Entrepreneurs constantly make efforts to strike a balance between performing the tasks of the firm and providing excellent service to customers. As already demonstrated by various businesses using the outsourcing model, if you want your business to scale and at the same time focus on your core objectives, outsourcing is the right choice. Hiring outsourced solutions would help improve efficiency, cut costs, speed up product development and allow companies to focus more on core processes. Outsourcing relieves the pressure business owners experience and enable them to stay up to date and function smoothly. Identifying your strengths and weaknesses will let you decide which tasks need to be outsourced to experts.
What to Look for When Outsourcing
Businesses often resort to outsourcing to get ahead of technology but what and when to outsource depends on factors like timeliness, culture and desired outcomes. Business organizations have a lot of repetitive and redundant tasks that consume a lot of time. By outsourcing them, business owners and employees can focus more on the core activities of the firm. Although outsourcing is cost-effective, successful outsourcing requires an initial commitment and saving money depends on the tradeoffs a firm is willing to make. Effective outsourcing minimizes disruptions, increases stability and consistency, streamlines routine maintenance and administrative tasks and provides scalability in staffing for workload management, special projects and specialty skill sets. Outsourcing minimizes the burden on employees and allows key staff members to focus on returning value to the business without increasing the budget. Professional BPO providers have skilled employees and help to stay on top of new technologies. They also know how to succeed in a challenging environment.
Common scenarios that lead firms to consider outsourcing are:
- Sudden loss of multiple IT team members
- Aging technology workforce looking at retirement
- Ineffective IT management team
In such cases re-staffing, training new people, finding the right person etc can prove daunting. Temporary or permanent staff augmentation by partnering with a competent outsourcer can bring quick, effective relief to your firm and ensure that all your projects are completed on or before time. Competent outsource providers are better prepared to ensure quicker results with a skilled technical team.
Short-term or temporary outsourcing can gradually lead to permanent outsourcing. Once the firm understands the advantages of outsourcing, temporary outsourcing could become permanent outsourcing bringing money and time savings. Some businesses choose a hybrid approach that allows key stakeholders to get comfortable with the idea of outsourcing by starting with low-level, routine functions like after-hours or overflow tech support, facilities operations, printer maintenance etc. When the business becomes accustomed to outsourcing, ROI begins to increase.
Outsourcing Trends In 2019
Outsourcing is a good strategy that lets you increase efficiency, minimize cost, improved product development, and also allows companies to focus more on core competency. With every year, outsourcing is increasing due to the changing dynamics of business processes. UK, U.S and Europe have been outsourcing their business processes to India, Philippines, South America and other countries for more than 20 years.
5 Outsourcing Trends
- Better Data Security: It is one of the most important priorities of any company. As technology increases the chances of compromising on security and privacy also increases. Security risks are expected to increase as the IoT (Internet of Things) becomes more prevalent in consumer and commercial products, exposing companies to cyber attacks. Increasing focus on privacy and security will give specialized security business process outsourcing companies a competitive advantage.
- Increased Use of Cloud System: Rise in technology is also a trendsetter in the outsourcing market and in 2019 we may see more shift towards cloud systems. In spite of security concerns and some companies taking a wait and see approach, adopting cloud technology will enable BPO companies to improve and innovate their service models. Those using cloud systems will have a competitive advantage over those who are not. The future of IT data centers will comprise many platforms and chief information officers are bound to experiment with cloud options like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
- Socially Responsible Outsourcing: This is also known as Impact Sourcing and it is a business process built on a foundation of social responsibility that will become popular in 2019. It focuses on providing good service at lower cost with lower employee attrition rates. Impact sourcing employs about 240,000 people around the world and the number is expected to rise as corporations aim to reach their diversity and social responsibility goals.
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence: RPA ensures cost reduction, increased productivity and quality process execution. In 2019, BPO should implement RPA as a part of their intelligence business process management suite. RPA involves usage of advanced software robots that can replace humans for repetitive tasks. To minimize labour costs, more BPO companies are focusing on implementing RPA. Similarly, AI can also improve products and services and help to quickly meet clients’ demands.
- Centralized System instead of Multiple Vendors: Managing multiple vendors is more costly and challenging. So, businesses are likely to move towards a centralized system. When businesses use multiple vendors the major concern is the project delivery which can be threatened by delays a single vendor may cause. Many MNCs are focusing on developing IT capabilities into a single service. This trend is expected to rise in 2019.
Many forward-thinking companies now prefer outsourcing as it reduces time and effort. It gives more time for entrepreneurs to concentrate on business development activities and discover ways to expand the company such as providing personalized customer attention, creating YouTube videos for digital marketing and other marketing campaigns that would allow the company to grow and earn more revenue. Providers of professional outsourced solutions can provide faster and better service with excellent accuracy.
