How to Resolve General Issues of Business Process Optimization

Date 8/19/2019

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When can we use BPO?

We know how difficult is to run a successful company, and how important is to optimize all the processes. Outsourcing is a possibility to cut down a significant amount of a company’s expenses, and we tried to provide you with detailed information on how to outsource your processes and hire remote employees. The main idea of our whitepaper is to deliver maximum information and to help you avoid mistakes hiring an outsourced team and to help with understanding the difficulties in that way. Of course, for some businesses, especially new ones, it’s quite difficult to determine the processes that can be easily outsourced, and that would better to keep within the company because of different reasons.

Any sensitive information, intellectual property, economic and technological secrets, you worry about, are normally kept confidential. But you can easily outsource any external processes – contacts with clients, marketing and advertisement. You can start with some daily routine and step by step cut off the processes that do not require your complete control. You can always contact Front Desk Helpers for more detailed advice and calculation. With the good connection between an outsourcing company and a client, they may not only boost the revenues but also double their productivity.

Mainly businesses use business processes optimization for different back-office functions – any kinds of work that can be provided from any place through the Internet connection – IT support, call-center services, human resources, billing and payments, personal assistant and a number of other jobs for which it is not necessary to be present in the office and which do not represent the activities that are main for a company. Various front-office functions also can be outsourced: namely customer support, technical support, market research, and advertisement campaigns, etc. Sometimes, some specific kinds of jobs can be outsourced as well – translation, content writing, etc. Of course, the number of processes that can be outsourced depends on the size and type of business.

People want some innovation and ease at work. But the key point here is cost since business owners seek a reduction of expenses. Understanding how much money they can save on this or that process addressing to an outsourcing company in comparison with a regular employee. With the good connection between two companies, they may not only boost the revenues but also double their productivity.

Geographical and other types of business process optimization

Outsourced service providers work as within their own country as well as outside, and according to it, we can distinguish 3 geographical types. Offshore outsourcing refers to the service provided by a foreign company. It’s obvious that the main question here is the price but some other aspects can also be taken into account. For example, Japanese providers are well known for their quality, but there may arise cultural or language barriers. Close in meaning is near-shore outsourcing, this term refers to cases when the service-providing company is located in nearby countries. And logically, onshore outsourcing refers to cases when a service provider and a client are based in the same country. And one more type can be mentioned, some kind of a mixed one, when service provider acts as a staffing company, providing a client with a number of specialists in needed areas from other countries in order to cover different time shifts or special questions. Outsourcing is considered to be an IT-based service and the development in this sphere will inspire the further development of outsourcing. Sometimes outscoring can be described as outsourcing of knowledge processes that can be performed easily and with more efficient outcome by a third party, a contractor hired to provide some kind of expertise in research or legal process, any analytical or marketing job.

Benefits of outsourcing

If companies decide to address to outsource service provider, logically they expect benefits from this cooperation.

The main idea of outsourcing is financial savings. If the process to be outsourced is not of primary importance for your company, or it doesn’t specialize in the above processes, it goes without saying that to organize such process within your business will take some efforts, time and money. At the same time using services of an outsourcing company a business owner can save up to 30% on salaries, taxes, rent, and other accompanying expenses. But one of the most important things here is that your employees do not waste time for the processes that can be easily passed to the supporting staff and devote their work time to their main functions.

The first point is connected to the second one as it allows greater flexibility in organizing the business processes and in reacting to changing circumstances and be capable to follow all the main streams in the market.

And these two give competitive advantages to concentrate on the company’s mission or primary goals for the period, provide new services, achieve sales targets, etc. As you pass some processes to the specialists you may expect that they will be performed at the highest level and on time.

Risks of outsourcing

Before trying business process optimization company management should choose the right outsourcing company, otherwise, instead of anticipated benefits, they may take unexpected risks. Frankly speaking, the number of risks is rather limited but in any case business owner or responsible person should discuss all the bottlenecks or problematic issues with the service provider to avoid any problems in the future.

So we can distinguish 4 issues companies feel uncertain about and which prevent them from trying outsourcing:

Security

Probably it is the most important question to be discussed with a service provider. Both companies should arrange a special secure channel for information as very often they have to pass regulated data and security breach is equally unnecessary for both – the service provider and the client.

Cultural differences

As two companies and their staff will work in close contact it is really advisable to choose a service provider from a country close to yours from the cultural point of view. Though the globe becomes smaller due to the development of Internet technologies and transportation networks, still there are some significant discrepancies between cultures in countries from different parts of the world or counties that historically had difficult relationships. And such misunderstandings may influence the cooperation ad general result of the work.

Higher expenses/ lower benefits

This happens when partners didn’t discuss all the details, the client underestimates the volume of work or they couldn’t anticipate all the costs.

Lack of communication and control

Some managers are worried that remote employees of the outsourcing company will suffer the lack of communication with the office staff and management than usual control tools won’t work with remote employees and the number of similar issues may seem the least important problem as modern technologies allows monitoring of the remote work, as well as the office staff. And different messengers and mailing agents will help to stay in contact anytime and everywhere.

To summit up – every experienced outsourcing company has a number of ways how to overcome all difficulties and to secure the information of the client. All the questions can be discussed beforehand to avoid unexpected surprises.

Perspectives of business process optimization

Future development of this industry is completely connected with the development of the Internet and Artificial intelligence. Automation and artificial intelligence nowadays make business processes easier and comfortable for employees and clients. The service can be provided at a higher level and peed to clients’ content. But not all services can be automated easily and it is not a cheap option, so outsourcing companies that deal with similar things quite often may be in more favorable conditions, as they have experience and resources how to automate their services.

Some experts say that in the 10-year horizon 179 million jobs will be automated and transferred to cyberspace. And after that everything will be existing in cyberspace only, and there will only no-shore outsourcing as cyberspace has no shores at all

We invite you to learn more about our capabilities and use the cost calculator for remote employees to evaluate the benefits of working with us!

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