What is outsourcing? Well, to put it in a few words, outsourcing involves contracting your business process to a third party service provider located in the same country or in another country. Some of the common services outsourced are customer support, web design, data entry, Big Data solutions management, legal services and more.
Over the past decade, the BPO industry has witnessed a huge growth and this growth is on the rise. In fact, it has emerged to be one of the fastest growing sectors today. There are several reasons why organizations across the globe choose to outsource and some of them are given below:
Optimum utilization of resources
Reduction in the cost of operations
Access to sophisticated technology
Effective management of business risks
Expert teams at work leads to quick turnaround times
Allows business professionals more time to focus on core business activities
Flexibility of services to meet the changing market demands
There are several factors that have empowered BPO services and Big Data solutions is one of them and it has simplified analysis and management of data. Effective data management is essential for organizations belonging to every sector and the BPO services industry is no different. However, in spite of the growth, there are quite a few challenges that are plaguing the BPO industry and some of the key ones are listed below.
Challenge #1 Meeting Customer Expectations
Meeting customer expectations can be a challenge due to the increasing competition in the market. As customers are becoming all the more aware of the different products in the market, they have sky high expectations that can become very challenging for companies to keep up with.
Challenge #2 Challenging Working Hours
A major portion of the BPO industry today is off-shore, which means the process is outsourced to a team that is located in another country, likely in another part of the world. This results in the employees having to work for odd working hours and even for hours at a stretch sometimes, which leads to a loss in efficiency.
Challenge #3: Management of Large Volumes of Data
As we have discussed earlier, data is increasing like never before and this is only going to get bigger and bigger. Big Data has risen to be a cause of concern for industries across sectors and the BPO sector is no different.
Challenge #4 High Rate of Attrition
In spite of being one of the fastest growing industries, the BPO sector also suffers from one of the highest rates of employee attrition. BPO companies often have to incur additional expenses to train new employees time and again, due to the high rate of attrition.
Challenge#5 Working on a Limited Budget
Often the budget set aside by organizations for outsourcing is very low and BPO companies are forced to work within the limited budget. This often makes BPO services providers to struggle to meet the quality standards.
Challenge#6 Lack of a Quality Talent Pool
This is another challenge plaguing the BPO services industry today. Due to certain factors that are at play, it has become difficult to find the right talent pool for the BPO companies. This is a big challenge because in the absence of good talent, it can be difficult to achieve the highest quality of customer service, especially when BPO is a people-oriented industry.
Conclusion:
In spite of the many challenges, leading IT solutions firms, like The Digital Group, Accenture, and Tech Mahindra are venturing into BPO services, just like they are catering to other in-demand services like Big Data Solutions and enterprise mobility, among others. The challenges mentioned above are slowly being tackled as BPO moves towards achieving a new growth milestone.