In 2017 one of the hottest topics is productivity and productivity hacks. These days’ businesses are trying their best to outperform their competitors.
However most organizations are struggling with resource to time ratio, because they don’t have enough scope to deal with every single task, as a result, often times they are not able to reach their target entirely. This is why BPO Services are so demanding right now.
BPO services can help to streamline workflow, manage opportunity cost and keep clients happy. Because you are saving time and energy, delegating some functions to others might even lead to higher profits.
What is BPO?
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a division of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the procedures and tasks of a specific business process to a third-party service provider.
Business Process Outsourcing is Two Types
- Back office outsourcing – Which includes internal business jobs such as web development, data processing, social media management, E-Commerce site management, HR, accounting and so on.
- Front office outsourcing – Which includes customer-related services such as contact center services, meeting set-up, chat support and so on.
You can Outsource in Two Ways
1. Hiring Freelancers
Freelancers can either work from home (or anywhere) via the Internet or they may work in your office. It is important you understand independent contractor laws, however, so you don’t unintentionally violate them. The most important thing to know is that an employer can not dictate the terms of where or how a freelancer works.
Some good places to find freelancers are – Upwork , Freelancer, 99designs
2. Hire an Agency
Hiring an agency means recruiting specialized employees for your specific business needs. Hiring an agency is very convenient for both small and big companies, because recruiting any range of employee or team is completely effortless. For measuring the work standard you can hire them on a trial basis. Once you are satisfied with the agency you can hire the team.
There are a lot of good agencies in Bangladesh, India, Philippine to choose form.
Outsourcing to Freelancers vs. Agencies
Benefits of Freelancers –
Pros
- Better one to one conversion
- Less formality
- Wide variety of workers
Cons
- There is some risk when working with a new freelancer
- There is less accountability of the work
- Less chance of getting a standard work
- Not reviewed by the professionals
Benefits of Agencies
Pros
- More transparency
- Faster project complement because you are hiring a team
- Long term alliance
- Standard of work is high
- Can handle a lot of work at the same time
Cons
- Technically speaking there are no cons if you hire a trustworthy agency with a good ethical standard and commitment. Though there are some misconceptions about outsourcing to an agency.
Major Benefits of BPO Services
- You can be free from many unnecessary hassles related to employee management.
- Improved productivity through efficient use of time and resource
- Tap different markets without breaking the bank
- You can redesign your business structure any time there is an opportunity
- You can cut your cost in half by hiring experienced employee at a lower salary.
1. Outsource Web Development Tasks
The rise of the WordPress popularity has made web design and development easier than ever. Some would argue that it is better to have a WordPress site than a dynamic one. I won’t go into that argument. But one thing for sure no matter which platform you choose or which type of language you use, maintaining your site on a daily basis is a must if you want to keep your website responsive and up-to-date for your customers.
For outsourcing web development projects you can hire an entire dedicated team or you can hire a developer for your daily maintenance and constant updates. Because one thing is for sure we are not that far ahead in the future where a website or web application can run by itself.
2. E-commerce Management Tasks
Managing your Ecommerce site or any other site that showcases products needs constant updates and changes. You always have to be in your toe for new market changes and your catalog has to be even snappier than your market trends; with your trusty virtual assistant daily tasks becomes a piece of cake.
There are number of tasks in an e-commerce site that needs constant attention. Naming some BPO services that can help you with that–
- Catalog – Updating
- Data Entry
- Data Cleansing
- Migration
- Product Upload
- Image Tagging
- Data Indexing
- Product Data Classification and Categorization
- Shopping Cart Data Entry
If you run a small business with few team members it can be a tough job to manage those tasks properly without making any mistakes and creating a complete mess.
3. Data Entry Services
Data entry falls under major BPO services, because the procedure is really easy to monitor and maintain. Yet the impact is so fruitful. Having a research assistant to do your online research, fact checking can be very handy to maintain your online persona intact. These days’ personal brands and businesses need constant research and data management actives to run their business and to make sure contents they are putting out there is 100% authentic. Some of the tasks you can outsource as a part of data entry jobs are –
- Online research virtual assistant
- Niche market research
- Data entry and management
- Data mining and presentation
- Database acquisition
- Database creation
The real value lies in the timing; you can finish your project, or reach your deadline very smoothly; without having to reduce the quality of the work in general.
4. Customer Care Service and Social Media Management
We all know the growing popularity of social media, but social media management capability isn’t growing at the same pace. Nowadays businesses need social media more than ever to grow their profit margin. But if not managed correctly this opportunity can be lost. But the main problem is with growing number of social media platform, it is hard for any business to keep track of all their activities and monitor what their customers are saying about them in those platforms.
Customer care and social media (BPO services) –
- Social media scheduling
- E-mail management
- E-mail campaign
- Twitter/ Facebook/ Instagram page management
- Managing social media account
- Social media page maintenance
- Social media campaign ( Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter)
5. Lead Generation and Monetization Tasks
Lead generation marketing is the key task for any marketing department, that’s how you can actually know who your potential customer is and who is not; it is more crucial for B2B businesses. Businesses know that and we can see from the chart how lead generation is rising to the top in recent years, but the problem is “lead monitoring” isn’t so hot right now. That’s because businesses don’t have enough time to monitor hundreds and thousands of leads every day. That’s why lots of potential buyer’s slip through the crack in the pipeline and business lose their profit margin.
That’s why outsourcing your lead generation and lead monitoring task can be substantially profitable for you –
- Business lead generation (B2B)
- Customer lead generation (B2C)
- Social media monitoring on prospective leads
- Social selling for selective clients
- Pitch preparation
6. Content Writing and Proofreading
Content marketing is the ultimate way to market your small business and personal brands. So making quality content on a consistent basis can be a real handful for a business. So you can outsource some of your content writing and copywriting work to make your brand more versatile and edgy.
It will help you prioritize your content publishing effort rather than you wasting all your time making it. Because it doesn’t matter how good your contents are unless and until your target audience gets to see those content.
When you are outsourcing your content writing tasks you are actually making a partner, who can help you with your outbound links. Because they also have a blog where they can mention your brand and as a result, you will get more outbound links, which will result in more traffic to your site.
BPO services related to content writing and design tasks are –
- Copywriting
- Writing Product descriptions
- Proofreading
- Article writing (various length)
- Blog post writing
- SEO proof writing
Handy Tools for Keeping Track
Ø Time Doctor – It is useful for individuals and companies for tracking remote team’s time management and overall productivity.
Ø WorkiQ – It tracks employees’ computer behavior and provides reports on their time spent on productive and nonproductive applications.
Ø Asana, Jira – Tasks can be assigned individually and tracked in real time, comments and discussion can take place within the tool.
Ø Slack – This is an instant messenger built for the workplace. You can use it to set up persistent chat rooms, or 1-to-1 communication.
Ø Discord – It’s an awesome tool for chatting and audio calls among team members.
Bottomline
In this post, I have talked about 6 major BPO services that you can outsource to make your operation smooth and your productivity superior.
- You can choose a different organization for different tasks mentioned here.
“OR”
- You can go with a single professional organization; in that case, they will do all those for you without breaking any sweat.
Benefit of the second option is that you have more control over the whole process, all your BPO services stay under one umbrella and you can reduce your business expenditure by a significant margin.