Nick Brown July 8, 2021 Business process outsourcing (BPO) involves hiring third-party contractors or cloud-based ‘business process as a service’ solutions to undertake your business operations instead of carrying these out in-house.
Operations could be either back or front end, including areas such as accounting, payments, IT services, sales, and marketing.
Organizations outsource for a range of reasons, principally because they want a process to be executed correctly but lack the internal ability to do so. For example, enterprises that don’t have the resources or departments for more technical digital marketing projects would have to outsource and get the help of pertinent agencies for SEO and guest blogging. Outsourcing frees up employees to directly focus on their jobs.
It also lets organizations prioritize their core business processes and allows leaders to think clearly. Other benefits of BPO include increasing revenue, improving processes, and boosting efficiency.
Here are six of the best ways to reinvent your business by leveraging BPO to boost growth.
1. Pay lower costs for the same quality of work
What company doesn’t want to lower its overheads? Yet reducing costs is generally associated with sacrificing quality. Outsourcing your processes to countries that have lower costs of living and wages means you don’t have to make this compromise. While searching for the cheapest possible offer is probably not the smartest idea, unlocking human potential abroad is.
There are many benefits of a center of excellence, domestic or otherwise. Say, for example, you outsource to a call center provider in Mexico. The country is home to a large number of people who speak fluent English, but average wages are lower. Poland, on the other hand, might be the perfect place to look for talented software developers.
Businesses can find reasonably priced services in these countries while maintaining their already high standards. Cost reductions, in turn, lead to higher profit margins.
2. Increase your company’s efficiency
Every employee has a particular skill set. If your company has a specialized need but doesn’t have the human talent, there are two in-house options: hire someone or learn. Taking on new staff is costly and potentially unnecessary, and wasting time researching is inefficient and likely to lead to mistakes being made.
However, hiring a contractor with the precise experience you are looking for – by analyzing employee reviews on websites such as UpWork, for example – will guarantee you the professional service you need.
You can choose a contractor who specializes in exactly the right area, and rest assured that they will not make the same mistakes you would. There’s a huge pool of freelancers online who work remotely and will bid to take on your project.
Outsourcing processes ensures the contractor you choose is more skilled than your employees in that particular area. This means your problem will be resolved using the correct solution, which will strengthen your business in the long term. Even nuanced processes, such as a disciplinary meeting hearing, can also be outsourced. For bigger and more technical tasks, like digital marketing, you could even seek help from agencies with more expertise, helping you optimize your brand, maximize your reach and impact, and reduce customer churn.
Your employees will also thank you, and you’ll have happy staff who aren’t asked to do jobs they’ve neither the qualifications nor competence to perform.
3. 24-7-365 business operations
There are obvious advantages to running a business that outsources its operations to several different time zones. Your company can essentially be non-stop. Imagine a software operation that starts work at 9 am in Australia, continues in Europe, and then ends in Latin America – only to instantly start again in Australia.
There are also benefits of global teams working together. Research has shown that people from different cultures can resolve a problem by addressing it from many diverse angles, which is an asset to your business.
4. Access the latest technology
From bots mobile apps to augmented reality, keeping up with the latest technology and software developments is difficult. These are fast-evolving areas, and companies need to spend a lot of time and resources keeping abreast of changes, which can involve huge overheads.
However, by outsourcing to specialist IT companies that have already invested in software and employ experts, businesses can harness the latest technologies without any of the hassle or cost of trying to do it themselves.
Even global organizations with large offices can benefit from outsourcing IT services to professional companies as they do not have to manage these processes in-house. This frees them up to concentrate on what that company does best.
Additionally, companies need to collect data on everything they do on a daily basis – a record of every customer who’s been contacted and email that has been sent. Outsourcing this task to specialist companies that use the latest technology platforms to maintain and manage an organization’s data is a more secure and efficient process than taking care of it in-house.
5. Improve your operations
Repetitive processes carried out daily are a good place for a company to start outsourcing. Small, medium, and large enterprises can save themselves from having to routinely complete boring tasks that suck the innovation out of employees and executives. Instead, they can outsource to expert companies that are often located in cheaper countries.
Procedures that are the easiest to outsource include order processing, onboarding, and KYC processing. This would improve operations as senior management wouldn’t have to involve themselves in potentially complex investigations.
6. Compete with larger companies
Larger companies have a greater market share as they have the in-house capacity to employ experts across diverse fields. This attracts more clients, and the cycle repeats itself, only serving to solidify their dominance.
But BPO is a way for SMEs to level the playing field. They can’t put more staff on the payroll, but they can find an excellent contractor to help with specific needs. This allows them to behave as if they’re much larger companies but without the overheads. Even small businesses can compete with market leaders if they make smart use of outsourcing.
Conclusion
Each company should dedicate the majority of its time to what it does well. Using employee hours and effort on complex tasks that they don’t specialize in is, at best, time-wasting and, at worst, dangerous.
Luckily, we live in a remote age where specialist tasks can be outsourced to excellent professionals who know how to do what you don’t.
Outsourcing has innumerable benefits, ranging from allowing your business to compete with much bigger companies to being able to operate round the clock, all of which will boost your growth in the long term.
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