The 4 most common outsourced business functions

Often, it’s easy for people to become fixated on the call centre environment and assume that customer service is the most outsourced business function, when in reality there are many others regularly managed by third parties. According to a study by YouGov, 70% of British businesses have handed their key services to outsourcing companies. Within this are services from all across the board, as each business has different goals and priorities. It’s also common for businesses to outsource numerous processes, not just one single function. So today we’re helping to give you an idea of what you could outsource in the future. Here are 4 of the top outsourced processes:

Accounting

One of the most commonly outsourced roles is accountancy, as extensive knowledge and skill is needed to carry out the role effectively and in line with compliance. If someone in another role were to manage this themselves, this would tarnish their main workload and could risk becoming incompliant. On the other hand, even just a single accountant employed in-house can be an enormous hit in labour costs – So outsourcing is used to resolve both these typical issues. An overseas accountant’s expertise are no less, and your savings can be extraordinary.

Marketing

Gathering unique and creative ideas whilst also being persistent in portraying your message is a time-consuming process. A business owner or senior member are unlikely to have the free time to manage this without negatively impacting their operations. A third-party team can be the most time and cost-effective approach. In the UK, you may only be able to afford one or two marketers, whereas, with offshoring, you could have an entire team constantly bouncing ideas off each other. Although outsourcing marketing tasks as a whole is very successful, an overall marketing strategy is best created by individuals in-house as they will have the best understanding of the business.

Sales

Depending on the nature of your business, more completed sales can be acquired by handing your sales team over to a third-party organisation. This tends to work best with businesses in E-commerce, or those that provide a service and aim to get a proposal signed. Physical interaction is rarely needed to persuade a lead to sign a proposal, which is why third parties can be involved in this process. This can be done by building relationships through emails and calls. There are businesses where this is inapplicable, such as a car dealership where customers walk into a physical store, and a sale is fulfilled in person. One potential issue of outsourcing sales is that some providers may not allow their operators to fully understand your business, though a high-quality company will train their staff to become an extension of your team.

IT management

With today’s technology and connection between countries, it gradually matters less and less where your technical services are carried out. IT skills such as web design, app development and software development can take years of learning to master and are not expected skills of other individuals. Therefore, handling these processes yourself is rarely an option. Businesses that require IT support every so often may pay a provider per job; however, those that need regular updates to apps and websites would benefit most from an outsourced team. Especially as there are often ad-hoc demands and tight deadlines in this area, a larger team can be paramount to a company’s success.

What businesses can outsource these processes?

Businesses of almost any size can outsource the above processes, providing they are sizable enough to afford at least one operator within the area mentioned. On the other side of the scale, we’re able to create the infrastructure to integrate multiple teams into your business, who will look, feel, and act as you’d expect traditional employees to do so.

We stand by the fact that we can provide specialists to almost any sector. Where physical interaction is unneeded, we’re there with a solution. A few of the sectors we work in include Logistics, Information Technology, Facilities Management, Recruitment and Marketing.

If you’re considering outsourcing any of your business processes, don’t hesitate to reach out for a chat with one of the team!