Business process outsourcing is gaining popularity in the offshore business of today. It is simply the process of getting a job done by another company, commonly referred to as offshore outsourcing service provider. In the past, the idea of outsourcing in business was not common and therefore not known by many people. But this trend began to gain momentum gradually, taking the form of an industry in some countries.
With this development, business outsourcing services have turned out to be the extremely familiar trend. Small and low-grade jobs were outsourced from the United States at the early period. Presently, a number of the most important jobs such as graphic design services, customer care, web design and development services, IT services and solutions, and other services are being outsourced. As a matter of fact, all possible outsourcing office businesses are being outsourced today.
Jobs that need to be done every day are usually the ones being outsourced. Nowadays, BPO buyer companies are no longer performing any tasks on their own but employ consultant companies to give their new recruits training. Even the job of doing advertisements is outsourced from an offshore outsourcing company.
As far as doing international businesses today are concerned, outsourcing of business processes has become the number strategy. It is even well thought out to be the ideal tool for carrying out business activities in the time of economic recession. The downturn is such a period when the opportunities of earning ample revenue drop off considerably. It, therefore, becomes necessary to reduce costs and save some money in the process. This is where outsourcing becomes handy as it will help to rise above such terrible situation.
There are more than a few benefits of business process outsourcing to the overseas corporations. Number one, it makes it possible the foreign companies to concentrate on their core business processes.
In addition, companies located in the United States or Europe can enjoy enormous cost advantage from outsourcing their non-core jobs from countries such as Philippines, China, and India. In these countries, there is no deficiency of cheap and skilled manpower. Philippines and India are known to maintain quality output when it comes to international standards, despite the fact that they charge extremely less for their service. This is a main reason phenomenon of outsourcing has become prominent today.
The BPO companies of nowadays are providing different types of outsourcing services like accounting and finance, insurance, IT, Telecommunications, and software development services. All possible processes of any business are being outsourced today. With services outsourcing, companies can get high work at lower cost and this is what is now driving the overseas corporations to seek more BPO partners in the third world countries.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
There are great advantages of working with remote professionals. For example, when you outsource, you won’t have to pay for office space, and you have access to a range of talents from all over the world. But fact is that working with a team of employees based in one location is completely different than leading a team of freelancers whom you may never physically meet. There are very many factors involved and you need some tips to help you benefit immensely from this:
Here are some tips on how to get the best from your remote team of freelancers.
1. Culture.
First, you need to set up a culture for your team, just like any other location-based team, especially if you expect them to work together. Your team’s culture will determine whether they make an effort to collaborate with each other, how often they communicate with you and with each other, what hours they work and how quickly they respond to emails. Basically, you are establishing guidelines of behavior for your team.
Establishing a tram custom among your outsourced staff require ground rules. All of them need to be clear on what behavior is ideal, what is acceptable and what is not. For example, you may want your team to be creative and think out of the box. To achieve this, consider giving them freedom to test new ideas, perhaps once a week. They can share the results with the rest of the team for helpful critique. Discourage bullying behavior and deal with any form of intimidation on the team.
2. Have clear expectations.
You may not be able to easily and completely monitor what your remote staff are doing at their computers or control how they work, so it’s best that you set clear expectations from the beginning. Make sure that everyone is given clear description on what their responsibilities are and what roles others within the team are playing. Give them goals and targets to reach. Ensure you include deadlines whenever appropriate.
In addition, it is also important to keep in touch with each freelancer regularly. Schedule daily or weekly meet ups online to review their progress, give feedback and to answer any questions that he or she may have. It’s better to do this through video conferencing instead of a phone call. You can pick up a lot more by seeing your freelancer’s facial expressions.
3. Communicate and collaborate
Promoting the building of both professional and personal relationships as and friendships within the team will help cement it and increase productivity. Better work relationships produce higher job satisfaction. Though remote teams miss out on opportunities for the daily chit chat that happens organically in office environments, you can increase communication and collaboration among your team by intentionally creating opportunities for these to happen.
Consider investing in technology and tools such as video conferencing, project management, screen sharing and resource sharing software. These will help you achieve better communication, collaboration and camaraderie. Video conferencing software enables face-to-face and voice communication. With project management software, teams can work together better with organizational tools, time tracking and resource planning tools. Screen sharing makes it easier for teams to discuss work that appears on each other’s computer screens. Resource sharing allows online files to be shared across the team. Accessibility to the team is also very important. They will have questions and inquiries. Provide them with easy ways to reach you. If perhaps, they need to take up more of your time, create a clear calendar of when you are available for longer meetings online.
Once in a while face-to-face meetings have a role to play in cementing working relationships among remote teams. This is because despite all the effort that you may put into promoting online relationships and collaboration, nothing beats the trust and closeness that is forged through face-to-face meetings. At least once a year, try to bring your team physically together. This can be a work and play event combining both project work and team bonding activities. You may even want to get the team together on location for a couple of months’ brainstorming sessions, if you have the resources to do so.
4. Compliment.
When your outsourced professional or remote worker performs well, compliment him/her. It’s important to give appreciation, recognition and praise to your remote workers, especially when he or she exceeds targets or expectations. It’s easy to get busy and only contact him or she when something goes wrong or when you need to provide new instructions. However, just like any other normal relationship, a lack of appreciation may result in a remote freelancer feeling unappreciated and unmotivated.
Sharing wins and milestone achievements across the team to publicly acknowledge a staff for progress made or a job well done and to inspire the whole team to aim higher is a great move.
5. Generous Compensation
Until recently, freelancers are regarded as a cheap alternative to location-based employees. But today, as more and more workers are choosing freelancing as a lifestyle, companies now pay better for higher quality freelancers to encourage them. While generous pay can only provide a certain amount of job satisfaction, it is still necessary that you offer adequate compensation to your freelancers to encourage them to commit fully to your work.
You can also build loyalty among your team by showing appreciation to your remote staff who have demonstrated outstanding output with special performance bonuses, paid family holidays or tickets to their favorite event. Understand what else motivate your freelancers beyond a better pay. When your freelancers are reminded that they are part of something really important that will make a difference in their world that could become another great motivation.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of the premier global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
Sales outsourcing has become a popular strategy for business companies who want to improve their business processing sector. All companies need to do is hiring the services of third party sales service providers. With this, companies today are able to focus on performing their core duties and on developing other important in – house responsibilities. Understanding the benefits of outsourcing will help every company facilitate better profitability and growth in all sectors. Outsourcing saves much of the company resources and by cutting the operational costs, a business is able to gain the upper hand.
Business Process Outsourcing
Doing business means saving money while increasing profitability. There is a big advantage when business outsourcing is integrated within the company’s operational structure because Business Process Outsourcing providers understand the key requirements of other businesses when it comes to improving their profitability while cutting down on costs. There are lots of companies who obtained higher sales improvement when they opt to outsource their business production. Other services can also be outsourced including those that are not considered to be core functions within the company. When these non-core duties are relegated to third party service providers, the company resources will be put to better use and employees will be able to focus more on their core responsibilities.
Outsourcing Sales to grow the company
Sales outsourcing offers all the benefits of actually selling with minimal risk. It is a very practical thing if a business is able to get all the best and highly efficient tools not to mention finding reliable workforce for the business. With sales outsourcing, companies can handle project or production delays and ensure there are no lost opportunities. For every business, the most efficient and reliable tools in addition to the right labor force is all that is needed to ensure that the business will become successful and that the company’s growth is stable.
Sales outsourcing also facilitates increased productivity like no other. If a company is having problems with its in-house production, outsourcing the business process can make sure that the production will be on time while guaranteeing that the quality of the output is in line with the company standards. You will find a lot of BPO providers with excellent track records in providing affordable and quality services. Some are experts in sales.
Companies who are working hard just to get ahead of the competition can use the services offered by BPO providers in order to meet their customer demands and ensure satisfaction as well. An improved production equals an increased profitability and this is the desire of every company.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of the premier global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
Today’s economic system is volatile, hence a majority of companies today are looking for efficient ways to cut cost while at the same time enhancing the quality of the products and services they offer to their clients and customers. In so doing, it will make it possible for them to deal with the ever changing market condition both in the local and global industry. Particularly for companies looking for highly qualified reception services, outsourcing this specific task can provide the necessary resources that will allow companies to have access to a pool of qualified professionals that offer the most cost effective and quality services. Outsourced reception services are among the options being considered by organizations in order to cut down huge chunks of expensive operational costs.
What are Outsourced reception services?
Outsourced reception services are third party services that provide help desk services, as well as other consultancy services. Usually, the relationship between a BPO company and a client firm involves the use of technological tools and various resources to keep things going. As such, most firms have their own team tasked specifically to manage and oversee the area. Because customer service is more likely to be incorporated in the process, the staff may need these outsourcing companies to know what to do with the resource materials provided in order for them to find the necessary workforce specific to the requirements of their client company.
The Pros of Outsourced Reception Services
Outsourced reception services obviously have a better grasp of relationship management. They are also well equipped with the knowledge needed to handle customer queries more effectively without having to provide the necessary training and other skills development related requirements. In many cases, companies who are in need of a reliable reception service or want to outsource their help desk requirements to third party service providers will rely on outsourcing companies to find the right staff for them. This will maximize potential benefits offered by this particular function of the organization and enable client companies to focus on their core duties instead of sparing some of their resources to hire new personnel.
A typical outsourcing company offers complete packages related to outsourced reception services. They are already trained, sometimes generally and other times, it is custom-made and designed according to the clients’ specific requirements. This allows the needs of client firms to be specifically matched and every issue to be sufficiently and timely addressed. The training often includes executive briefings where executives, managers as well as the entry level position holders may learn and understand the proper roles that each of them has in the department and how they will perform their specific work function.
Businesses that want to achieve a competitive advantage recognize this and thus equip themselves with the tools as well as the knowledge to use these tools and take advantage of the services offered by outsourcing companies. The benefits that firms may have from outsourced reception services while providing training for their staff will help contribute to the overall efficiency and growth of the business in the short and long run.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of the premier global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
Starting up a business is challenging. There are a whole lot of responsibilities to keep up with and these responsibilities can wear out even the most resourceful of entrepreneurs There are many aspects of operating your business that don’t necessarily have to be handled by you, personally, but finding the right help to trust any facet of your work to can be extremely difficult- even more so when you start to factor in the cost of hiring good help- sometimes it seems as though the only real solution is to carry the entire burden on your own shoulders, but this is simply not true. Marketing is one important aspect of your business that could also be very tiring.
Outsourcing marketing services is a solution that every entrepreneur would be happy to have done at this point in their career, and it will go a long way to show a magical difference in profits in comparison with the competition.
An outsourced service provider can be the missing link in your life that will allow you to take a step back from the tasks in your small business that could be handled by someone else, someone trusted to get the job done right. Outsourcing some of your labor can help you to get the best of both worlds- you get great employees doing good quality work for just a fraction of the price that you would have paid if you had done the entire job yourself, or hired full time staff.
The outsourced marketing services industry is experiencing tremendous growth as it has proven to be one of the most valued assets for anyone running a business, no matter the size.
The simple fact of the matter is that not all of your labor has to be performed right at home, so to speak, and outsourcing solutions provide a tremendous financial incentive, so much so that it very nearly becomes a matter of just throwing money away by not utilizing one of these services. The right outsourcing option can end up saving tremendous amounts of income that you would have otherwise had to spend on labor costs or infrastructure to support the task, and we all know that a penny saved is a penny earned.
You can take the money that you saved and turn right around putting it back to work.
Do not consider outsourcing simply because of the cost – consider all the time that you could spend elsewhere, doing that aspect of your business only you can do, if you did not have to oversee the completion of tasks that could easily be handled by a competent employee with the right direction. Invest your time wisely; it is worth more to you and to the company.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
One of the fastest ways for a business to drive away customers en masse and lose money is to constantly produce dissatisfied customers. Poor customer service has always delivered more than enough, as it has a way of doing free destructive campaign for the business. An unhappy customer would tell their neighbors, friends, family and anyone who cares to listen about the shortcomings of your business and in this digital age of social media, dissatisfied customers reviews spread faster and farther than wild fire. Making your customers leaving with smiles and positive experiences is now more important than ever and should become one of the top priorities of any business. You tell me you’re ready to grow in business when you have invested in your customer service.
Excellent customer service could cost a fortune! The cost of a great team is beyond cash. Time, personnel, space and other factors are required.
Begin by considering what an ideal customer service entails, and then what yours will consist of. Basically, your customer service staff needs training by consultants in the field. They need to learn how to handle disgruntled customers. That in itself is a huge budget. They need a phone line where they can be contacted by upset customers. Right off the bat you’ve incurred costs from paying an employee, costs for setting up that employee’s work station, and a monthly surcharge for the phone service. You can however, lower all of these costs without compromising the quality of service by hiring a customer service outsourcing firm.
Customer service outsourcing is precisely what it sounds like, but you might not realize everything that the operation entails.
For example, when you think about how much time and resources that goes into finding, hiring, and training an employee to handle your customer service, and imagine bypassing the entire process, yet having hired instantly, an experienced customer service representative or team to handle this aspect of your business. It sounds like a sweet dream, and yet it’s real! Customer service outsourcing provides this service, letting you have incredibly good customer service with just a phone call.
Most business owners have found that outsourced customer service saves money. You already know the reasons.
Another beautiful aspect of outsourced customer service that can save you money is the fact that you have the option to only pay for your outsourced customer service representative when you really need them- while a customer service representative that you hire for your own business might sit around for huge chunks of time while not receiving any calls and, therefore, not really serving their purpose, many outsourcing services offer you the option to only pay for the time that your customer service rep is working for you.
If you’re just reading this, find out more for yourself. Outsource today!
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
If you want to keep your business healthy and growing, keep always this word before you: Marketing. Study it, work at it, and put it on your top to-do list. Be best at it, have the right team on it and make them consistent in being the best at sales and marketing. Every potential customer should know what services you are offering and why it has to be you who would fill their needs. Little wonder why many businesses have entire divisions dedicated to nothing other than marketing. This of course, may not be a cost effective solution for many businesses; but it does not diminish a need for quality marketing. One way or another, a business should find ways to get its name out there. Its survival depends on it!
You may, maybe as the marketing guru that you are, want to handle your own marketing as the CEO. But you should know that this is a hugely time intensive endeavor, even if you are extraordinarily talented in this regard. You may end up using up the time and resources that you would have dedicated to other aspects of your business to growing your own marketing campaign.
You should also (importantly) remember, that your competition would also be launching very well developed, highly creative, and eye catching marketing campaigns and you have to be able to compete to keep up with. You may end up highly distracted in the end. How many CEOs have marketing skills, by the way?
This is where outsourced marketing come in. What many business owners don’t realize is that there is a very real way to cut back on marketing costs while still being able to present a very well assembled, appealing marketing campaign. By choosing to outsource your marketing campaign, you can still receive a high quality product for a fraction of the price. Outsourced marketing gives you the freedom to give highly qualified, highly experienced marketing professionals your vision for your business and forget about it- outsourced marketing lets you focus your time and talents on your business while getting a masterfully crafted marketing campaign worry free.
Marketing is a very vital aspect that ensures you keep your business up to speed with your competitors, as well as influences how the public perceives your business, your products, and your services. It also plays a tremendous role in how much business you receive and how much your competitors get to steal.
It’s up to you to make sure that your business manages to run as smoothly as possible while still finding the time and money to run a creative, smart, and successful marketing campaign. Outsourced marketing is easily one of the easiest and smartest ways that you can put your business atop the competition and make the sales of your life.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
The way outsourcing helps to boost a company’s financial wellbeing is indeed desirable. However, it is important to ensure that productivity is also boosted with this business solution known as outsourcing.
Here are 4 top tips on how to keep production and productivity on the up-scale while leveraging outsourcing company services;
#1: Think of What Can be Outsourced Successfully
In essence, take a look at the different areas of needs as a starter. Analyze the situation and determine what can be handled in-house and what should be outsourced. This should be a thorough as well as no-rush process. Knowing exactly what needs to be outsourced is the starting point to achieving success with outsourcing.
#2: Bid for the Best Possible Price
That’s the main essence of this business solution – to save cost. However, do not trade quality with price. As always the case, if it sounds too good to be true, then think twice. The best possible price is such that would motivate the outsourced provider to keep both productivity and quality at optimum and at the same time reward you with desirable cost savings. Try to interview as many as you can, especially those that are skilled in the area you seek help on. Keep cutting down the list until you arrive at the best possible choice based on both quality and quantity (price).
#3: Monitor Job Progress
Don’t leave outsourcing providers all by themselves. You need to monitor and track their progress at every stage of the outsourced project. This way, you can ensure that productivity flow is at the desired speed. Besides, you will be able to spot a defect on time and correct it early enough, instead of waiting till the end of the project. In fact, monitoring work-in-progress is an integral part of outsourcing solution that should not be played down on.
If you desire to see production and productivity moving at the desired rate, then you should keep your external employees motivated all the way. While monetary motivation is helpful, there are other ways to motivate your freelance workers.
Consider the following tips and tricks;
Make a solid promise to keep using their service if the present project turns out great. This will surely motivate them to put in their best and produce the best possible quality.
Rate them at every phase of the project – giving kudos and 5-star ratings if their performance turns out to be excellent at that poin.
Make a part-payment in advance or while the project is in progress – this really helps.
Indeed, making sure you keep production and productivity flowing at a desirable rate and quality is needful while leveraging outsourcing solution.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
Excellent customer service can help boost business, promote loyal patronage, enhance customers’ morale and ultimately affect your bottom line positively. These days, hiring customer service outsourcing companies has become an in-thing among businesses and companies. This is because customer service outsourcing has proven to be an effective way of achieving all these benefits.
However, you must ensure that an outsourcing provider who specializes on customer service will help you realize the benefits and goals mentioned earlier. How? Keep reading to find out.
During the selection process, find out how prospects will handle a range of customer service issues by painting a couple of real-life scenarios and asking them to respond to the situation. For instance, you can ask them to describe how they will handle a raging customer who called to report a defective product or lost/delayed order. Their response to such practical situations will give you idea of what to expect from their customer service.
Essentially, you should focus on hiring providers who possess interpersonal or relational traits such as calmness, compassion, as well as understanding traits. Also, they should be able to work under pressure without being offensive because some customers will push them to the limit.
Tip #2: Check If the Provider Operates with the Best Customer Service Practices
Also, to ensure you get the best from customer service outsourcing companies, find out the operational practice, policies as well as skills of the prospects. Do they constantly embark on professional development programs that gear towards customer service best practices?
In addition to training their customer service staff constantly, you should also find out if the outsourcing provider has a well-furnished call center outfit. Having the right gadgets for the task will help promote the expected outcome.
Tip #3: Set Up a Customer Feedback System
Don’t leave your customer service agents all to themselves. You should find out your customers’ experience with the outsourced service provider by putting a feedback system in place. Some of the features of the feedback system to consider include online portals for data collection, and survey.
And, consider offering incentives to further motivate your outsourced customer service provider with track record of quality and excellent customer service based on the customer feedback you collated. The incentives could be in form of a slight or substantial increase in terms of their fees. It could also be in form of providing five stars reviews on their website or other web platforms such as Facebook Page or Twitter account. These can go a long way in motivating them to do more.
Indeed, you will boost customer base, enhance loyal patronage, and ultimately enhance the growth of your business by leveraging excellent customer service outsourcing companies.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
For a lot of businesses, taking advantage of outsourcing administrative services for payroll function is both a valuable and attractive alternative to hiring a payroll officer in-house. When you employ rigorous step to employ an outsourcing provider, you will find out that outsourcing is a less complex way of filing your taxes, paying your workers, and carrying out other admin-related business functions.
Payroll Function can be a Big Headache
Even the professional and most experienced experts can attest to the fact that payroll can be quite a demanding task. This is why it is best to let an expert handle this business function externally. Otherwise, any slightest error caused by being less attentive or careless to the rigorous process that comes with payroll can greatly impact your business.
You may be having double mind about outsourcing payroll to outsourcing administrative services due to the following reasons;
You want to protect your wage information
You don’t want a third-party accessing your payroll information
Well, if you run a smaller business and do not encounter substantial changes in tax obligations, you may attempt managing payroll processing in-house. In-house payroll and other administrative functions processing are easier at the earlier stage of a business. However, even the small businesses have discovered that the cost of manning a payroll office is high, plus the task is time-consuming. Besides, if you use an employee who barely knows anything about payroll procedure and payroll programs to carry out this sensitive function, the mistakes that follow (no matter how little) can result in big trouble for your business.
The best way to ease your mind is to let a qualified payroll officer handle your payroll functions. According to the IRS, 1 out of every 3 business owners or companies has been charged for mistakes related to payroll, with the overall fines or penalties amounting to billions of dollars. Also, you should bear in mind that tax regulations are always changing, which promotes proneness to not just error, but error that has the capacity to grossly impact your bottom line.
So, When Should You Outsource Payroll?
Generally, if you do not have the financial capacity and/or expertise required for payroll function, you should consider outsourcing the task. In addition, engaging outsourcing administrative services will make sense if each pay period comes with changes in your payroll.
In essence, a payroll outsourcing service will be cost-effective and time-saving alternative to handling payroll function in-house.
The payroll service provider will perform the following functions for your business;
Tax obligations and payroll calculation for every employee
Checks printing and delivery
Management reports
Finally, outsourcing administrative services can provide additional payroll functions like envelope stuffing, automatic check signatures, as well as direct checks deposit.
Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams.
