Understanding Back Office Support
Back Office support is part of your operations and is responsible for running the business rather than customer-facing or focusing on revenue. Some examples of Back Office support include Accounting, Administrative work, Logistics, IT, Risk, and Legal. In other words, Back Office is the opposite of front office support, which is the direct revenue-generating area of the company.
Are you supporting your business in the right way?
About 57% of companies outsource their Back Office support to grow their business. In most cases, your non-front office staff may make up the bulk of your operations.
There is about a 2:1 ratio between back and front office staff. The amount differs based on the size and the amount of staff the company needs to operate and how complex the service or product is.
For instance, the Accounting function in a small company can be just bookkeeping, consisting of 3-5 employees. They handle the day-to-day activities, report on expenditures, and pay salaries and vendors. In larger companies, there may not be an Accounts department but a Finance department that includes everything from Accounting, Payroll, purchase order approvals, and corporate-level analysis on ROIs.
Functions like these and other Back Office operations are critical but expensive and difficult to maintain. If you find yourself here, It is time to consider outsourcing so your business can grow.
Here are 5 ways outsourcing can skyrocket your business
You must grow to face the increased customer demands, upgrade your product and service offering, and adapt to your environment. You also have to manage complicated internal operations when most of your functions and processes are focused on support or maintenance.
Your predicament is a great place to be as you've realized the need to change.
So, have you considered BPO? If not, here are 5 ways that outsourcing can help you.
1. Increase Productivity
Consider this, or an exercise, if you will, ask your staff what their workday looks like. You’d be surprised how much of their day is spent answering emails or administrative work. Let’s take sales, for example. On average, 33% of their day is spent on sales activities. What if you can shift that focus and help your staff become more productive?
Opting for Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a solution that can help increase your productivity by decreasing the number of redundant tasks in your organisation.
You get all the benefits of working with professionals without the expense and hassle of having the persons in-house.
2. Improve flexibility
Are you trying to scale up or bring it down? However you measure it, you have more control and options available when you outsource. As time progresses and your environment changes, you must also change your internal processes to catch up. Upgrading technology and hiring experts is very cost and time intensive. Furthermore, having so many moving parts makes the operations heavy and inflexible.
Outsourcing can also reduce redundancy, reducing the need for more staff to support your front office functions.
Large companies find themselves with complicated operations over time. A BPO takes some of the weight from your processes to help you move your business in the right direction.
3. Better resource management
Maintaining Back Office departments like stock keeping, administrative work, and other processes is a significant investment.
Think about the effort, planning, and management of operations to support your front-facing staff. There are also salaries, health care plans, incentives, and other cost-intensive activities, all done in-house. After a while, some departments or functions can seem unproductive, especially if these activities do not directly generate income or tie into your company's strategic goals. More staff means more processes, bureaucracy, and a longer time to execute and get things done.
Outsourcing decreases the amount of resources you have to manage in-house. You can also manage your staff, updates, and projects more efficiently.
4. Grow your business by reducing costs
Are you always looking at cost inefficiencies? Solutions or initiatives that are cheaper also lack quality.
What if we told you that outsourcing can save you cash without sacrificing the quality of work?
Outsourcing creates opportunities by giving you access to more resources at a reduced cost.
For instance, you can leverage technology, subject-matter experts, new ideas, and processes for a fraction of what it would cost to do them yourself or keep them in-house
High Opex (operation expenditure) makes developing new products, Marketing, Sales, or spending on new projects difficult.
Let's look at Google. The technology giant outsourced part of their operations in 2016/2017, which led the company to outsource other non-core activities. By doing so, Google was able to reduce its operational cost.
5. Become a focus-driven company
Finally, you can focus on your core functions. You can expand your operations by freeing up your time to tackle high-leverage activities.
Look at it like this: you and your team can concentrate on your core competencies and continuously work on improving them. This increases the chances of meeting your strategic goals. If you outsource to a BPO, the non-core functions are delegated to experts. Then your operational goals shift to expand, grow and meet your customer needs.
Business processes you can outsource
You can consider outsourcing the following functions:
Administrative
Back office teams handle various administrative tasks such as data entry, document management, record keeping, scheduling, and coordination. They help maintain organized and efficient workflows, ensuring that the administrative aspects of the business are well-managed. You can outsource these tasks to a BPO and focus on other activities.
Outsourcing your payroll
While your Financial planning and Account Payables can stay in-house, a separate company can handle the process of paying staff. It’s a redundant task for most companies, and over 50% of organisations opt to outsource this function.
Lead generation
You can outsource a part of your sales operations. For instance, you can hire an external team for lead generation. While Sales is a front-facing function, lead generation is a back-office function that your Sales team does. Lead generation can take up as much as 33% of their time. Your outsourced team can focus on building the correct contact list, so your in-house salesperson can focus on closing the sale.
Grow your business now
Are you considering outsourcing part of your internal processes? In that case, you've taken the first step to growing your business in the right direction. A BPO can help you focus on the future, decrease overhead costs, and make your company more flexible. You also get the added benefits of having access to more resources at a fraction of the cost while increasing the productivity of your staff.
Take control of your operations, steer them in the right direction, and work with us. Call Serv is a nearshore outsourcing team that provides support for many Back Office solutions, including Customer Support, Payroll, Lead Generation, and much more. Reach out today and speak directly with our Management team so we can tailor the right solution for you.
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