BPO, or business process outsourcing, is the quickest way to improve your business efficiency and bottom line. It’s a growing industry with a lot of opportunities for businesses of all sizes. BPO can be used for a variety of tasks, from customer service to accounting and human resources.
Business owners inevitably find themselves in a spot where they are unable to quickly grow without investment. In the past, growth required significant investment in staffing for different functions, office space, and marketing and sales.
However, with current technology, companies of all sizes and growth stages can take the advantage of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to grow and transform their business model. Let’s look at some of the key ways this can be achieved.
Take Advantage of Emerging Opportunities
With the help of BPO, you can run a nimble business that can exploit emerging opportunities. Let’s take the example of a small real estate brokerage operating in San Antonio. With the real estate market red hot in Texas, especially in neighboring Austin, it could make sense for them to start operations there.
In a traditional approach, you would open an office, and hire people in marketing, research, operations, etc. However, with the help of BPO, you can hire outsourced marketing and sales support to generate leads and get remote executives to connect with local property owners.
BPO allows the flexibility to rapidly exploit opportunities. If at any point in time you experience a downturn in business, you can immediately scale back your business functions as most BPO contracts allow you to reduce billing hours based on your needs.
Improve Profitability
Startups and growing businesses are in a race to find profit. You cannot spend money or precious resources getting in-house processes optimized. With the help of BPO, you can quickly outsource business functions often for an affordable fee.
For example, instead of employing a full-time bookkeeper, you can use online bookkeeping services and save thousands of dollars a year as well as countless hours of your own time.
Build Valuable Expertise
Building expertise in a start-up or small business can be difficult, especially with current labor shortages. BPO allows you to overcome these challenges by providing you with readily available expertise and process knowledge.
Let’s take the example of a retail chain looking to expand into a neighboring state. As they prepare to expand, they will need to set up contacts and negotiate rates with suppliers.
With the help of an outsourced research service, it’s easy to tap into an expert team of procurement specialists. Such experts can benchmark the capabilities of suppliers in the new area and prepare cost models for effective negotiations.
Exploit Technology
Irrespective of the size of the business you are running, using the best available technology and processes will help you achieve a competitive advantage. When you engage leading BPOs to manage different business functions, you get the advantage of deploying cutting-edge technology that might be out of reach for a small business.
Look at the example of an outsourced customer support team working for your business. It offers you the chance to build a knowledge base based on similar clients it may be handling. Based on their previous experience in similar verticals they can implement best practices of query escalation and incident management.
Moreover, they can offer insights into the challenges your consumers are experiencing.
Similarly, an outsourced marketing group can introduce best practices of growth marketing relevant to your vertical and let you use software platforms that would cost a lot to purchase yourself.
Key Advantages of Engaging BPO Across Key Business Functions
Growing businesses need to build expertise across marketing, sales, technology services, customer support, accounting, and compliance to name a few functions. Let’s look at some of the advantages BPO services offer.
Accounts Receivables
There are many benefits to outsourcing collections on your accounts receivable to an invoice factoring company. Perhaps the most obvious benefit is that it frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
Another benefit is that it also allows you to take advantage of the factoring company’s expertise in collections, which can lead to improved cash flow.
Marketing Services
BPO specializing in marketing and sales functions can help you tap into emerging markets, deal with new client topology, and drastically improve the rate of customer acquisition and retention.
They can help you with marketing research and run digital marketing campaigns in specific areas. Outsourced marketing services teams can also coordinate with local executives and run sales support campaigns.
Technology and Digital Services
Nearly every business needs to embrace technology to stay relevant. BPO specializing in technology and digital services can manage your presence on websites and apps, as well as create applications to improve customer service and product support.
Technology solutions can also manage your business data, assist with reporting and analysis, and forecast trends.
Customer Support Functions
Using BPO for customer service, you can offer customer support across phone, email, social, and other digital channels 24/7 and gain a competitive advantage.
Some BPOs can even help you with managing AI chat support systems, and knowledge bases, and engage in support-driven growth.
Final Thoughts on BPO Transformation
BPO offers one of the most innovative ways to quickly transform your business into a lean operation focused on profitability and growth. It also allows you to build a sustainable business model in a vertical where profit margins are relatively low.
However, the biggest advantage that BPO offers is the power to experiment – you can enter new markets, try new product and service offerings, and dramatically increase your marketing and sales efforts without breaking the bank.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Blake Bobit
