4 Advantages of Scaling Up Offshore

Business owners need to take note: within a high-cost domestic market, fully leveraging and scaling up the use of qualified offshore staff could transform your business operation in ways you might never have imagined. So much more than an emergency solution, or a stopgap to deal with short-term staffing shortfalls; an expanded offshore program refocuses core staff, improves the delivery of projects, and creates lasting cost sustainability. All are advantages with the potential to increase profit margins, decrease the pressure of outgoings, and allow your team to perform at their peak.

It’s time for a realignment of how businesses perceive the value that offshore teams can add to their operations. Highly skilled professionals, such as our qualified team members in the Philippines, offer much more than a temporary fix. Seamlessly integrated through the tried and tested hammerjack onboarding process, you may soon view your offshore team as indispensable to your operation – as many of our other clients have discovered. Once the value of your offshore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) program is understood, you may inevitably seek to upscale.

If you approach the growth of your offshore team in the right way, the benefits to your business could be instant and profound. As we discuss some of the universal advantages, keep in mind that the hammerjack team is always available to tailor offshore solutions to your specific needs.

Advantage #1: Offshore programs create greater cost efficiency

With domestic wage rates exploding, many business owners simply cannot gain local access to each and every roleplayer they need to accomplish essential tasks without blowing out the budget. Offshore team members don’t command the same high wages as their counterpart skill providers in Australia. As you scale up your offshore program, you stand to reap the highest possible savings for your business.

Scaling up your offshore program guarantees better access to the professionals you need without threatening your bottom line so severely. Say, for example, you are in need of the services of a bookkeeper to ensure tax compliance and wage payment. When considering current rate hikes, a domestic service provider may be well beyond your capacity to pay. That being said, the solution is not to try and do your bookkeeping yourself. Mistakes, misinformation and misguided action can all be manifested quickly that way.

Scaling up your outsourcing program, if accomplished in collaboration with our expert team, allows for the best of both worlds. You gain access to the qualified bookkeeper you need – sourced, onboarded, and briefed by hammerjack – while avoiding breaking the bank. The key to ensuring the savings are genuine is in quality control. You must guarantee that the offshore team maintains the expected professional standards and efficiency. It’s no good paying someone half as much if they take twice as long.

A key point of difference for our hammerjack team is making sure that offshore staff uphold the standards that you expect. Where so many outsourced staffing providers are content to set and forget, we seek to match the ideal offshore professional to suit your exact requirements. We then continue to monitor performance throughout the relationship. By virtue of this process, you can feel confident that you’ll actually witness the expected savings from a BPO program while maintaining productivity.

Advantage #2: Offshore staff empower existing team members

Scaling up your offshore program isn’t a matter of replacing your existing onshore team; it’s actually a matter of supporting them. Too many clients approach us with stories of core personnel, overburdened with daily minutiae and the clutter of menial tasks. Your team can’t think of the big picture if there are too many small items on their plate. Say your CFO is tied up in the repetitive daily accounting tasks of your operation – it becomes near impossible for them to simultaneously keep an eye on the overall financial direction and aspirations of the business.

What we’ve witnessed, time and again, is that when a business implements offshore roleplayers using the correct onboarding procedures, the existing staff find they have more capacity to focus on their priority tasks. When a highly skilled offshore accountant is introduced into the team, it empowers the CFO with the ability to delegate their more trivial work to them. This support allows your staff the breathing room to be capable of genuinely focussing on the big-ticket items.

The larger your array of available offshore team members, the greater the number of tasks for onshore personnel you’ll be supporting. If correctly onboarded, core staff are likely to be reinvigorated by this extra support they’ll receive. They can work efficiently in the understanding that the outsourced professionals are there specifically to provide them with the infrastructure they need to perform at their optimum.

There may be a number of ways in which an offshore skill provider can support team members that you might not have considered. A number of our clients, for example, fail to recognise the immediate benefits that an Outsourced Virtual Assistant might provide them in their own day-to-day. Due to our extensive experience in tailoring offshore solutions to suit various business needs, the team may be able to assist you in identifying these undiscovered areas of potential efficiency.

Advantage #3: A BPO program is scalable to your needs as conditions change

It’s no secret that trading conditions are volatile for many businesses at the moment. As customers respond to interest rate changes, international conflict, and supply chain disruptions, many owners are consequently facing violent swings in revenue. This effect is compounded for businesses in a growth phase, as they’re dependent on regular cash flow to ensure they can survive through the growing pains.

Engaging offshore personnel offers crucial flexibility and agility within these conditions compared to expanding onshore staff. In times of feast, you can scale up the team quickly to account for the surge in demand. In times of famine, you can react abruptly to reduce your cost exposure. When taking action in collaboration with the hammerjack team, your business can react to swinging market conditions efficiently and decisively.

As customers return to full purchasing power, our team will assist in integrating any further qualified skill providers with minimal fuss. Our experience in successfully onboarding personnel for businesses of all shapes and sizes allows us to accomplish this without disrupting your productivity, workflow or team culture. Sadly, this is not guaranteed with other offshore staffing providers. A slapdash, backsides-in-seats approach may appear to fill your immediate need, however without the extra diligence, care and oversight from a team such as ours, an offshore upscale may actually create more headaches as opposed to less. If it is to be done, it should be done properly.

Advantage #4: Offshore team members allow for sustainable growth

Approaching staffing requirements when entering a growth phase for the business can be tricky. As your customer base increases, and workload intensifies, you’ll need extra hands on deck. However, if you employ too many high-cost domestic personnel too quickly before your revenue increases significantly enough to pay them – you may be in trouble.

As with so many things in business, it’s a matter of ensuring that the growth in accounts receivable is enough to accommodate the growth in accounts payable. By virtue of the flexibility, agility, and cost benefits outlined above, it’s evident that a scaled-up offshore team can take the bite out of these wage pressures. At the same time, you can guarantee that you have the workforce to meet your rising customer demand.

Bringing these skilled roleplayers in during a growth phase will also serve to preserve team morale and enthusiasm. If offshore team members can declutter a key team member’s workload during business-as-usual, imagine the assistance that they can provide as your customer base expands. Many employees often suffer under the weight of excess work, expectations and stress when a business actively seeks to grow its market share. You can alleviate some of that pressure without shrinking profit margins to nil.

All it takes is the select implementation of offshore team members in collaboration with an expert provider who understands your requirements.

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Upscaling your offshore staff program is an exercise in fully resourcing your business and its existing team members. When empowered with the support of our qualified professionals from the Philippines your team will enjoy the freedom to focus their full attention on the deliverables that matter the most. At the same time, you’ll be exercising budgetary responsibility and safeguarding the business from the rampant cost increases we’re witnessing locally.

For more information on how to effectively scale your offshore program, and leverage the skills of highly qualified skill providers, speak to our team today.