A smart and strategic company lets past activity predict future trends. What has happened repeatedly in the past might portend advancements in technology, the introduction of industry-leading products or services, or new and more cost-effective ways of doing business.
But how do we get the information that tells us what happened in the past and how it can be used to predict and implement a company’s profitable future? Increasingly, business process outsourcing, or BPO, can play a big part.
First, a brief primer on the bigger picture concerning what business process outsourcing is all about.
Understanding BPO and Its Impact on Business Efficiency
Companies have always used BPO to unlock their full business potential, even before the term came into the mainstream. If you hire security services to discourage shoplifting, secure your warehouse at night, or outsource your accounting or legal services because it would be too expensive or complex to bring those professions in-house, you’re more familiar than you might think with the concept of BPO.
The business strategy behind it suggests your company should stick to its core competencies — its talents and activities that drive revenue growth— and trust outside experts to handle services or departments that might serve as major distractions.
As an insurance agency, for instance, you might wish to focus on customer recruitment and sales and leave many other critical functions to the experts.
BPO might also be a cost-effective solution for services that are only irregularly needed. Why should you pay an entire team or individual full-time to perform services you don’t need 52 weeks a year?
Expertly delivered BPO services can include everything from inbound and outbound call center operations to human resources, accounting, IT, and various other front- or back-office responsibilities and the overall enhancement of your brand image.
To that ever-growing list, BPO is increasingly offering at least one more: data analytics.
Data Analytics as a Game-Changer for Modern BPOs
BPOs gather information. Lots of it in the performance of their services. And some are increasingly adept at using that information for the benefit of their client companies.
Consider the call center operations many U.S. companies entrust to nearshore BPO operations. (“Nearshore” describes a BPO partner in another country for the sake of cost-savings but near enough to the U.S. that the time zones are the same or similar, and travel between partners is quick, easy, and affordable.)
Client companies can use BPOs’ call centers for inbound or outbound calls — or both. Inbound calls come from customers or prospects placing orders, issuing complaints, looking for answers, reviewing options, or even simply calling for hours of operation.
Outbound calls are placed by highly trained call center operators to solicit new business or upsell existing customers. BPO call centers might also be used to survey customers or prospects or make other forms of contact with the company’s target audiences.
Get together with your BPO provider and figure out how to custom-design the operation to maximize your call center success.
Core Advantages of Integrating Data Analytics in BPO
The bottom line is these call centers can collect a lot of information — or data — when taking or making these calls. Once carefully analyzed, this information can help a client company make decisions to raise revenue, improve operational efficiencies, or otherwise positively impact its future.
The more complex data sets are known as big data. That term describes an abundance of rich information that can come from customer interaction (remember those call centers?), social media, surveys, and other sources. Big data might be used to reveal customer buying patterns and behavior, current market conditions, and future trends for the sake of new product or service development. Companies that employ data-based decision making are 58% more successful at meeting target revenue goals.
Enhancing Efficiency and Accuracy in Decision Making
The most advanced BPO operations have advanced technology to collaborate with partner companies to collect, analyze, and interpret all or some of this ongoing data — and know how to use the information they’ve generated to effect a positive change.
The Steps To Implementing Data Driven Decision Making in Partnership With Your BPO
Companies of all sizes can benefit from successful analytics in collaboration with their nearshore BPO partners. It’s just a matter of knowing how to proceed. Here are four basic steps:
Recruit a BPO Partner
Your partner in data driven analytics must be technologically advanced and should be able to prove that they’ve executed effective data driven campaigns on behalf of other client companies. Let them show you their analytic tools and what they can do (and at what cost).
Outline and Share Your Goals
What are you trying to learn? What would you like to achieve? Is the goal to improve product performance, enhance customer service, reduce costs, or run your business more efficiently? Effective analytics can help you do all of that and more.
Collect, Analyze, and Interpret Data
This is a three-step process that can be successfully undertaken with a BPO partner who understands the science and technology of data analytics and has the tools to get results.
Present Results and Execute a Strategy for Change
All of your stakeholders must be thoroughly engaged in change-making and know their part in moving forward. The data driven decision making that results can have a positive impact on your customers, employees, and bottom line.
Future Trends: The Synergy of BPO and the Analytics Evolution
We are in the Information Age. Almost everything we do leaves a digital trail. Your clients or customers don’t just pick up the phone and call your toll-free number. They leave information that can help predict their future activity and outcomes for your company.
Data can be collected, analyzed, and interpreted to better understand those calls and the effectiveness of your company’s response through your business outsourcing partner.
Unveiling New Market Opportunities and Perspectives
Call center metrics include response times and call lengths, common complaints, commonly asked questions, and revenue related to call volume, among many other data points. This can be analyzed to improve customer service, launch new products or services, and derive insights into future trends and business needs.
Other sources of valuable metrics include social media, website interaction, surveys, interviews, and focus groups, among other strategies. Use all or some of those data-rich resources to your company’s bottom line advantage.
Big companies have successfully used BPOs for years. However, company size is not a restriction. A business outsourcing partner that understands the impact of big data management in BPO can be your best resource for effective data driven decision making to keep your company an industry leader — no matter its size or how big you’d like to grow. In fact, businesses of all sizes can benefit from the insights provided by skilled BPO providers.
Choosing the Right BPO Partner for Your BPO Needs
Confie is the largest and most respected personal lines insurance distributor in the United States. We are also presenting a state-of-the-art nearshore BPO operation with an emphasis on data driven analytics. Trust us to help you collect, analyze, and interpret the impact of big data that can change how your insurance agency operates, engages customers, and makes sales.
Our BPO operation, including the call center, is located just below the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico. This means we’re in close enough proximity for responsive collaboration but offshore for major cost savings.
Let Confie’s BPO operation help you grow your company.
Contact us online or call us at (714) 252-2500 to learn more about how we can develop a close working relationship with your team in areas beyond your core strengths, including data driven analytics.
