Save time and money with offshoring, but make sure to protect your brand in the process. Here’s how.
Key takeaways:
- Offshoring processes can save time and money.
- You must offshore in a way that doesn’t degrade your brand or reputation.
- Choose the processes you will offshore carefully.
- Do due diligence on the BPO firm you select.
- Negotiate a contract with long-term pricing stability.
- Create a business continuity plan with your BPO firm.
- Don’t rush through the transition.
- Be transparent about your offshoring efforts.
Offshoring select jobs can save you time and money, but you need to ensure you’re not ignoring your brand during this process. You’ve worked hard to establish your image among customers, and the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firm you choose should onboard with your brand in mind. Once the transition is in place, your offshore employees should complete work with your company’s vision in mind.
To help you save on expenses and time while also protecting your brand, you need to offshore strategically and work with the right BPO firm. This guide covers fundamental tactics you should employ if you want to maintain your brand while working with new offshore employees.
Carefully evaluate the processes to offshore
Many companies put a lot of effort into choosing the countries where they want to offshore, and they carefully negotiate contracts with offshoring firms to ensure they’re paying the best prices. They often don’t put as much consideration into the processes they outsource, however. If you want to safeguard your brand image, you need to carefully select the processes you’re going to offshore.
Sort your processes into core, critical, and commodity processes. You should control core processes internally, or your operations will suffer. Critical processes can be outsourced but only to a best-in-class vendor who can provide professionals that will operate in a way that is consistent with your brand image. Commodity processes, however, can be easily outsourced.
Carry out due diligence
Whether your offshore team deals with your customers or provides help with background processes, their work directly affects your business’s operations, and by extension, your brand image. Make sure that you choose your BPO company carefully and perform adequate due diligence.
Research the company and make sure they have a history of satisfaction with their clients. Also, consider the individuals who are going to be on your offshore team. Do they have the experience and skillsets you need? If so, will the BPO firm be able to retain them? To assess that, talk with the firm about their employee attraction and retention strategy.
Whenever possible, try to interview prospective employees before they start working with your business. Top BPO firms often let you interview a handful of people before you commit to working with the firm.
Negotiate a contract with long-term stability
When you offshore processes, they can be hard to reabsorb, especially on short notice. This reality can give offshoring vendors the upper hand. Tread carefully into these arrangements. Make sure that you lock in long-term prices and that your contract prohibits unpredictable and unaffordable rate increases.
If a BPO firm raises prices quickly, you may be stuck with the rate hike simply because you cannot handle the operational disruption of finding a new BPO company or reshoring the jobs. If your budget mandates that you jump ship, your operations will suffer. Orders may not get filled as quickly, customer satisfaction rates may go down, and you may face other issues that hurt your brand.
Allocate ample time and resources to the transition
When moving processes from in-house to off the shore, take your time. Make sure that you devote ample time and resources to the transition. Many businesses rush through this process. They’re eager to get certain tasks off their to-do lists so they can devote their internal team’s bandwidth to other processes.
If you rush through the transition, though, mistakes are more likely to occur. To give you an example, imagine that you’re outsourcing some of your customer service functions. If the offshore team that answers customer calls or emails isn’t adequately trained, the customer experience will be dissatisfying. Customers may lose trust in your brand if they call your number and can’t get the info they need or if they have to endure long delays while the offshore team reaches out to your internal leadership for clarification.
Create a business continuity plan
Disruptions can hurt your brand image. Your business likely has all kinds of continuity plans with its home base operations. For instance, you might have a backup server in case your main server stops working. You may have given your employees laptops so that they can work from home if they get sick. You may have cybersecurity insurance to help you deal with the cost of a data breach. The list goes on.
To protect your brand, you need to create a business continuity plan when offshoring business processes. When talking with prospective BPO firms, ask what will happen if a natural disaster strikes. How will your offshore team stay online and continue to provide services? Even if you’re hoping for the best, you need to plan for the worst.
Be visible about your offshoring efforts
You don’t have to hide that you are offshoring. Consumers understand that we live in a global economy, and they know that most of the companies they patronize will have some connections to labor or resources in other countries.
Everyone is familiar with the labor scandals that have damaged some company’s brands – avoiding those issues requires you to do due diligence. Visibility is also important. As needed, let your customers know that you’re leaning on offshore resources, but that you’re still committed to a fully transparent supply chain, ethical work conditions, and fair labor practices.
Offshoring is a critical strategy for businesses that want to be competitive. It can help you save money and give you more time to focus on your core processes. As you cross the ocean, however, you need to navigate these waters carefully to ensure you’re protecting your brand.
At Doxa7, we prioritize our client’s brands. We provide high-quality offshoring services for a wide range of processes, and we ensure that our team protects your brand image. We offer business-friendly terms and allow you to interview candidates before they start. To learn more about what we can do for you, contact us today.
