The general trend of business has seen a shift from in-house departments to outsourcing, which is the most cost-effective way to complete the task when you factor in everything. Here are a few of the essential business processes that companies prefer to outsource to a third-party provider.
- Accounting & Bookkeeping – Take Acclime accounting firm in Indonesia, as an example, this specialist provider services foreign and domestic businesses by handling all their bookkeeping and accounts, ensuring they are compliant with local laws. Almost every company has their accounts handled by a local provider and even when an organisation grows considerably, they prefer to outsource.
- Logistics – The new kid on the block, third-party logistics (3PL) is a rapidly growing sector and when you order products online, the 3PL company picks, packs and delivers the goods. A digital entrepreneur can run an e-commerce website from their laptop, outsourcing IT, digital marketing and logistics, so the business owner doesn’t need to handle the products at all! Drone deliveries are the next step on the road to autonomy, while traditional retail outlets will diminish, being replaced by huge warehouses.
- Marketing – It is very expensive to directly employ a team of marketing specialists and even the corporations that can afford such luxuries prefer to outsource. The huge number of SEO agencies is a reflection of how busy the digital marketing industry has become and let’s face it, without SEO services, you will invariably be an ‘also ran’.
- Telecommunications – Forget the telephone, all you need for all business communication is a good VoIP application that is powered by your closed cloud network. Talk to a managed IT services provider and they can help you turn to digital communication and that allows you to make unlimited video meetings and conferences.
- Cyber Security – Absolutely essential these days and you will need far more than a free anti-virus program to ensure that your critical business data is secure. Again, this is the domain of a managed IT services provider and if you have customers making online payments, their financial data must be protected and with cyber-security experts overseeing your network, security is assured.
- Vehicle & Equipment Maintenance – Commercial vehicles are working most of the time and in order to ensure they are always in good shape, a regular maintenance schedule needs to be set. Let’s look at a medium size publisher as an example; they have 100 vans that deliver books and magazines to retailers and rather than going to the expense of setting up their own garage with directly employed mechanics, they simply outsource the entire fleet’s servicing to a specialist company that has the resources to accommodate the fleet.
The essence of any business is customer service and by outsourcing many business processes, you, the business owner, can spend your time improving the customer experience. Of course, we should always compare providers when outsourcing and if we are unhappy with any aspect of the service, it is easy to find another local company who offer such services.
