A BPO company will help your business build high-performing, scalable teams at a fraction of the cost
Key takeaways:
Get quotes when searching for BPO companies.
Make sure you understand the BPO company’s pricing structure.
Compare your current costs with the cost of outsourcing services.
Look at how outsourcing can help you reach your goals and overcome challenges.
Focus on the growth of your company.
Get help from DOXA.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) allows your company to handle a variety of tasks without hiring more employees. BPO is critical for businesses that want to do more without increasing the size of their team, incurring additional employment costs. Your first question, if you haven’t outsourced processes before, is probably “how much does business process outsourcing cost?”
BPO companies charge a range of rates and the costs vary depending on the services you need. Costs can range from as little as USD $50 per month to USD $1,500 per month when you sign up for subscription-based services. You will also see varied rates for a la carte services.
The value of outsourcing services and the money you will save in the long run can be tremendous with BPO. This guide explains how to get accurate quotes from BPO companies and how to assess the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing.
Getting quotes
Assess what services you need so you can get an accurate quote from a BPO company. Some business owners know exactly what they want – such as to outsource their call center or mailroom or to hire someone to handle accounts receivable, accounts payable, or payroll.
Others know they need help but don’t know what. Contact a BPO company directly in this situation, talk about the areas you need help with, and see what they can offer. They will guide you toward the services you need and create a quote for you.
Understanding BPO pricing options
BPO companies have different pricing models and you need to compare apples to apples when you look at different quotes. Traditional BPO pricing models are straightforward. They quote you a number for start-up costs and then you pay a monthly fee to cover ongoing labor and expenses. You can scale up or down depending on your needs and this can change the monthly fee.
Other BPO companies use a profit- or savings-based model. They look at your current expenses and charge you a percentage of the amount that you save when you start outsourcing or they analyze how their services boost your profits and charge you a percentage of profits.
Some BPO companies request you to form a joint venture with them. This is not the typical model and before taking this direction you need to ensure you understand all the legal and business implications.
Comparing current and outsourced costs
You need to compare your existing costs with the proposed cost of outsourcing if you’re thinking about replacing an internal team with an outsourced team. Say you have an internal information technology manager but you want to outsource this role. You should take into account their salary and benefits as well as ancillary costs such as desk space, training costs, and expenses incurred to cover leaves of absence. Compare this amount to the cost of an external IT professional once you have all the numbers.
You may want to do a cost-per-seat calculation if you’re replacing an internal customer service call center team with an external team. This is the amount you currently pay for each employee on average per month; compare it to the monthly cost per seat assessed by the BPO company. Keep in mind that some BPO companies also charge an additional per-minute fee for time on the phone.
Analyzing your goals and challenges
You need to spend some time thinking about your goals and challenges if you want to analyze the true value of outsourcing processes. What does your business want to achieve? Do you want to free up more time to focus on other aspects of your business? Reduce errors? Improve customer service? Boost your profit margin?
Think about the challenges currently in the way of achieving these goals and then consider how BPO services can help. Here is a quick example – say right now you’re spending so much time on routine accounting tasks that you cannot focus on bringing on new clients – if you outsource these processes, you will have 10 additional hours per week.
What value can you create with that extra time? Does that potential value exceed the cost of outsourcing these processes? These are the types of questions you should consider if you want to assess the cost-efficiency of business process outsourcing.
Focusing on growth
BPO companies don’t just save you money and make your company run more efficiently. They can also position you for growth. These companies are committed to scalability.
You have to spend a lot of time recruiting, onboarding, and training employees as well as facilitating office space when you deal with processes internally. BPO companies, in contrast, can help you scale up and down instantly so you don’t have to go through any of these cumbersome hoops.
Gaining expertise to support your business
BPO companies can also provide you with the expertise that you need. This may include helping you with specific areas of your business that are outside your wheelhouse such as HR, accounting, or customer service. This may also include guiding you into new markets by providing local market knowledge, fluency in foreign languages, or country-specific legal assistance.
The expertise you can get from a BPO company will help you to become more successful. It also frees up your time to focus on core aspects of your business.
Contact DOXA for affordable BPO
We are committed to helping our clients grow and we invite you to contact us at DOXA for a free consultation. We let you interview two to three candidates before you sign up for our services and we also offer no-cost process optimization for teams of five or more. Call us today to get started.
