Knowing When to Outsource

Core vs. Non-Core Business Practices & Knowing When to Outsource

To begin, it’s important to understand what outsourcing is. Aside from working with companies overseas, there are many U.S.-based companies providing superior business process outsourcing (BPO) services nationwide. The primary goal of outsourcing is to guarantee best-practices are used when processing key business components. This includes areas of data processing, supply-chain management, warehousing, logistics, HR, accounting, check writing and check printing, rebate fulfillment, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), third party billing, barcode labels and other integral business processes.

BPO allows businesses to partner with an expert in a specific non-core business processing area. In doing so, the BPO partner takes on the responsibility of investing in state-of-the-art processing systems in order to streamline your company’s non-core business process. This can be a huge financial savings for your company, especially in the areas of:

• Employee training time
• Employee processing time
• Increasing productivity
• Increasing successful processing rates
• Increasing customer satisfaction

All this while relieving your business of the burden of staying up-to-date with processing requirements and technology investments (which can be extremely costly) related to processing these non-core business activities.

Only a few short years ago BPO was virtually unknown. Fast forward to today and companies around the world are realizing that by using BPO services they can focus their energy on areas where they have a competitive advantage. This allows many businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors, allowing them to take advantage of cost savings from the outsourced functions.

Generally speaking, business processes can be broken out into three distinctive categories:

1. Core Business Practices: are the vital and defining activities of an organization. This is the thesis of an organization and not something to be outsourced to another company. Core activities must be performed internally. (Example: Advertising agencies would not outsource advertising accounts. The May outsource payroll or third party billing or even check writing services, but never advertising campaign accounts.)
2. Vital, but Non-Core Business Processes: these areas of a business are required to be completed as precisely as possible. Failure to do so could put a business in a compromising position creating a disadvantage alongside competition, or even create a risk for the business. There are several examples of businesses who have failed to adequately manage their supply chain and logistics processes properly, which leads them to product shortages, loss of market share, and even the eventual loss of their business. BPO can be extremely successful in situations of supply chain management, logistics, HR, accounting, rebate processing and even EDI, check writing and check printing, third party billing, barcode labels.
3. Non-core Business Processes: processes performed repetitively with the intention of supporting a business. From the surface, these functions appear non-vital to the success of a business. These tasks include areas like catering, security and cleaning.

With the competitive nature of business today, it is mandatory that all businesses optimize every process involved in their business in order to achieve the best possible business performance. There is no business task that is not important to optimize, even non-core business processes.

The three business processing categories discussed here should be used as a way of assessing exactly which business processes should be processed in-house and those that companies should consider outsourcing to an expert. When a company is seeking to improve productivity by streamlining procedures, while spending less on processes, that business must consider BPO as a viable solution.

To learn more about business process outsourcing, contact Integration, Inc. today. Integration, Inc. is an industry-leading business process outsourcing provider specializing in business process automation services, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), check writing, check printing, check processing, rebate processing, barcode labels and third party billing to thousands of companies across the globe.

As a primary business process automation outsourcing provider, Integration’s goal is to empower all its client’s to focus on their core areas of expertise, while leaving the business process automation services to our team of experts. This is accomplished by supplying excellent business process automation services that enhance your company’s ability to provide increased reliability and cost savings to your customers. Integration enables your company’s success by providing a complete IT outsourcing solutions for business process automation.  As a result, this allows your organization to respond rapidly to changing business environments, while meeting your customer’s needs consistently and in a more cost effective manner.

Share: