Business process outsourcing started out as a privilege for larger organisations. With the proliferation of offshore virtual assistant services teams and agencies, it’s now made available for small to medium-sized enterprises as well.

Choosing to outsource brings numerous benefits like reduced costs, increased ad spending and enhanced scalability. These are especially obvious with back-office operations, such as human resources services and data management.

However, it’s important to note that companies must always take a structured approach towards back-office outsourcing. Without proper planning and management, outsourcing may negatively impact the bottom line.

Failing to define tasks clearly will slow down the workflow. This is because your employees end up having to ask about their responsibilities and seek confirmation about their output constantly. Rather than make life more convenient, it will only add to your daily duties.

By knowing which tasks are better done in-house or outsourced, you’ll be able to focus on growing your company than monitoring offshore assistant workers.

Here are examples of back-office processes you should be outsourcing right now:

Customer Service

Every growing business will see an increasing number of customer feedback, complaints and queries. There comes a point when attending to these concerns and answering calls alone will take up a huge chunk of your time.

For you and your team to focus on activities that drive revenue or scale your business, it’s best to outsource this task instead. There is a good reason why large organisations such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Amazon have long decided to outsource this aspect of their operations.

Technical Support

For a company to boost customer retention, reliable post-sales and technical support are necessary. Tech issues need to be addressed by professionals who have sound expertise in hardware maintenance, software management, and similar areas.

An outsourced technical virtual assistant can update the rest of your staff on the latest trends and tools. Additionally, they can provide remote assistance that may be difficult for you to handle internally. Not to mention that they have access to disaster recovery as well as advanced storage and security solutions.

Public Relations and Marketing

Careful planning and strategic effort are required to successfully promote your brand across various mediums and platforms. Also, it’s important to note that social media marketing takes a different approach as that of search engine optimisation. The same is said for traditional marketing methods.

A digital marketing VA is able to effectively analyse your website for areas that need improvement. They can also run pay-per-click campaigns with the most suitable keywords. Writing SEO-friendly content for your blog or website can be part of their responsibility as well.

Human Resources

This covers a wide range of tasks, such as recruitment, training, management, retention, performance evaluations, and so on. While it’s tempting to keep this in-house so you can filter candidates yourself, it will be challenging when you need to hire a lot of people for different departments or teams.

If you have limited resources, it’s a smart idea to outsource your HR operations instead. You can save time in crafting job listings, sifting through the flood of resumes and cover letters, interviewing candidates who pass the first stage of recruitment, training the new hires and so on.

Payroll and Accounting

With back-office outsourcing, you are able to prevent and/or minimise the risks of calculation errors and ensure that you are contributing the correct amount of taxes and other government benefits to avoid costly penalties or fees.

You can also rest assured that your employees will always be paid properly and on time. You won’t have to hire an accountant of your own and spend on their bookkeeping software or work equipment. An experienced payroll virtual assistant will already be familiar with QuickBooks or other tools too.

Data Entry

The job of inputting information through an interface sounds simple enough until you have to perform it for hours on end. It becomes even more complicated when you have to interpret, research additional data, or apply certain business rules before the information is entered into the system.

A data entry virtual assistant can check if an accident claim is valid or not before putting it into the database. They can verify if the names of diseases and brands of medicines are correct too. Best of all, they can free up your time to perform other business activities.

Logistics Operations

Does your business involve transporting goods from one point to another? You’ll have to check every parcel from the source and at every stop to make sure that it’s safe and secure until it reaches its destination.

There are systems to automate this process but it’s good to have an actual human to inspect issues related to defects, returns or unavailability of items. They can negotiate with suppliers about alternatives; ask couriers for updates on deliveries; collaborate with customer support on complaints; and the like.

Conclusion

There are certain back-office functions that are better outsourced to remote virtual assistants for the growth of your company. Have the above tasks assigned to an offshore specialist with the experience and expertise to handle them.

Remote Workmate can assist you in finding a suitable virtual assistant to take care of your back-office operations according to your preferences or needs. We’ll also cut your employment costs by up to 70%, boost your productivity, win back your free time and supercharge your bottom line.