What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a business practice where a company or organization contracts out certain tasks, processes, or services to external parties rather than handling them internally. In other words, it involves delegating specific functions or operations to third-party companies or individuals who specialize in those areas.
8 Steps to Ensure Outsourcing Success
Asking the most important question— when to outsource and when not to— is essential to the success of your outsourcing endeavor. It can be intriguing to delegate some business operations to an outside expert in order to increase your company’s profit margins, but there are some factors to take into account to ensure a smooth outsourcing transition.
Geographical boundaries have been eroded by the growing idea of a global workforce to the point where any aspect of your business can now be carried out anywhere in the world. Outsourcing non-core functions will give you the talent, skill, cost, and quality advantage you need to stay competitive if your business is expanding and needs something extra. To make sure your BPO transition is successful, take into account the eight factors we’ve listed below before choosing a partner.
- Assess Your Needs
Determine the driving force behind your outsourcing decision and look for any potential gaps. Clarity helps to more effectively implement the steps of the outsourcing process and goes a long way toward managing expectations. You can use an outsourcing consulting firm or an outsourcer who has experience working with many different businesses to assist you with this process during the initial discovery and discussion.
Recognize the distinctions between various outsourcing strategies, such as offshoring (outsourcing to other countries) and offshoring (outsourcing within the domestic country). Offshoring with a co-sourcing partner (proactive, consultative, value-added relationship) is an option if you prefer to work with others rather than vendors.
Tempo services or staff augmentation frequently require a lot of your time and effort. When your company may already be understaffed, the management of resources, including training and onboarding, falls to you. Many administrative tasks are handled by hiring an outsourcing partner, and you also benefit from their knowledge of influencing business results on behalf of their clients.
- Set clearly defined goals
It’s not always simple to outsource roles within your company. There is no doubt that the entire team will make the choice, not just one person. On how and where to begin, each team member has a unique perspective. You should first establish your overall objective, even if they have different motivations.
Do you desire lower overhead costs for businesses? Do you want to increase productivity? One of the first steps to outsourcing success is to define these goals to make sure everyone is on the same page and to give them direction.
- Choose the right outsourcing model
Learn about the four different outsourcing models before working with a provider. Choose the option that best meets your company’s requirements, then ask a provider who offers that model for assistance.
Offshoring can be broken down into four models:
- Project-based outsourcing: is the practice of paying a freelancer from abroad to finish your company’s project. It’s fortunate that they aren’t just focused on your company.
- Traditional outsourcing: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the practice of paying a foreign company to handle all aspects of your offshore operation.
- Offshore company incorporation: You established an overseas division of your business and are in charge of all aspects of daily productivity and quality as well as IT, labor laws, hiring, HR, and payroll.
- Managed services offshoring: To establish an overseas division of your business and assign them to manage facilities, IT recruitment, and HR while you manage quality and productivity, you form a partnership with an offshore provider in the offshore location.
Not all of these models are suitable for every business, and each has advantages and disadvantages.
- Consider your offshore management team
You must be prepared to assume responsibility for the training and daily management of your offshore team, along with your managers and team. How can you make your company and culture more understandable to them? Who will look after your people?
Assigning a manager to your offshore team will help you get better results, so spend time on this. Having a dedicated manager for an outsourced team facilitates communication and speeds up the establishment of your offshore team.
- Have Realistic Expectations of Your Outsourcer
Clear expectations with your outsourcing partner will guarantee that the quality and quantity you were promised will be met. To monitor deadlines and deliverables, communicate frequently with your external teams. Make the project transparent so that your expectations for the results match your actual ones.
Although it may seem like the first option, picking the lowest-cost provider is not recommended if you want high-quality service. Additionally, it lacks the proactive support that seasoned partners like Premier BPO provide for ongoing process improvement.
- Evaluate the risks
Risk increases with growth, and outsourcing is no exception. When deciding to outsource certain aspects of your business, it’s crucial for your company to be aware of any potential risks. Legal risks, environmental concerns, or technological issues are a few examples.
The first step in making sure these problems won’t have a negative effect on your company is identifying them. To make sure you’re ready should a risky situation arise, talk to your team, other businesses that outsource, and your service provider.
- Estimate Your Savings
To determine what you will receive, always estimate the cost. Calculate how much you will save by outsourcing once the fundamentals have been resolved. Your fully-loaded costs rise overall because internal employees’ additional costs are frequently disregarded. Your partner takes care of all overhead expenses when outsourcing, including attrition, training, quality control, healthcare, insurance, and vacation days.
Corporate Care only charges for labor; all other costs are absorbed into our services. Here is an example of how our interactive ROI calculator can determine your outsourcing costs and typical savings.
- Enhance security policies
It’s crucial to be aware of your licenses, permits, and certifications in order to perform particular tasks or reveal sensitive data both offline and online. This may depend on how your company operates. Let’s say you have to give an offshore provider access to sensitive client information. The legal ramifications of this, as well as whether your clients will consent to have their information exported abroad, must be understood in that situation. Making sure your data security systems, policies, and processes are up to date is a great way to inspire confidence in people who may not be familiar with offshoring. You must research the licenses you might need to send information to a third party and obtain permission from pertinent internal parties, even though offshore providers are experts at ensuring data security for their clients.
Outsource from Corporate Care
Having structured implementation frameworks is, in our opinion at Corporate Care, one of the most crucial steps to successful outsourcing.
To transfer your business knowledge to your offshore team, we can assist you in creating organized training plans.
Working with multinational corporations to develop and scale their outsourced teams is something we have done for many years. Working with you and sharing what has and hasn’t worked for companies like yours is something that our experts are more than happy to do. You are not required to work alone!
Your offshore team can really assist you in meeting and exceeding the expectations of your customers with your planning and our assistance. To learn more about how we can assist you in elevating your company, get in touch with our team.
