Australian companies wishing to control operational costs often resort to an offshore service providers who perform their administrative or non-strategic support functions. The modern business is evolving and business process outsourcing or BPO is quite the latest business practice darling known for giving businesses the strategic support they need to be competitive.
Trends to watch in BPO
According to Gartner, a world-leading information technology research and advisory thinktank, up to $9.5-Billion will be spent on business process outsourcing by the year 2016 in the Pacific and Asian regions. Australia was cited as the largest market for BPO in 2011, piling in $4.6-Billion, which technically made this commonwealth nation’s market share even bigger than that of India and China.
Plunkett, another global market watchdog, issued in a report called Outsourcing and Offshoring Industry Trends and Statistics 2013, that the global outsourcing markets will exceed $480-Billion in the year 2013.
Cost remains the biggest cited factor for outsourcing but there are also commanding boom in market industries like Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Retail, Travel, and Communications in Australia due to quality factors.
Factors that Influence the Use of Offshoring BPO
As a way to approach business, the use of BPO by small and big companies are driven by several key factors. They are:
- BPO services are often scalable and offer flexible options to businesses
- Diverse, reputable companies offering wide-scale BPO offerings and service levels
- Assured quality goods and services due to improved processes and infrastructure
- Improved productivity over reduced liability and less-pressure of business management
- Competition and increasing call to expand globally which demands for more workers
- Talent shortage
Business Process Outsourcing Service Types to Consider
What you need right now or in the next couple of years will be dependent on several factors. However, we would like to cite some of the ideal business process outsourcing solutions that you can seek from Australian BPO support providers like Big Outsource. Here are the following that will be highly in demand:
Bookkeeping and Financial – Certain financial matters can be outsourced to an offshore provider from the preparation of the business payroll to simple to complex tax audits. Outsourcing to a BPO provider this aspect of business can help generate more revenues for your business and give you more edge in dealing with your financial matters.
Virtual Management – Especially for startups, certain non-strategic business functions can be delegated or sent offshore as you grow your business, especially to meet customer and business demands. Hiring an executive management team member under a business process outsourcing provider contract can remove the pressure off business owners and allow them to focus on the important side of their business.
Customer Service – As companies see the bigger picture of operating and maintaining their own in-house customer service department – time consuming and costly – outsourcing customer service continue to appeal as a viable option. In fact, it is one of the most popular BPO support side that companies are sending to offshore service providers.
IT Support – As the search for the best IT professionals who are equipped with up-to-date skillsets and right qualifications become more and more challenging, some companies find success by hiring a virtual worker through a business process outsourcing provider. Programmers, mobile app developers, digital platform development professionals will be highly valuable and in demand and they will push for the growth of offshore BPO in the near future.
The foreseeable future may be few years from now but the evidence are clear: companies globally searching for quality workforce from business process outsourcing providers will continue to rise. What’s best to do now is to have a regular progressive evaluation of business needs and requirements.
