When Should You Outsource?

Intro

All growing businesses reach a point where the workload outweighs internal capacity. 

Deciding when to outsource is about recognizing the precise moment when delegating is needed to maintain sustainable growth. Outsourcing helps business owners or leaders to focus on the tasks that really generate revenue, while outsourced specialists take on secondary or repetitive work. 

A report published by Grand View Research revealed that global business process outsourcing (BPO) reached USD 302.62 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 525.23 billion by 2030. Such a rapid expansion suggests that companies are learning to scale by outsourcing on time, not out of desperation. 

Outsourcing is most effective when done proactively and preventively, right before the workload starts to affect quality, team morale, or customer experience.

Knowing When to Outsource: Brenda’s Story

A secret to success is knowing when to outsource. It’s about timing, doing it before getting sunk under a sea of paperwork and thousands of other tasks. 

Learn Brenda’s story and how outsourcing saved her and her business.  

Brenda runs a small digital-marketing agency that she founded a year ago. After six months, Brenda went from zero to 18 regular clients. Instead of celebrating, she found herself buried under reports, emails, strategies, and invoices. Evenings didn’t exist for her; she had to complete the admin work. 

One day, she lost a potential new client because she missed a video call. The deal was practically done, but Brenda lost the opportunity. 

That moment was her signal. She had to accept that she needed help. Instead of hiring an in-house employee, which she couldn’t afford, Brenda reached out to us. 

We had a conversation where she explained her needs, and we matched her with a virtual assistant (VA) with the skills Brenda needed. Within a couple of weeks, her new  VA was already managing the calendar, responding to emails, making follow-up calls to the client, and preparing reports.  Brenda could return to client acquisition and focus on creating the best marketing strategies for her clients. In the next quarter, she got new clients and her revenue rose by 35%.

For a deeper insight into outsourcing, take a look at our article “Outsourcing by the Numbers: How Virtual Assistants Drive Business Growth.”

Brenda’s experience shows that delaying outsourcing can prevent growth. Delegating early frees time for revenue-generating work. 

What Is Outsourcing and Why Timing Matters

Outsourcing means delegating recurring or specialized tasks to external professionals or remote teams so you can focus on your priorities. Startups and small companies usually start delegating administrative tasks. Read our blog post here for some commonly outsourced admin tasks and how this practice benefits them. Outsourcing is an ample concept that shouldn’t be restricted to virtual assistants or customer services; there is actually a growing number of roles that could be outsourced. 

Although outsourcing can make the difference between growth and failure, timing is a key player. If you outsource too early, this can strain your cash flow, while if you wait too long to adopt this practice, you will miss business opportunities and find yourself and your staff suffering burnout. And you’ll start losing client satisfaction and loyalty. Maybe at a point of no return. 

What If?

• If you hired a home repair service and the plumber never came because of a messy calendar?
• If you booked an appointment with the dentist due to an aching tooth, only to find they have already left?
• If you purchased a night gown for an important event through an e-commerce store and it never arrived?

These are simple examples of how bad service will not only make those businesses lose you as a client, get bad reviews and word of mouth that will prevent new customers from approaching you. 

When these things happen, it’s quite obvious that you and your team can’t keep all their tasks correctly done and on time. This could be like a “death sentence” unless you take action right away. 

When might a business decide to outsource? When they still have time, before losing productivity, clientele and reputation. 

It’s a common misbelief that the main reason behind outsourcing is to cut costs. It certainly does, but there’s much more behind. Consider this: Deloitte’s 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey found that over 80% of organizations consider outsourcing as a long-term strategic partnership, not a last-minute fix, and they plan to maintain or increase their investments in outsourcing.

Outsourcing at the right time prevents burnout, cuts costs, and sets the basis for strategic growth. 

Signs It’s Time to Outsource

As soon as you recognize the signs it’s time to outsource, go for it! This can save you headaches and save your business months of inefficiency.  Let’s get to the point and analyze the signs you need to watch for:

1. You’re Spending Excessive Time on Admin Work

If your mornings vanish into inbox check, reply, and cleanups, and you spend most of your afternoon with spreadsheets and pulling reports, it’s time to delegate. Admin overload distracts you from your leadership, sales, or creative tasks.

2. You Are Missing Deadlines (and Make Clients Wait)

When project timelines start stretching is usually due to a lack of capacity (time availability being critical here), not a lack of skill. This means that regardless of your skill or your in-house team's skills, sometimes the workload engulfs them. Don’t miss more deadlines, don’t lose clients: hire a virtual assistant or back-office remote staff and keep deliverables on schedule and clients satisfied. 

3. Your Staff Is Stressed and Productivity Drop

Burnout spreads as fast as an aggressive virus, and it harms workers’ mental health, satisfaction, and productivity. 

And this is not new. A research article, “The Effect of Stress and Satisfaction on Productivity”, revealed that stress leads to reduced productivity, while increased satisfaction reflects on augmented productivity. And when work begins to overlap with personal life, these further impacts productivity negatively.  Watch out for stress, both for your personnel and yourself.

4. Time to Innovate

In the article by Forbes, “Should You Be Outsourcing? Eight Signs to Look For”, they mention the need for innovation as one of the main indicators that it’s time to outsource. Any business should accompany the evolution of trends and technology. But many times, investing in new tech and systems is a limitation, particularly for small companies or those under budget constraints. 

At Virtudesk, we can give you a helping hand here. We count on the latest tech and a multi-skilled team of professionals. From Tymble Dialer (our power dialer prospecting platform)  and Timedly, (our AI-powered employee time tracker), to any communication, CRM, or managing tool, you can take your business a step beyond without costly investments. 

Stay on top of innovative trends and tech, and prevent your company from staying stuck in old work systems that will hinder your growth or even lead to bankruptcy.  

When to Outsource: The Right Time for Each Business

Determining the right time to outsource work varies a lot depending on where your business stands. We already discussed general signs that indicate outsourcing time has arrived. But let’s see some additional facts to help you answer “When should you outsource?”, depending on the characteristics of your business.

1. Early-Stage Startups

Typically, founders take on all tasks at first. However, once daily admin work demands more than 25% of their working hours, outsourcing tasks like data entry, scheduling, and sorting inbox helps them stay clear to focus on their business growth activities while preserving or improving their gains. 

Take a look at our pricing page, and estimate how much you could produce an hour, let’s say designing a webpage, giving legal advice to your clients, or setting new marketing campaigns. Wouldn’t you be saving at the end of the month? If you are still hesitant, consider trying our Virtudesk Lite package with only 10 hrs. of virtual support a week. 

2. Growing Small Businesses

When sales are increasing, but service quality starts to tremble or decline, it’s most likely time to outsource admin, back-office tasks, or customer support. This allows owners or salespeople to focus on strategic planning and execution, instead of secondary operations. 

This short video by Clutch.con explains why 70% of small businesses are already outsourcing and plan to increase this percentage. 

3. Established Organizations

Mature and large organizations outsource to remain competitive and flexible. They outsource both generic and highly specialized roles to add experience while reducing costs. This is just a small list of large companies that succeeded by outsourcing to improve efficiency, access worldwide talent, accelerate innovations, and cut costs. 

• Procter & Gamble: Outsourced research and development to accelerate growth and innovation. 
• Google: Has been outsourcing software development, AdWords support, and numerous business operations
• Slack: Delegated the development of its initial product, web, and app. 
• IBM: Improved its business process by outsourcing tasks like finance, HR, supply chain, and procurement. 

Each business can benefit from outsourcing. Delegate early enough to support expansion but late enough to ensure steadiness. 

Why Outsourcing is a Smart Strategy to Scale and Stay Competitive

What is outsourcing about? It’s about improving cost-efficiency, stability, scalability, and growth. Recognizing when to outsource affects your team's performance, commercial profitability, and competitiveness.  We’ll review some of its main advantages:

1. Cost-efficiency Without Compromising Quality

The main driver for outsourcing is cost reduction without compromising quality. You’ll want to pay less but not compromise the quality of your products or services. Why is this achievable?

The reason is that most business services providers recruit their staff from diverse regions where labor costs and much lower than in the U.S. (Something you’ve seen at Virtudesk, we reflect it in our low fees). 

Yet, it’s not only about lowering costs, it’s about maintaining or improving the services. That’s why all our staff undergoes a strict background check and continuous training. 

Do some research on the recruiting and training processes of the service provider. At Virtudesk, we do a previous background check, and all our workers undergo rigorous training. 

2. Easy Access to Expert Talent

Sometimes you need immediate access to generalist virtual assistants or specialized employees. The costs of recruiting, training, and onboarding the right person are massive, both in money and time. If you can’t afford any of them, outsourcing through a reputable agency will solve this for you promptly. You’ll be able to access a global pool of professionals in different areas. 

3. Scalability and Flexibility

A sign that a business should outsource is when it faces an urgent need to increase its staff, for example, when about to launch a new campaign or when peak season is approaching. Outsourcing is the smart strategy to scale and stay competitive without costly in-house hiring or long-term commitments. You have the flexibility of increasing your team and scaling up or down according to your needs. 

4. Prevent Burnout and Employee Turnover

Delegating non-core tasks keeps internal employees focused on their main activities, and motivates them to go the extra mile. In most cases, having to perform tasks that are below their skill set causes a lack of motivation, which will reflect on lower performance. 

Strategic outsourcing increases performance, nurtures morale, and ensures your company or professional practice keeps sustainable growth while decreasing operational costs. 

When Should You Outsource? Follow This Simple Checklist

Still doubt if it’s the right time to outsource work? Review these signs:

1. You spend over 25% of your week on admin or secondary tasks.
2. Customers' inquiries remain unanswered for over 24 hours. 
3. Repetitive work results in delayed deliverables or project completion.
4. Your team members are multitasking outside their area of expertise. 
5. You lost one business opportunity due to a lack of time or forgetfulness.
6. You are paying overtime costs that keep rising.
7. You feel you are understaffed, but work seems to continue growing. 

Your business operations are lacking an effective and clear structure. (Regarding this issue, we recommend reading our informative post “How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Build Systems and SOPs”). 

When stress and inefficiency become routine, it’s a clear indicator that a business should consider outsourcing as a strategic growth solution. 

How Virtudesk Helps Businesses Outsource at the Right Time

When should you outsource, and which tasks should you delegate first? Call us at + (800) 470- 8136 or schedule a free discovery call. Our team will match you with trained virtual assistants or other professionals who will integrate impeccably into your workflows.

Timing is everything, and outsourcing tasks before you or your team reach their limits prevents stress, turnover, and customer dissatisfaction. Let us match you with the professionals you need to fit your values and help you boost your business.