Businesses always look for new and alternative ways to deliver value to their customers, increase revenues, expand their reach and ultimately improve their bottom line. Back office outsourcing is one strategy they may employ to reduce in-house workload. It is important for organizations to evaluate what business processes can be entrusted to an external provider. In the financial sector, banks are seen to take on outsourced services to improve their bottom line and ensure success. For example, BPO providers can more efficiently manage huge volumes of daily data, and allow banks to focus on managing various transactional processes such as order fulfilment, applications processing, billing and customized collections services among others, on a high frequency basis. With strategic outsourcing, banks can enhance agility and keep pace with competitors and also efficiently meet the “fintech” challenge that is a real threat now. When an organization gets assistance with tasks that in-house staff are not skilled at, it will have more time for higher level activities that will ensure growth and productivity.
Regardless of the talk about a possible decline in the outsourcing trend, manufacturers, IT providers, and telecom providers among others continue to outsource their activities to experts in the field. A dearth in local talent, cost savings and enhanced productivity offered by the outsourcing model, and competitiveness ensured make outsourcing attractive.
When outsourcing, it is important to analyze and determine which activities can be safely outsourced.
- Tax documents filing: Preparing tax returns can be time consuming and requires special skills. Tax consultants can help you prepare and file your tax returns on time. You can outsource VAT, Service Tax, and TDS returns preparation. You can provide temporary access to your online accounting software, and these service personnel will be able to generate the return.
- Accounting and Book-keeping: Book-keeping is an essential part of any business’ functioning, and can cause serious problems if you ignore it. This activity involves maintaining the records of all financial transactions in a systematic way. It is a time-consuming task that should be done every day without fail. To avoid the burden of accounting and book-keeping activities, you can hire a reliable vendor who can take care of day to day requirements in this regard. This will save time and help you focus more on core business tasks. Cost savings is also ensured because accounts outsourcing is cheaper than hiring a full-time accountant.
- Social media marketing: In the present world, social media engagement is very important. Popular social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc are now used for social media marketing. Marketing activities on these social networks require special skills and activities to gain more attention. Outsourcing to reliable vendors will help to optimize your website efficiently.
- Skills that you don’t have: Employees may have certain skills to meet their job requirements. But as the company grows, employees may have to undertake other tasks that they are not familiar with. For example, the employees may have excellent skills in handling sales, but they may not be skilled at document management. It is always better to outsource those activities which your staffs are not proficient in.
Payroll processing: Payroll processing is simple if you have a small business. But once your company starts expanding, more employees will join and payroll processing becomes difficult. It is necessary that the payroll processing activity is carried out efficiently as it includes employee leaves, joining and exit formalities, bonuses, loan advances etc that should be maintained to avoid any confusions later on.- Event management: If you are planning to host an event or workshop, the best option is to outsource it to an expert event management team. They will take care of each activity right from planning to execution. By outsourcing you get to save your valuable time and also conduct your event successfully.
- Creative work: For any company it is necessary to maintain an attractive website. Sometimes you may have a great web design in your mind but you may not be skilled at bringing that vision to reality. A good web design company can help you create a website that can drive more traffic. Consider outsourcing designing of your logos, business cards, website images, ad banners, letterheads and so on.
- Hiring: Companies recruit new employees through online application or from existing employees. The recruiting process is time consuming which includes many steps such as interviewing, short-listing, background verification, salary negotiation and so on.
Payroll processing: Payroll processing is simple if you have a small business. But once your company starts expanding, more employees will join and payroll processing becomes difficult. It is necessary that the payroll processing activity is carried out efficiently as it includes employee leaves, joining and exit formalities, bonuses, loan advances etc that should be maintained to avoid any confusions later on.As mentioned at the outset, companies rely on outsourced solutions but it requires an additional layer of trust. So it is important to go through reviews and recommendations from others before you hire someone.
