While he is grappling with these issues, he or she still needs to address his back-office tasks such as bookkeeping, invoicing, and other tedious activities that take his valuable time away from client facing activities. In most likelihood the small business owner can not afford to have dedicated full-time staff to address his front-office and back-office needs so he has to rely on outside vendors – whether local or off-shored. Complicating the arrangement is that he or she has to rely on more than one vendor to get all the tasks done. Availability of vendors that could take care of most of his business tasks was non-existent. This added burden to his time since he had to communicate with all the vendors and in some cases pass information back and forth between these different vendors so they could do their job.This added burden of communicating with multiple vendors and in some cases passing information between vendors can become very taxing.

Single Sourcing – Integrated Support

Now imagine an arrangement in which one company can provide integrated front and back-office services to this small business owner. The provider has spent years working with different customers and developing expertise in different areas that the owner needs help with. More importantly, the provider has also built up experience and knowledge base of how to leverage this expertise in different areas such as online marketing (SEO, SMM, PPC etc.), book-keeping, application development, and market research to build integrated well-functioning teams that seamlessly handle different aspects of the business. Now the owner does not have to explain the business to a number of different vendors. He or she does not have to pass information constantly between these vendors for them to do their job. Once he has developed a comfort level with his team at a single vendor, he can really focus on taking the company to the next level.

Proactive Support vs Reactive Task Performing

The benefits of using integrated back and front-office services do not stop at just the operational level. Over the course of our interaction with our customers who use these packaged services, we have found that by having a complete picture of their businesses, we are in a strong position to offer them strategic advice on how to achieve future vision of their business. An example is a provider working with the customer to understand their desired growth rate and then devising online marketing strategies to deliver on those growth plans. These grown plans might also trigger other changes to the business operation such as implementing integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Content Management System with the website, requiring new market research on the products that the customer wants to launch, or bringing a new person to handle the increased invoicing and payments to the suppliers. The team can easily adjust the headcount and the required skill mix to successfully execute the required strategies. In a situation in which the small business owner was dealing with multiple vendors, the execution of this strategy would have wasted valuable time in coordinating activities between them and, more importantly, increased the odds of failure by adding more complexity to the execution plan.

Provider Selection – Critical

The successful vendor selection for this type of outsourcing obviously becomes very critical. If a single vendor is going to be providing most of the required services, then the owner must have faith in vendor’s ability and stability. First of all, the remote assistance companies come in all shapes and forms. Many of them provide different siloed services but the customer has to probe them to see if they have been successfully serving customers that have entrusted them with more than one type of service. Ask for references and inquire about the setup of some of the teams that the vendor has currently put together for its other clients. Also start out slow. Many of our customers started with one service and as they became aware of our other offerings and felt comfortable with our cost and quality, they expanded into other areas and some to the point where we manage almost all critical aspects of their business – both operationally and strategically. The success in managing teams of this nature comes from experience and that has to be the differentiating factor of the selected vendor.

Bottom-line

For us in the industry, the ability to offer these integrated services is truly a big step in the evolution of the remote assistance industry. The industry has moved beyond offering just Business Process or Knowledge Process services to offering “Integrated Process Outsourcing” services where the a provider looks at the front and back-office processes of their customers and offer customized integrated services to suit their particular requirements. Some of these offerings might fall under the traditional definition of BPO and some might under KPO, but, for the customers the distinction is really not that important. What they really want is an arrangement in which they can get not only revenue enhancing but also cost reducing services from a single provider.

To best understand the scope of services offered, consider the following examples:

Website and Web Application Development

As more and more applications move to the web, demand for development and maintenance support has skyrocketed. A number of ecommerce and online business owners started asking for technology savvy VAs. As a result, now web development is offered as one of the services. Most of the clients are SMEs that hire a part-time or full-time associate to support their business. VA firms are not only developing basic websites but also developing and supporting web applications to facilitate business processes.

Internet Marketing

As the virtual world become more and more competitive, online marketing became a necessity to differentiate a company’s products and services from other competitors. Initially, VA companies were given basic internet marketing tasks such as link building, blog writing, etc. but with the passage of time some of these companies developed online marketing knowledge enabling them to devise marketing strategies and implement those with tangible results.

Bookkeeping

The benefits of outsourcing bookkeeping go beyond lower cost.  Up-to-date books provide an accurate snapshot of company’s financial picture and thus facilitate better decision making. This outsourcing of bookkeeping is a new route for SMEs and hence has few uncertainties associates with it. Proceed by selecting the right bookkeeping platform that suits your needs and setup a process that is secure and easy to follow. Have an NDA in place before any financial information is shared with your service provider.

Online Store Management

As small online stores get bigger, the effort required keeping up with orders processing, updating content, customer support etc. can become very taxing.  A growing business must keep its cost in check and hiring a VA can help in achieving that goal. The store owner must ensure processes are well documented; otherwise, expect a steep learning curve for the VA. Store owners on eBay, Amazon, and others are good candidates for employing a VA.

Human Resource/Recruiter Support

A major part of a recruiter’s time is spent on digging up candidates for a particular position, researching candidates’ backgrounds, filing information, and contacting/scheduling candidates for potential interviews. A VA can help with the recruiter performing above tasks. Online databases such as Linkedin, Demandbase, and Spoke etc. have made it possible for a VA to do some of the leg work.

Invoicing/Order Processing

A common task performed by VAs on an on-going basis is invoice processing. The Purchase Order (PO) must be matched with the invoice and the packing slip before the vendor can be paid. This three way matching is time consuming and can be setup where a VA can perform the task. Similarly, order acknowledgement and processing can also be performed by a VA.

Real Estate Services

According to the National Association of Realtors [(NAR), www.realtor.org, 2007 data], 81% of agents/brokers buy or sell homes by using the internet; furthermore, 73% of buyers drive by/view a home they came across on the internet. All this information processing can be done remotely by your outsourcing partner. A capable VA company can be your one-stop-shop for developing and maintaining your web presence, managing your CRM, updating your MLS listing, contact management (GroupMail 5, www.topproduceronline.com etc..), running your ads and online marketing campaigns, newsletter and flyer design to name a few.

Office Of the Future (OOF)

All of the above or other services can be combined together to form a back office or Office Of the Future (OOF). This is not an easy undertaking and must be carefully evaluated. The time and effort required to build a viable back OOF is fairly significant. Before you start looking for a back office service provider, estimate the hours required for each service. For example, if you estimate your weekly bookkeeping requirement is 10 hrs; internet marketing is 30 hr; website development/support is 20 hr; and admin support is 20 hr, then your total requirement is for two full-time associates. Your back office will probably have more than two associate but your total cost will not exceed two Full Time Employees (FTEs). In an ideal situation, your OOF will be staffed with FTEs since shared resources create a certain level of inefficiency.

Conclusion

So why should one work with a VA firm that offers BPO services as opposed to a regular BPO firm? The answer is simple: lower cost and equally good service. VA firms tend to service SMEs and as a result have lower cost structures as opposed to regular BPO firms that have historically serviced larger clients and have higher cost structures. The focus must be on pooling your requirements so there is enough work for at least one full-time associate. This minimum volume will enable the VA provider to provide quality service. In the long run, the goal must be to create a small back office with your provider staffed with a variety of skill set and that will create a win-win scenario for both parties.