3 Outsourcing Essentials for Better Business

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Business Process Outsourcing has become an all-in-one solution in today’s industries. This is evident in the Philippines, with the local outsourcing jobs exhibiting exponential growth. The country hit high margins of employment in August 2014; from 101,000 in 2004, the workforce increased to over 930,000. It’s evident why outsourcing is the byword in cost-efficiency across a variety of industries.

Outsourcing is only beneficial if you approach it with the right strategies. There are variable, essential factors to consider before adopting solutions for your business, and it’s important your decisions are backed by solid evaluations. Here are three essentials to consider before you commit:

1. Consider the Costs

It’s common knowledge outsourcing saves time and money, but this is only the case if the solutions complement the business’s needs. Yours must be realistic in terms of sales or savings, projected and actual. Anticipate problems in production / operation to preempt losses. Survey factors that can affect your income, pave a clear path for your prospects.

2. Partner with the Right People

Synergy is crucial to smooth operations, all the more important in outsourcing jobs. Ensuring a successful business requires partnership with the right team. You get to screen and choose the service, so bide your time and consider as many quotes as you can before you commit. Don’t give in to what’s most feasible until you’ve weighed all strengths and weaknesses.

Beware the pitfall of going for the cheapest offer, though; this sometimes comes with serious tradeoffs. It helps if you choose the best one as you contrast the qualities of the products and services being offered. Entertain quotes and proposals, conduct background checks, evaluate history of performance, and never, ever skip the fine print.

3. Draft a Solid, Airtight Contract

The terms of service will either ensure you get the best end of the deal, or it could leave you shortchanged. At the very least, there’s mutual benefit with the outsourced party. Closing on the contract is tricky if you haven’t fleshed out the essential details with your partner. The dynamics of your partnership hinges on the signed agreement – it’s your assurance of quality service, also your safety net in untoward incidents.

A cost-effective business involves taking advantage of every opportunity, and outsourcing jobs is proven an efficient, feasible alternative to in-house sourcing. Your business has everything to gain with the service, so long as you guard your interest, do your due diligence. In any case, outsourcing companies are well aware of these expectations, it’s just a matter of finding the right people to partner with.

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Three Odd, Specialized Tasks You Should Outsource

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Businesses delegate tasks for minimum cost and maximum efficiency, the primary reasons why outsourcing is so appealing. Companies often outsource so they can concentrate on big picture management. If you’re considering third-party services, it’s important the provider leases skilled, experienced. and specialized staff.

However, you might not be aware of unlikely processes you can also outsource, sparing you time and money. This includes podcast production and email management, anything you’d rather not do and willing to pay for. Here are three other tasks you can delegate to outsourced staff:

1. Logistics, Planning, Appointments, and Reservations

Isn’t it great if you didn’t have to worry about the day’s mundane routines? Businesses have the same needs; the service is similar to hiring a personal assistant, but the scope is wider, covering important operations and processes. You can also delegate what can be considered errands. If you’re managing the personal affairs of a team or department, you’ll need help handling the task that pile up.

It’s best if you outsource these tasks to virtual assistants: dinner reservations, spa appointments, car rentals, parcel tracking, even social media posting. These seemingly trivial tasks are real-world concerns of businesses and corporations, and entire teams are leased and hired to to handle the upkeep.

2. Calls Management, Inbound and Outbound

Unlike virtual assistants who juggle a wide variety of tasks, virtual receptionists are dedicated to call management. Instead of answering calls on your own, you can choose trained and experienced representatives to filter the flow. As authentic and professional fronts to your business, virtual receptionists will also screen your calls, sparing you time and trouble.

There are plenty of tools you can use online, with receptions always on standby to take over your load. If your needs are so involved you’ll need a team of receptionists in rotating shifts, then staff leasing is your efficient, feasible alternative.

3. Research and Documentation

These can involve something as simple as a background check, to a comprehensive survey of target market trends. Either way, you can do away with the legwork. Outsource this to skilled researchers with background on statistics or library science. Even if you’re only composing a blog post with detailed data, researchers ensure the facts and numbers are straight.

You can hire individuals or teams, depending on the bulk of the work to accomplish. If you’re pressed for time, then you can spend it rehearsing your presentation, instead of fumbling with the source material.

There’s always someone willing to take on the task. With outsourcing, costs are surprisingly feasible, and people bid with high-quality work and shortest turnaround times. Whether you’re a start-up or established business, outsourcing the small task ensures you’re focused on management and operations, everything that keep the gears of the company grinding.

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Business Metrics: What Surveys Can Do For Your Business

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While it is often overlooked and its relevance not emphasized, surveys are important in all endeavors. It’s the key to answering specific questions needed in an organization. However, the process isn’t as simple as it seems. Every question is drafted to cover a diverse range of topics; when answered, this provides companies answers and solutions. At the very least, companies have better grasp of its next strategies.

In business, surveys help collect valuable data used to better understand the market. These include consumers, competitor, and market trends. The data helps business owners, potential investors see the organization from a different standpoint. Surveys are conducted to answer questions and obtain data, used to improve processes and systems in the organization.

Every survey process has three phases:

1. Formulate relevant questions that answer most or all of the company’s questions.
2. Extract the raw data, translate, organize, present.
3. Identify positive and negative results, strong and weak points; suggest courses of action.

Surveys are vital to an organization’s success. The data points you in the right direction, also helps you prepare for unforeseeable problems or challenges you may encounter. Projections are insightful in new, various ways. Once data is interpreted properly, you have enough to use on customer outreach: engagement, monitoring, and follow-ups.

Here are some points to address:

– What’s the running pulse of your customers, your market?
– What can you do to improve communication, increase positive feedback?
– How can you improve customer experience?

Surveys glean information by collecting data from a representative sample of your market. This requires extensive preparation, execution, evaluation. Most companies outsource this service to specialists, which is often the most feasible option. Your company could be doing great, plateaued, or at a crossroads, all these ideal scenarios to conduct surveys on your market. However, it’s important your surveyor is skilled and experienced in processes, able to draft the right set of questions, choose the best sample, apply the appropriate treatment, and interpret the data.

Companies in tune with their markets are able to beat the competition. Finally, there’s one compelling reason why you should seriously conduct surveys: your best competitors are doing it. Keep the competition at bay, find practical ways to get ahead, and roll with improvements.

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Why Project Outsourcing (Still) Points East: Take Your Market Research Calls to the Philippines

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While the global economic climate has succumbed to caution and slower growth, the Philippines remains a lucrative destination for project outsourcing needs, including the expanding industry of market research. With enough decision-making work on your hands, it’s time you consider taking on the world’s largest outsourcing market, one of Asia’s most English-proficient countries—ultimately meeting your market research call needs in the process.

A Large English-Speaking Talent Pool

To effectively gauge your customers’ reactions towards your product or service, you must have a certain understanding of their daily routine and how it relates to what you offer to them. Filipinos themselves are highly Westernized, which makes their calls feel more authentic. No customer would feel comfortable talking about their products to a stiff-sounding robot, which is why Filipinos, with their first-hand experiences of Western products, can very much relate to the experiences of your customers. Perhaps they can even throw in a pop culture reference or two (when appropriate, of course), to make your business feel more human.

Lower Costs

Despite the abundance of qualified talent, the Philippines is still known for being a cost-efficient, project outsourcing destination. In the realm of market research calls, that simply means your expenditures for customer support take a nosedive, while the development of your business can finally take a huge chunk of the company budget. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Intense Competition, Higher Quality

Open a Filipino classified ad or job website and you’d be hard pressed not to find a BPO company. According to the Oxford Business Group, it’s even become an $18 billion-dollar industry in 2014. Competition, in turn, has become rife as an abundance of outsourcing companies vie to give the best contact services possible to their offshore clients. You can expect to avoid paying top dollar for quality.

A Tech-Savvy Generation

The Philippines is no stranger to the newest technologies, especially in its young workforce. Developments in consumer electronics and telecommunication are immediately adopted and applied. This is seen in all IT industries: transitioning in-house tasks offshore is easier if you’re working with teams that easily adapt. Technical and specialized processes are competently handled; couple this with English-proficient professionals and you have the ideal talent pool.

Project outsourcing is good for business because it reduces operation costs. If you’re partnered with the right teams, then you’re also guaranteed efficient processes. If you’re considering locations to expand, there’s no better place to start than the Philippines.

Did you like this post? Contact us now for inquiries!

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Essentials of Contact Center Management: Call Handling

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There are instances when call center agents get a rough time handling customer calls. With the variety of phone connectivity available, numerous troubles, concerns, and complaints need to be addressed accordingly. There’s always the option of contact center outsourcing, and there’s always room for improvement; here are some steps to implement with your teams. Let your teams work on these strategies, improving the overall call handling performance of the agents.

Answer Incoming Calls Immediately

If you want to convert customers, answer their calls. Even if you think it’s only a complaint, every call you receive is worth the company’s income. Through this fundamental gesture, your customers feel valued. If the roles were reversed, you don’t want to be on the other line, waiting for someone to pick up the call even though it has been ringing nonstop. Make sure that your agents answer the calls properly and on time. This is a great start to help you convert more calls into customers.

Ask for Contact Information

When the consumers call, it’s possible that they are considering doing business with you. In this case, you better train your team well and provide an effective system that helps them collect the name, email address, and contact number of each potential customer. This is an essential step in contact center outsourcing, knowing how to follow-up on consumers for possible leads or other special offers, even if you have multiple agents receiving the calls. After all, you don’t want to lose a lot of information in the shuffle of different people answering the phone.

The Art of Putting Calls on Hold

Remember that the longer you keep a caller on hold, the less likely that customer stays on the phone. With this in mind, train your agents to have a clear understanding of how to keep callers on hold for the shortest time possible. In fact, it can be observed that the average waiting time of most callers is more or less within the 50-second range. It is best to make the most of the customer’s time by moving with a comprehensive system of gathering information, providing solutions, and the like.

Developing dynamic, efficient contact center outsourcing involves equally effective methodologies. Stay on top of processes, and don’t hesitate to apply feasible ways of improvement. You’ll know the teams are doing well with significant decrease in complaints, and increased rate in customer satisfaction.

Visit our Solutions Page and tell us what you need!

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Spotting the Right PEO for Your Business: Efficient Offshore Staff Leasing

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Business owners seeking the aid of offshore staff leasing have to make sure they are on the right side. While it is proven that this type of platform is highly cost-effective on their part, it is also wise to evaluate what is best for the company. Offshore staff leasing sure has lots of advantages to offer, but sometimes this strategy may tend to backfire.
To secure your business’s future, here are some of the things that you should consider in looking for a professional employer organization (PEO) that would represent your ideals and goals.

 

The Right Combination of Services

 

In considering which PEO to deal with, it is important to know the services being offered first. Do they have what you are looking for? Do you think they will be able to give you the kind of service that your business needs in able to grow its market? Ask as many questions as you like. Be very specific with your criteria; if you think the PEO will benefit your company in the long run, then you can consider it as a green light.

 

Financial Stability

 

Considering the PEO’s financial strength also counts when it comes to securing a good business deal. As an entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to avoid scams, misfires and similar failures to prevent damage on your behalf. A PEO with a clean and impressive track record is the one that you want to transact with.
Look into every detail before deciding to give it a go, ask for advice and references from colleagues, and most especially, study the contract meticulously. Scams tend to provide contracts which delude clients. If you see even the slightest anomaly in the details, raise a red flag and inquire before signing.

 

Rapport

 

Another thing to look over when dealing with a PEO is the personal connection between you and the representative. It is easier to do business with someone whom you’re comfortable with than with someone whom you don’t truly trust. Developing a close bond with a PEO may determine the course of the relationship which you may have with them in the long run.

 

The PEO you’re partnered with affects the trajectory of your business. Offshore staff leasing comes with plenty of benefits, especially if the people you choose share your ideals. Details are easily sorted out once you’re in agreement with the big picture.

Partner with us! We customize Staff Leasing Solutions to meet your business needs.

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Boost Your Business Without Going Bust – 4 Scaling Tips for Startups

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Startups are now the norm in business, where risk-takers with big ideas flock. Launching a startup requires thrust to escape gravity, though. Yours may not be in league with Tesla or Uber, but who’s to say investors won’t like your special sauce? And while some attribute success to luck, yours should be about hard work, coupled with the knack to capitalize on every opportunity.

You’ve crunched the numbers and they’re solid, your business is primed to scale up. You’re even weighing the advantages of outsourcing development. But before you do, it pays to assess actual health with a handful of criteria. These four essentials are not exhaustive, but enough to ensure you have a good head start.

1. Focus on the Bigger Picture

If you think your business is now the big fish in your pond, then it makes sense to dream of open seas. You have to mind the transition, though, which means there are smaller, shallower waters to navigate before you’re really capable. Say you’ve valuated your business at $1 million, how high should you scale up? $100 million may be a stretch, how about $30 million?

Keep your goals realistic, and progress with doable margins. You’re likely aware many startups crash and burn because too much money was funneled into a flimsy business model that fell flat. Make sure yours is solid before you boost.

2. Your business deserves a face – like Apple and Microsoft

Many of the biggest brands are fronted by equally big personalities. Think Elon Musk, Oprah, and Donald Trump. While it is possible to build a brand separate from its founders, it’s in your best interest to couple personal brand with your business. For better or worse, stamp your seal of approval and front the business with a familiar face.

Building your public profile exposes you to the industry, opening tie-up opportunities. If eventually you’re big enough to spread out to related industries, your personal brand will tie these ventures together. Think Google, currently spread out into countless areas in tech.

3. Build, expand your network

This may seem an understatement, but have you considered there are connections you’re better off without? Some connections spark and sustain growth; others hamper, or worse, drag you down. Before you pursue potential tie-ups, do the legwork and research your investor. Confirm if your partners are financially sound before you commit.

It appears counter-intuitive to turn down opportunities for funding. It’s wise to think long-term, though, cut ties and preempt any potential damage.

4. Steer the ship, delegate the details

This is the pitfall of many start-ups, failing to focus on strategy and push with it. It’s true success is measured in small steps as much as milestones, but upper management is supposed to steer, even in small start-ups. If you find you’re knee-deep in routines you can delegate, pause and find someone to do the dirty work. Outsourcing development and processes to third parties lifts the burden, frees you to focus on the long view.

Hire specialists to take on tasks, prefer multi-taskers if you’re tight on finances. It’s important your head is clear preparing for investor meetings, setbacks, and other curve balls thrown your way.

Stepping up in business takes true grit, but it helps if you’re also equipped. Avoid the urge to gamble, though; businesses that went all-in and succeeded are the exceptions. Plenty more went bust and only had lessons to learn from the mistake.

We want to help you build better business! Visit our website and check out our staff leasing solutions.

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