff with bespoke perks which keep them motivated to constantly go the extra mile.

Taking care of this yourself will become far too time-consuming, but using an employee benefits platform automates exclusive rewards and really lets you flex your recruitment and retention muscles.

Practical perks like cheap cinema tickets and money off meals make employees feel more valued than customer service certificates or boring boxes of chocolate.

2. Payroll

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that paying employees inaccurately and late will make them feel antsy, frustrated and unappreciated. In fact, a couple of months of shoddy salary payments and you could be facing a wildcat strike.

This duty would usually fall in the remit of an in-house HR department, but they don’t come cheap. However, outsourcing your payroll services to a cloud-based system saves time and money.

These clever platforms coordinate staff wages more accurately and quickly than human employees, while ensuring tax arrangements are adhered to in different jurisdictions — what’s not to love?

And if you eventually hire an HR partner, they can focus on fostering positive employee relationships rather than completing onerous admin tasks.

3. IT support

Depending on the nature of your business, there’s every chance that you’ll have to invest in significant IT infrastructure to keep daily operations running as smoothly as possible and deliver excellent customer experiences.

But are you really going to burst your budget hiring your very own IT experts to fix every flaw from minor to major?

Securing an external IT support partner seems more sensible — an expert provider can troubleshoot common problems, prevent more major issues escalating into crises and monitor systems to improve performance and guard against cyber-attacks.

Having trusted associates on call whenever you need them provides peace of mind — especially in an era when having your IT down for a few hours can cause you to lose customers to the competition.

Outsourcing these three services will help your business stay streamlined, swift and successful. And although you’re delegating duties, you’re still firmly in control.

Which services do you outsource? Share your thoughts in the comments section.