March 17, 2025
How Outsourcing Tasks Could be a Game-Changer for Small Business Owners
Outsourcing might seem like a strategy reserved for large companies, but it’s equally beneficial for small businesses. Outsourcing can help business owners save time and focus on growth. It can be a straightforward, effective tool to streamline operations and source expertise.
Let’s explore a few of the biggest benefits of outsourcing for business owners and see how your business can get started with outsourcing to help you maximize your company’s success.
Why Outsourcing Matters
Outsourcing for business owners is a growth strategy that offers a few key benefits for small businesses:
Focus on core activities
No small business can do it all. Outsourcing for business owners can help improve your company’s strategic focus and devote more resources to what your business does best. For example, if you own a bicycle shop, managing payroll or bookkeeping isn’t central to your mission. Similarly, restaurant or spa owners might benefit from outsourcing website management or customer service tasks.
Business outsourcing can take these routine business tasks off your to do list. Using an outsourcing strategy can help free up your small business to do more high-value activities that are truly essential to serving your customers. Let outsourcing handle those tasks for you.
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Save time
Time is money, and few people understand this better than business owners. Outsourcing helps business owners “buy back” time by entrusting routine tasks to trusted experts who can often perform them quickly.
Here are a few examples of routine business tasks where your business might save time by outsourcing:
- Accounting: Business owners could consider hiring a tax professional to help balance the books. Many CPAs can also offer services like payroll processing.
- Administrative tasks: Outsource tasks like billing, scheduling and data entry, for example.
- Information technology (IT): Work with an IT consulting firm if hiring a full-time tech team isn’t feasible.Marketing: Outsource your marketing efforts or augment your in-house team with external specialists to drive more leads and help you reach more clients.
These are just a few broad categories of tasks that your small business could outsource. But if you want to get serious about outsourcing, think more specifically about what kind of professional expertise you need.
Access specialized expertise
Outsourcing doesn’t just save time and money – it provides your business access to professional expertise. Hiring full-time experts for every need isn’t always practical, but outsourcing can help you hire experts on a flexible, short-term basis.
Here are a few examples of outsourced service providers who might have the special skills you need:
- Freelance writers
- Graphic designers
- Marketing agencies
- PR firms
- Project managers
- Sales trainers
- Search engine optimization (SEO) experts
- Software developers
- Web designers
Outsourcing is flexible. It lets you tap into the unique talents and experience of a wide range of professional consultants, freelancers, and technology gurus for short-term engagements and high-impact problem solving.
How to Get Started with Outsourcing
If your business is ready to get started with outsourcing, here are a few steps to take:
1. Make a strategy for which tasks to outsource
Keep in mind that not every business task is a good fit for outsourcing. Ask yourself:
- Which tasks are core or essential to your business?
- How much time or money do you hope to save by outsourcing each task?
- What are the risks of outsourcing a task – such as information security risks?
2. Choose reputable, reliable outsourcing partners
If you’re hiring freelancers, consultants, marketing agencies or business process outsourcing providers, vet potential partners thoroughly. Make sure they have good customer reviews, references and clear examples of their work.
3. Communicate regularly
Maintain clear communication with your outsourcing partner and provide feedback along the way. Ask yourself:
- Is your business achieving the benefits of outsourcing that you’d hoped for?
- Is the cost reasonable for the quality delivered?
- How can you give your outsourcing provider the information, guidance and support that they need to be successful?
The Bottom Line
Business owners often juggle a long list of responsibilities. Outsourcing can allow you to delegate non-core tasks and focus on growing your business. By leveraging professional expertise and streamlining operations, outsourcing can be a powerful tool to help your business thrive.
This content was written by a freelance author and commissioned and paid for by American Express.
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This offer is made by Upwork and is for $100 in credit to Upwork when you spend $500 (the “Qualifying Spend”) on Upwork. Offer is non-transferable and may not be combined. To be eligible for this offer you must be a new Upwork customer. A new Upwork customer is defined as a customer that has not previously created an account with Upwork using their email address. To redeem this offer you must create a new Upwork account using the dedicated American Express offer landing page and spend $500 on services by 12/31/2025 at 11:59PM ET. To earn the $100 in credit, your account must accrue and be successfully billed the applicable Qualifying Spend, excluding taxes, before the offer end date. After meeting the Qualifying Spend, $100 in credit will be credited into your Upwork account within one business day and will be automatically applied to future spend on Upwork. Credit is non-transferable and is not redeemable for cash. Any information you provide to Upwork will be subject to Upwork’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Fulfillment of the offer is the sole responsibility of Upwork. Offers are subject to change at any time without notice to you. Limit one offer per new customer account.
