In today’s fast-moving business world, every company faces a constant stream of high-stakes decisions. At a minimum, the company must decide on how it approaches emerging technological advancements, shifting market demands, updated industry regulations, and global economic events like trade embargoes and the rising cost of goods. If your business is committed to achieving long-term, sustainable growth, it must be prepared to adapt and evolve.
Outsourcing presents an excellent opportunity, enabling businesses to leverage outside expertise to enhance their own capabilities while maintaining or even reducing existing expenditures. Of course, this path may present new challenges, such as determining which functions should be outsourced and selecting the right outsourcing partner. Your organization must navigate its way to a strategic and scalable business outsourcing process.
Identifying the Measures for a Scalable Business Outsourcing Process
Since outsourcing is meant to augment existing operations, this new direction must begin with an audit. Your company must assess two key items.
First, it must determine what tasks can be entrusted to another party. Collectively, the outsourcing industry can manage a diverse range of business functions from general tasks within customer relations and mail logistics to specialist tasks such as paid media advertising and inventory management.
This leads to the next step, where the company must consider how outsourcing these tasks may impact short-term goals and the overall business plan. Outsourcing, as both a strategy and an asset, demands a great investment of funds, time, and effort to work effectively. The departments and processes affected by this change must be prepared to incorporate the support; otherwise, it may prove ineffective or even detrimental.
To mitigate this risk and evaluate the success of the initiative, outsourcing should be framed by clear and measurable targets that can also be scaled as the business matures.
For example, a financial services company interested in developing its guest experience may consider outsourcing its reception services since the front desk is an important but non-core function. As the company prepares to outsource, it must consider key objectives for success: customer satisfaction rates, conflict resolution, adequate training, etc.
Designating Your Outsourcing Partner
The outsourcing industry is diverse with capable vendors that can support a vast range of business functions. The ideal outsourcing candidate will vary depending on your specific needs, but an organization with proven expertise, a strong commitment to regulatory compliance, flexibility to support growth, and effective communication skills is well-positioned for success.
Each vendor employs a different outsourcing model to accommodate certain situations.
- Location: Many outsourcing partners, namely those in the recruitment and consulting fields, are unhindered by geographical boundaries by operating remotely or offshore. Other companies deploy site-based teams to work alongside their clients in a hybrid or fully onsite capacity. This model is common for logistics operations and healthcare services.
- Relationship: Many teams, especially software developers, work exclusively with individual organizations to support their infrastructure. Other outsourced teams augment the existing workforce to meet temporary but urgent needs, while others are utilized on a project-by-project basis.
- Pricing: Depending on the longevity of the outsourcing project, vendors utilize either time-and-material pricing (based on service hours rendered), a fixed-price (for a particular scope of work) model, or a hybrid (incentive-based).
Outsourcing Integration
Once the outsourcing objectives have been identified and the partner has been selected, the business can now focus on implementation and evaluation. The success of the operation hinges not just on the labor used to accomplish the task, but also on the degree of collaboration between the business and its outsourcing partner. Effective communication channels, clear workflow procedures, and well-defined metrics for performance and quality assurance all play significant roles here.
This process and partnership will serve as your organization’s foundation from which it can further grow, exploring countless opportunities.
At Drake Business Services Asia, our goal is to support your business using tailor-made, scalable business process outsourcing solutions. We bring together smart technology, world-class talent, and a fully managed process to help you thrive. Contact our team to start your journey: https://dbsa.asia/jp/contact.
