If you’re wondering what tasks can be outsourced for your business, you’re at the right place. But before going over examples of outsourcing, we’d like to quickly introduce the concept of outsourcing and go over countries you should consider outsourcing to. But if you’re already familiar with both, you can click here to go straight to the outsourcing examples.
What is Outsourcing?
In its simplest form, outsourcing consists of contracting with other people or companies to handle your tasks. Offshoring, on the other hand, means placing contracts with people or companies who are located overseas.
Outsourcing can be conducted locally, or overseas by independent contractors and companies. It can be done on a large or small scale. For more information on outsourcing, we highly recommend you read our definitive ‘what is outsourcing’ blog post.
Where are the Best Countries to Outsource to?
AT Kearney recently published a report indicating countries are considering cybersecurity and automation when choosing BPO providers. By automating tasks, low-skilled jobs in low-cost countries are being rendered redundant in low-cost countries. India remains one of the top outsourcing countries, according to Tholons’ 2014 Top 50 Digital Nations and a 2019 Worldwide Location Index from T. Kearney. Along with its 24-hour service and use of the latest technology, it also takes pride in its top talent, most of whom specialize in IT and software development.
The Philippines is a close contender for the most popular outsourcing destination with India. In spite of its late bloom, the country has held the title of the ‘BPO Capital of the World’ since 2010. Their former status as a Spanish and a US colony has given them a deep connection to Western culture. Known for outsourcing customer service roles (both voice and non-voice-related) such as IT support or call centers, the country specializes in outsourcing customer service.
The search for high-quality employees continues both for employers and for recruiters. There are freelancing platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer, and Outsourcely, among others. From the rankings of these platforms, we discovered which jobs are among the most in demand today.
Without further ado, here are the top 5 tasks that can be outsourced by any and all companies worldwide.
5 Top Examples of Outsourcing:
1. Customer Support
It’s not surprising customer support would rank first among outsourced tasks- more than 46% of businesses cite enhancing customer service as a number one priority. This is because 96% of customers cite customer service as one of the biggest reasons behind their loyalty. As a result, loyalty facilitates retention. And retention is important- price of signing a new customer is five times that of keeping an existing customer, which means that retention improves profits and saves resources. As a rule, a retention rate of 5% can increase revenue between 25 and 95%.
During outsourced customer service, third parties manage the customer-facing communication channels. It is common for businesses to outsource customer service to call centers, which have trained agents who answer incoming calls on their behalf.
Making the decision of whether to reassign your customer service to a third party can be challenging. Many business owners feel uneasy about outsourcing customer service. As a result, you want to ensure that your company is capable of providing quality customer service.
All kinds of companies outsource their customer support. Some prominent companies, such as NBC and PNC Bank, outsource their customer service. The same advantages that bigger companies enjoy can also be enjoyed by small businesses when they outsource their customer service.
2. Technical Support
There are a wide variety of IT services that can assist enterprises with the implementation, management, and maintenance of systems, software, and equipment used in modern IT environments. There are a number of sub-segments within the market, including managed services, which will generate close to 200 billion dollars in revenue in 2019; and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which will generate over 140 billion dollars in revenue. According to eMarketer, the industry for IT services is the second fastest growing among all sectors, only behind enterprise software.
According to the 2019 Global Outsourcing Report, the outsourcing industry generated nearly 92.5 billion dollars in revenue. In that same year, the total contract value of the business process outsourcing (BPO) market was 26 billion dollars. There is no doubt IT outsourcing is huge.
Most businesses provide technical support to their customers in order to help them troubleshoot technical or software problems.
When you outsource technical support, a third party takes care of the technical support of your products and services. Your business can concentrate on more important things, like launching a new product.
As a result of high salaries in countries with more skilled employees, like India and the Philippines, technical support outsourcing has been growing rapidly.
Which types of technical support are you able to outsource?
The following technical support tasks could be outsourced to cover the entire pre and post-sales lifecycle for your customers:
- Activation of applications.
- Repairs and installation.
- Management of accounts.
- Support covered by the warranty.
Your business may even want to outsource help with custom applications or any major software platforms.
3. Sales Support
Ecommerce and B2B sales support focus on giving customers the answers and resources they need to better understand your products and services. It’s important that your team knows how to answer all questions, whether you’re selling clothes or insurance.
In the case of e-commerce, the process actually happens on your store’s website, so it’s a little different from traditional sales work. You likely need staff available at different hours to accommodate customers visiting from different time zones. This would no doubt be difficult to staff yourself, making outsourcing a popular option.
Pre-sales support can also be handled successfully by experts outside your company through live chat and email integrations with a customer service outsourcing company with proven experience in your industry.
The advantage of outsourcing sales and marketing is that the team is only focused on achieving sales results. With their laser-like focus, they will build and convert your prospects into sales leads.
Managing sales in-house means your team may have competing priorities that divert their attention. On the other hand, outsourced sales teams are paid to do one thing – make connections that lead to conversion.
The good news is that they also have the expertise and knowledge to make that happen. Having a professional sales team that knows how to make connections and develop relationships is essential.
A sales representative from the outsourced team will typically have years of sales experience under their belt. This will enable them to execute sales processes that can get results.
When you bring in in-house sales reps, it can take time to train and familiarize them with your product. The outsourced sales team already has proven sales strategies and techniques in place; they only need to learn the benefits and solutions your product offers, and they’ll be ready to go.
A knowledgeable sales expert is on the team of a sales outsourcing company – someone who has dedicated their careers to getting customers to say yes. People like these are usually very logical and understand how to look at a problem in a logical way, and then present a solid solution. There is no requirement for them to understand every subtlety of how a product works; technical people can be connected on both sides of the table so that they may talk about it. An effective salesperson must relate to clients, learn about their pain points, then persuade them to invest in learning about how to solve those problems.
4. Billing and Collections
It is not uncommon for companies to spend as much time and effort as they can on their Customer Billing and Collections department. If your industry and services are competitive, billing and collecting payment can either be a cinch or a headache. By outsourcing this part of the business, you can not only effectively support it but also lower your costs compared with in-house personnel.
As the Billing and Collections department handles sensitive information, like personal and banking information, Your outsourced billing and collections department has to implement and abide by global standards to safeguard the identity and information of every single customer.
5. Back Office Support
With an effective outsourcing strategy, many companies today can cut various back office costs in half while improving their productivity and focus at the same time. Statista reports that 59% of businesses outsource to reduce costs.
A business’s back office support does not usually become a problem until it becomes larger. With increasing size, managing business processes crucial to everyday operation becomes an increasingly costly and time-consuming endeavor.
Having to grow or create new departments is costly, and you have to hire and train new personnel. Outsourcing provides a solution in these cases.
You can gain numerous benefits by outsourcing your back office support, including business enhancements. As soon as you find the right partner to complement your business needs, you can concentrate on your core competencies and let the experts handle the secondary concerns.
Regardless of the size or industry of an organization, its back office needs are generally the same to a large extent. They include administrative functions such as accounting, data entry, order processing, data collection, and market research.
At first, administrative work may not appear to be a big deal, but as your company grows, it becomes one of the biggest challenges you will face.
Conclusion
Outsourcing is determined by what a company needs, how much they can spend, and how quickly it needs to be done. Despite your expertise in a certain area, have you thought about whether you can make someone else do the same thing more easily while you focus on other tasks? Now might be the time to take that big step and begin outsourcing. Regardless, we hope our list of outsourcing examples was helpful in helping you decide if outsourcing is for you.