1. What is outsourcing?
2. Why Outsource?
3. Benefits of Outsourcing?
4. What is BPO?
5. Why India?
6. What Can I outsource?
7. What are the Best Practices in an Outsourcing decision?
8. How to Evaluate an Outsourcing partner?
9. What is Outsourcing of call centers?

What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a powerful business model which

• transfers the responsibility of one or more of the company's functions to an efficient and reliable source
• allows the company to focus on its core competency
• reduces capital investment & assists in business expansion
• reduces the requirement of excessive manpower
• provides precise customer service

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Why Outsourcing?
In the past, many companies believed: "If critical, don't outsource." The new economy has changed this thinking. Getting resources for superior customer service is expensive. It requires a strategy to implement efficient call center operations and advanced training methodologies. Your customer is just a click away from leaving your site being a satisfied or a dissatisfied customer. The kind of service customer's experience at your site is the key to your SURVIVAL. You can ensure professional customer service by outsourcing your e-services requirements. More and more companies are outsourcing their business to e-CRM experts to retain customers and expand the client base.

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Benefits of Outsourcing?
Outsourcing your Customer Relationship Management & Back Office Operations will

• give you more time to focus on your core competency & expand business.
• minimize your investments in customer support with constantly evolving technology
• maintain a high service level for your customers
• relieve the stress of hiring and training new employees
• place a professional staff in charge of your support services
• facilitate seamless support of multiple programs and growing requirements in a scalable and modular environment
• provide you with a clear time-to-market advantage through 'ready-to-deploy' outsourcing solutions
• help maintain your customer database
• provide a personal touch to all customers
• make customer services easily accessible
• help establish a strong brand equity

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What is BPO?
Top US companies are turning to business process outsourcing, according to a study released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, based on interviews with senior executives at more than 100 U.S. companies averaging about $4.4 billion in yearly revenue. About 73 percent of U.S. executives interviewed said their companies presently outsource one or more business processes to external service providers.

Frequently outsourced business processes:

The study defines business-process outsourcing (BPO) as the long-term contracting of a non-core business processes to an outside service provider.
Executives said:

• BPO lets companies focus on core competencies to increase efficiency without having to invest in people and technology.
• It also helps companies become more profitable and leads to better service levels than internal departments can provide.
• A majority of the polled executives said BPO helps a company maintain a competitive edge.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Top Decision-Makers Study is a landmark study - the first to focus exclusively on BPO at billion-dollar multinationals. The study provides an in-depth report of the attitudes and behavior of senior executives and their companies toward BPO in general, and Finance & Accounting Services (F&A Service) specifically.
Interviews were conducted with 304 top decision-making executives in 14 countries: CEOs, Presidents, CFOs, COOs and CIOs. Among this group, 192 companies (63%) report outsourcing one or more business processes. And, of these companies (41%) report outsourcing Finance & Accounting Services which includes General F&A, Internal Audit, and Tax Compliance.

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Why India?
India is uniquely placed to offer a wide range of quality, cost-effective outsourced services, such as IT and IT-enabled services including finance and accounting, human resources and customer care. If outsourcing is in your business plan, proceed with confidence. India has become a destination of choice. Some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies are outsourcing their business processes to India due to some of the following reasons:
  1. Availability of a large & young English speaking well educated workforce.
  2. Availability of Reliable telecom & infrastructure facilities.
  3. Government support in form of subsidies & exemptions for ITES industry. (in Income tax, import duties, sales tax etc.)

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What Can I Outsource?
You can outsource a verity of your processes which you feel, if outsourced will provide you with a broader platform to operate from without worrying about the mundane back office operations. So that you can concentrate more on your core business activities and expand your business by cutting costs upto 40% at the same time getting partnered with a support organization that will support your business and help you to grow.

Some of the operations/ processes that you can outsource are:

A. Sales Management

• Out Bound Telemarketing
• Dealer - Distributor Management
• After Sales Services
• Order taking
• Fulfillment & Replenishment Services
• Collection Services

B. Customer Care & Relationship Management

• Voice Based Inbound & Outbound Customer Support
• Web based support - Web chat & E-mail Support

C. Portal & Web-site Management

• Content Management
• Database Management & Updation
• Pricing & Product Tracking Management
• Web Business Promotion & Management

D. Database Management System

• Data Entry
• Data Capture
• Data Processing
• Raw Data Management & Analysis
• Processed Data validation, verification & updating.
• Customer Data Management.

E. Product & Market Research

• Product & Market Identification
• Market Research & Tracking
• Product Tracking & Analysis

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F. Financial Management

• Accounts Processing
  • Accounting Process Management
  • Bank Reconciles
  • Payroll Management
  • Taxation
  • Bookkeeping
• II. Transaction Processing
  • Claims Processing
  • Chargeback & Fraud Management
  • Transaction Verification
  • Credit Verification
  • Credit Card Verification
  • Money Realization
    • Credit Card
    • E-cheque
    • Physical Cheque
    • Money Transfer

G. Insurance Services

• Telemarketing
• Policy Admin, Policy Issue, Policyholder Services
• Accounting dividends, bonuses etc.
• Claims Processing

H. Advertisement & Promotional Support

• Advertisement Film Production
• Print & TV Advertisement development and management
• Design & development of promotional material

I. HR Services

• Human Capital Sourcing
• Generation of pay slips, Computation of Salaries, Cheque preparation
• Calculation of gratuity, bonus & Income tax
• Generation of statutory and MIS reports of the entire employee's.
• Deposit of the pay Cheque in the respective salary account bank.
• IT returns filings for the employee & Pan card application filing.
• Online access to the employee/employer to data like salary statements leaves records, Form 16 and other relevant data.
• Payment of all the utility bills of the employee's.

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What are the Best Practices in an Outsourcing decision?
Outsourcing is a complex decision, and has to a strategic one, some of the best practices in the decision making process are:

• Identification of the processes/ function to be outsourced
• Objective approach on how each activity contributes to over all strategy of the company
• Key drivers for outsourcing (Cost, Internal dissatisfaction, Better quality, Focus on core activity, Technology)
• Measure external and internal impact stakeholders
• Developing a RFP (defining the current status, what is wanted and the expected results)

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How to Evaluate an Outsourcing partner?
Evaluation of the Outsourcing partner is the first and an important step towards a successful outsourcing relationship; an organization has to develop an evaluation metrics based on their Key drivers of outsourcing. The areas in which an outsourcing partner should be evaluated are:

• Background
• Financial strength
• Quality certifications like ISO 9001:2000
• Services offered
• Experience in the industry
• Technology & Infrastructure
• People
• Growth plans

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What is Outsourcing of call centers?

• Outsourcing is rapidly becoming a strategic concept maturing into an effective corporate management tool.
• More and more companies (over 30%) who are now outsourcing are also actively searching for additional opportunities.
• The growth rate of US Companies outsourcing offshore will double by 2003.
• Half of attempted on line purchases are abandoned a loss of @25 billion a year in revenue.
• Only 27% organizations have a fully integrated phone, web & E-mail system for responding to customer inquiries.
• Only 42.8% of support organizations provide 24*7 support to there customers.
• The web shopping market will grow to $10.39 billion by 2005.
• Weak customer service tends to be the rule on top customer retail websites.
  

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