Effect of technology on BPOs
Despite the fact that most businesses opt for BPOs or look to outsource their back office support and data management services mainly with the idea to streamline their operations and additionally also cut down on the expenses, the current IT trends are known to shaking the sector in a couple of ways. The disharmony arising could be resulting from the decision of customers to reduce their back office expenses, due to the arising budget pressures alongside that by the suppliers to opt for additional services or revenues that could be compliant.
Most of the BPOs are unanimous in their decision to opt for technologies such as the cloud computing, business analytics software, social media or process automation software in their attempt to cut down costs and increase business efficiency as well.
According to a research by Accenture, the highly effective BPOs are liaising with the customers, by delivering value for business by adapting to latest technologies as a major aspect of innovation and benefit.
Anoop Sagoo, the BPO lead of Products Industry is of the opinion that effective technology and design helps to cut down the costs and make operations more efficient, by streamlining the system environment, while also cutting down on the systems being used. It also helps to regularize the technology environment on a platform that is consolidated.
Meanwhile, the head of outsourcing at a law firm, Mark Lewis had also claimed that the developing BPO market scale is expected to attain better levels of automation via IT. He also adds that they consider it to be a way to gain non-linear development.
Another BPO specialist, Paul Roehrig, from Cognizant, adds that combining business process with technology also helps to optimize the business process services for the client. It integrates human process with automation. At the same time, next gen tech like the cloud, social media or analytics also have more of an impact on success of BPO services delivered. As a result, earlier where businesses were looking to outsource non-core activities as a way to cut down costs, now expect more. Scaling operations to meet the arising challenges, most of the businesses now opt to combine BPO services with technology.
He also says that one another major trend to see in business today is the significance of data and technology, which enable the data to be used up completely for specific business purposes. With BPOs handling huge volume of data, they should also be able to undertake analytics on transactions identify the deep insights and then look for opportunity to further enhance operations, Sagoo adds on.
Meanwhile, Lewis chimes in that employing software to mechanize the business process is becoming more of a norm and should be able to help with cutting down cost of training or hiring a person. Finance and accounting robots would soon be replacing human in back office operations.
This article here, in the meantime could be taken as a reflection into how decision to outsource should also take into consideration, the integrated approach of aligning IT with BPO performance, so that it can ensure effective service for business success.