What Is Back Office Outsourcing?
As the name suggests, back-office refers to the functions which are required to be carried out efficiently to ensure the success of the business, but these services do not fall into the core operations functioning of the firm.
Back-office operations are considered to be the backbone of an enterprise and hence are no less important than the essential functions.
Apparently, back-office outsourcing has been on the rise in recent years as they are quite crucial to the core activities of any enterprise.
So, before we take a look at various types of back-office operations that can be outsourced, let’s take a quick look at the advantages first.
Why Outsource Back-office Processes?
There are many benefits of outsourcing back office functions. Here are the major ones
- Focus on core operations
- Job carried out by professionals with domain expertise
- Higher level of flexibility
- Access to state of the art technology and infrastructure
- Lowered costs
- No hassle of staff acquisition and retention
The global outsourcing market is expected to grow at a huge rate.
Different Types of back-office Functions
Payroll Outsourcing
Outsourcing payroll and accounting services help businesses of all sizes free up valuable time and resources.
It was a myth that only established companies with a larger workforce can reap benefits by outsourcing their payroll activities.
Over the years, even smaller organizations and start-ups have realized the importance of outsourcing payroll and accounting activities.
Organizations, through outsourcing, not only saved costs but have also been able to increase their income.
⇒ Data Entry: Data entry is quite a tedious yet one of the most important processes for any enterprise. It’s not wise to manage data entry in the house, though.
By outsourcing data entry process to an efficient and reliable outsourcing partner with a good team of professionals and a robust infrastructure with proper security measures in place, organizations can use their work-force for core business activities which directly have an impact on their day to day operations and finance.
⇒ Data extraction: The handling big amount of data is no cake walk. Data helps you make vital, rational and strategic business decisions and hence required to be managed by a professional and dedicated team.
⇒ Data enrichment: The real trouble starts when data is derived from multiple sources as multiple and wrong entries can turn the table upside down.
Data enrichment ensures accuracy and consistency so that you can count on the data and make right business decisions.
⇒ Document Imaging: Conversion of data from various sources such as forms, receipts, images and paper documents into electronic format is referred to as document imaging. It allows businesses to store a large amount of data in digital format.
⇒ Translingual Data Entry: Translingual data entry is crucial and requires the expertise of multi-lingual data entry experts who can do data mining & migration and online as well as offline data entry jobs.
⇒ Directory Services: Directory services are required to store and organize vital directory information to render seamless access to all stakeholders. The information may include target industries, contact details of decision-making team and other vital data such as email address, contact number, designation in the organization, etc.
⇒ Invoice Forms: Another tedious data entry process that includes keeping track of due, partial and paid invoices along with digitizing through the conversion of paper invoices into electronic format
⇒ Human Resource Outsourcing: Human resource outsourcing helps organizations achieve the highest level of employee satisfaction and streamlined business processes.
There are many advantages of outsourcing HR functions. Over the years, it has helped organizations not only free up their precious time but also to develop a better HR strategy inclusive of screening and hiring, auditing, compensation, leave management, retention, performance management and building better procedures and workflows.
It helped enterprises save on cost, time and effort while enjoying better inter-departmental synchronization and higher ROI.
⇒ IT Support Outsourcing: Post sales support or technical support is indispensable to any organization as it directly impacts customer satisfaction and hence customer retention. Customers would call into discuss their product’s warranty related issues or technical support for troubleshooting minor or major issues.
It’s therefore of utmost importance for it to be dealt by a team of professional with sound technical expertise and customer service experience. Outsourcing IT support not only ensures customer satisfaction, but also unburdens your in-house staff from managing multiple responsibilities. It results in higher employee morale, higher customer satisfaction, and increased ROI.
⇒ Bookkeeping & Taxation: For any organization Bookkeeping and taxation is crucial and mundane in equal measures. As important as it is, it consumes ample amount of precious time of your in-house staff and also requires the highest level of proficiency and accuracy with 100% compliance to regulatory norms.
Organizations over the years have realized the importance of outsourcing bookkeeping to professional vendors with state of the art software and workforce of accountants with plenty of experience in the domain. While managing this function in-house will cost you hefty amount of money for software like Quickbooks, MYOB, Peachtree, Quicken and Sage accounting among others, it’s time-consuming too.
Professional vendors have necessary software and a dedicated team of accountants who can offer you necessary consultation you need from time to time.
Bookkeeping Services Offered
- VAT returns
- cash flow statements
- balance sheets
- ledge maintenance
- annual accounts
- Tax reports
- bank account reconciliation
- adjustments of year end accounts
- credit card reconciliation
- accounts payable reports
- transaction entry
- preparation of sales reports
- tax liability reports
- income statements
These are important tasks that fall in this functional category and hence require experts to manage them.
⇒ Insurance Services : Insurance outsourcing solutions will provide you with quality assurance and operational efficiency enabling you to focus your efforts on your core business of service and customer retention. Click here to read more.
Back office support services will only be on upsurge as more and more organizations are getting to understand the benefits of outsourcing their back office operations.
If you have any queries about back office services or you wish to share your thoughts, please feel free to drop your comments.