Sustainable growth is the primary goal of nearly every modern business. We live in a fast-paced world and with increasing market competition, improving efficiency, enhancing productivity and rapidly delivering products and services to market is vital. To enable your business to achieve its goals, Cloudstaff introduces our seven steps for successful outsourcing.
Providing your customers with comprehensive products and services while focusing on business growth means it’s essential for your team to focus on core competencies. That’s precisely why the world’s leading executives choose to outsource specific business functions as part of their long-term business strategy. Outsourcing provides organisations with the time, workforce flexibility, agility and cost effectiveness required to achieve sustainable growth objectives.
Outsourcing: Taking your business to the next level
To aid you on your outsourcing journey, here are seven objectives we suggest adding to your business development plan to help leverage outsourcing to reach your goals quickly and efficiently.
1. Set clearly defined goals
Outsourcing business roles is never easy, and it is best to involve your whole team. While they may have different views on where and how to start, you must consider the business’s overall goals.
Be specific about what you want to achieve.
- Are you trying to reduce company expenses?
- Do you want to improve workflows?
- Do you want to deliver better value to your customers?
Clearly defining your business goals will get everyone on the same page. Then, you can use those goals as your business’s guide to successfully leveraging outsourcing.
2. Identify roles and responsibilities to be outsourced
There are plenty of roles you can outsource, including:
- Accounting
- Development
- Technical support
- Marketing
- Administrative tasks
Anything that is essential to business processes but is tedious, repetitive or time consuming, getting in the way of key staff driving the core growth of your business are roles you should look at for possible outsourcing.
While outsourcing can lower overheads and improve efficiency and productivity across many departments, it’s important to keep in mind that core business functions shouldn’t be considered for outsourcing.
A prime example of this:
In a real estate business, networking is best handled by local managers while administrative tasks are best managed by an outsourced team.
3. Find the right outsourcing partner
Your outsourcing success is entirely dependent on your business process outsourcing (BPO) partner. When choosing your BPO partner, it can be challenging to see whether they’d be a good fit for your company.
There are a few things you should consider, including whether the BPO has:
- A proven track record
- Ample access to talent
- Robust staff retention
- Adoption of the latest technology
- Reliable infrastructure
- Comprehensive data and hardware security; and
- A strong management team.
For more help in choosing the right BPO partner for your business, see our 10-step guide to choosing the right company for offshore talent.
4. Evaluate the cost
Outsourcing can only save you money if it works, and you can guarantee its success when you’ve set clearly defined goals, identified the roles you need to outsource and partnered with a reliable outsourcing provider that fits well with your company.
Many businesses see significant cost savings over standard staffing costs because instead of focusing on wage reduction, they’re building an efficient workforce that adds real value and enables them to maximize their return on investment (ROI). Cloudstaff’s innovative efficiency accelerator uses custom-built technology, streamlined processes, training and culture to further increase outsourcing value for your business.
5. Communicate your expectations
Another vital element to outsourcing success is communicating expectations with your outsourcing provider.
Provide a comprehensive business development plan so your BPO partner can better understand your goals and be able to focus on the things that matter most to you.
It’s vital you’re clear about the scope of work or how you want the work accomplished. Being clear at the start ensures assumptions aren’t made about your preferences. No service provider can tell what exactly it is that you’re thinking about when it comes to growing your business.
6. Overcome obstacles and challenges
Working with the right outsourcing partner doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t encounter challenges along the way. Evaluate possible risks like technological problems, environmental concerns and legal and security risks – things that could impact your success when you’re outsourcing business processes. Being aware of possible challenges and their implications will help you make the right decisions for your business. More importantly, speak to your team and service provider so you can create more opportunities rather than problems.
7. Make good use of the outsourcing benefits
Outsourcing is a continual journey of improvement. A great outsourcing partner won’t just set and forget you—they will be with you along the way. They will help you continually evolve your team and processes. They will work with you to help you get the most from outsourcing.
To stay ahead of the competition, you’ll need to focus your efforts on your core business continuously. Outsourcing allows you to focus on the really important things to your business and reclaim some of the time you spend on the ‘little things’ that are best handled by someone else. Smarter outsourcing with Cloudstaff helps your business grow.
How can Cloudstaff help with your outsourcing?
Cloudstaff’s outsourcing experts are always available to help. For more than a decade, we’ve been helping businesses of all sizes grow with global outsourcing teams. From helping you get started, to fine-tuning high-performance teams, we are always happy to share our experience with you. Interested in finding out how you can take your business to the next level with outsourcing? Contact Cloudstaff’s team of experts to get started..