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for the personnel development of your inhouse employees, which is an effective management strategy.

      3. Outsourcing means that a company can make investments into more revenue-producing activities. Investors shall then see this as a good sign.

      4. Outsourcing can help the company to start a project as soon as possible. This is possible because the outsourcing company has the resources and the expertise to handle the project immediately.

      Unlike inhouse projects, there is no need to take weeks or months for training and support services.

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      5. For small businesses, outsourcing can be beneficial for them because they can save a lot of money and enjoy the same level of efficiency and expertise that large companies have. Outsourcing can also be viewed as a leveling instrument in the playing field.

      Outsourcing is not just to cut costs; it can also enhance efficiency, effectiveness and level the playing field for small businesses.

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      BPO Outsourcing: Is This For All

      Companies?

      What is BPO? Business Process Outsourcing or BPO is the process of hiring an outsourcing company to provide services that a company should and could normally do. Before, BPO consists only of payroll services but now it also includes a number of functions such as financial and administration, human resources, customer services and accounting services.

      Often, the outsourcing contracts between a company and the partner outsource company involves many years and millions of dollars. What are the basic knowhow s for companies? A company before entering into outsourcing arrangements should know some basic knowledge about this. There is a right way to approach BPO.

      1. A company should be aware that outsourcing has cycles and each cycle involves strategies. Using Gartner s outsourcing model, four phases are identified. These are sourcing strategy, evaluation and selection, contract development and sourcing management. The company management should ask itself questions on each of this strategy such as the risks and the reasons behind all the actions he has to make.

      2. A company must know the duration of the contract. Usually, BPO contracts last from three to five years. The company must be able to make a balance, making it long enough to produce results and short enough to easily make changes.

      3. A company must be able to make identification and assessment of the risks involved in outsourcing. The main idea here is to be able to separate the functions that can be outsourced and those that must remain inhouse. There are many processed that

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      can be delegated but there are those that involves much risk such as policymaking and accountability. There are still many issues that a company has to evaluate before entering BPO outsourcing. Being aware of these is the first step. The next step is applying these to your company.

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      The Disadvantages of the Business Outsourcing Trend

      In this day and age, outsourcing business processes to thirdparty companies has been the trend that almost every company is trying to emulate. Though outsourcing is indeed a business strategy that works for some companies, there are also some unexpected drawbacks associated with it. This is the reason why a lot of negative criticisms have been thrown to outsourcing in terms of (a) language skills, (b) quality of service, and (c) security.

      When outsourcing is combined with offshoring to regions with different language and culture, expect that dissatisfaction from customers will come in. This happens mostly in call centers wherein English may not be the primary language. Customers are having difficulties understanding call center agents due to variations in accent, word usage and sentence construction. Though product knowledge may be excellent, language barrier is undoubtedly one of the factors that lead to conflicts and misunderstandings.

      If there is communication gap, quality of service is at stake as well. Another factor is that since the main purpose of outsourcing is to reduce costs, other services may be put in jeopardy due to lack of necessary resources. Though questionnaires may measure quality of service rendered, an unbiased Service Level Agreement (SLA) should still be prioritized to clearly define the necessary deliverables for each business process.

      Security has always been an issue related with outsourcing.

      The company may not have the capacity to control each and every transaction done by the thirdparty company, therefore resulting to some legal security and compliance issues. There are even staff members from the thirdparty company who were penalized because of getting the most out of being exposed to confidential company and customer information. This is indeed one of the areas of outsourcing that needs to be addressed as well.

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      Business Process Outsourcing

      Learning the Basic Concept of BPO s

      Getting into the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) trend also means acquiring a thirdparty company in which the transmission of company services with its associated operational activities and responsibilities will take place. This is yet another business strategy with certain expectations to meet such as providing services with at least a guaranteed equal service level so as to avoid client-customer conflicts. BPO indeed provides definite solutions to companies while promising more efficient organizational designs as a result of productivity growth, cost reduction and innovative competencies.

      Currently, BPO is divided into two categories: (a) back-office outsourcing and (b) front-office outsourcing. If back-office outsourcing deals with internal business functions such as payroll and human resources, front-office outsourcing, on the other hand, includes customer-related functions such as tech support through phone, chat or email. These categories are further subdivided into three, namely

      (a) inshore outsourcing

      (b) nearshore outsourcing and

      (c) offshore outsourcing, depending on the BPO location.

      Inshore outsourcing means that the BPO company contracted is within a company s own country. If the contracted BPO is located on a company s neighboring country, then this is called nearshore outsourcing. Once the BPO company contracted is located outside the company s own country, it is then an offshore outsourcing.

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      There are also certain risks involved to acquiring BPO services.

      This is because it is more like transferring all business elements including process management, software and people to a

      thirdparty company on behalf of the outsourcer. Risks should be carefully managed to successfully achieve desired benefits. Otherwise, this will only lead to failing of company expectations, therefore business growth and development will be at stake.

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      The Truth Behind Call Center Outsourcing

      The customer is always right this is a common statement instilled to a lot of employees who get to interact customers or clients each and every working day. This is because it is through only excellent customer service that people get more value for their money. This is also the reason why many companies are investing on training so that their employees will be given a chance to improve their customer service abilities and get to meet or even exceed customer expectations. A very good ingredient that adds more color to every customer interaction is having exceptional communication skills. In the call center industry, this is one of the main areas that are being focused on.

      Though large companies have the capacity to establish their own call centers, some resort to outsourcing their call center needs.

      This is what makes call center outsourcing a critical part of any business operation. However, it is a must to assess first if going to the call center outsourcing direction is indeed what the business needs. Some of these reasons would most likely due to low costs.

      Given that a call center specializes in phone support and is acquired by most companies simply mean that good management is in place. Therefore

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