Easy methods to start a BPO business (step-by-step guide)

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Need to know find out how to start a BPO company?

With tons of companies trying to outsource their non-core activities, starting a BPO company has never been more lucrative!

In this text, we’ll show you find out how to start a BPO company and run it effectively.

Table of Contents

What’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)?

Business process outsourcing is an activity where an organization contracts its non-core work to an external party. Traditionally, most corporations outsource the work to dedicated BPO firms.

For instance, many corporations in the USA outsource their customer support to small BPO corporations in India.

Nonetheless, with the rise of the gig economy, corporations now also hire freelancers to do the job for them.

Why do corporations do that?

Outsourcing non-core business activities like data entry and customer support let corporations focus solely on their core business operations. This fashion, they’ll only invest resources in tasks that matter probably the most.

What’s in it for you as a BPO vendor?

The BPO industry just keeps growing. As tons of corporations want to outsource their non-core activities, there are many business opportunities within the BPO industry for brand spanking new BPO providers.

By organising BPO firms like domestic call centers in countries just like the Philippines and India, you’re also going to avoid wasting tons of cash.

How?

You’ll incur:

• Reduced setup costs.
• Cheaper overheads.
• Lower salaries.

Plus, there’s no shortage of services that companies are willing to outsource!

This implies which you could start a BPO business that makes a speciality of just about anything, comparable to:

• Inbound or outbound call center services.
• Market research.
• Data entry.
• Human resource management.
• Payments or claims processing.
• Customer support and other back-office services.
• Digital marketing and e-commerce.

The six steps to begin a BPO business

Here’s how you’ll be able to start and run a business process outsourcing company in six easy steps:

1. Determine the style of BPO you would like

Step one in organising a BPO company is identifying what you are promoting area of interest.

Why?

Zeroing in on a distinct segment helps you establish:

• Your BPO industry sector.
• The activities your BPO firm undertakes.
• The style of clients you engage with.

For instance, you might provide call center services to small corporations within the retail industry. Here, your BPO sector is retail, your activities are call center services and the style of clients you’re employed with are small corporations.

Remember, when starting out, select an outsourcing service you’re acquainted with. For instance, if you’ve no experience handling administrative work, don’t offer those services. Despite the fact that it could seem straightforward, you’re higher suited to offering services you’re already trained in.

Once your organization has gained enough traction, you might decide to expand what you are promoting in one in every of two ways:

1. Horizontal BPO

Refers to BPO activities that will be offered across multiple industries. For instance, you might only provide technical support across various industries like IT, financial, retail and marketing. On this scenario, your service stays unchanged; nevertheless, the industry focus of what you are promoting varies.

2. Vertical BPO

Refers to BPO services which might be industry-specific. For instance, medical coding and billing are activities which might be specific to the healthcare industry. Here, your industry focus stays the identical while your offerings expand to incorporate other activities inside that industry.

2. Develop a brand new marketing strategy

The following step is developing a marketing strategy in your company.

Ideally, your plan have to be well-researched and comprehensive. It’s essential analyze the intricacies of your chosen area of interest and take a look at what your competitors are doing.

Your enterprise plan should:

• Determine your organization’s long-term direction.
• Set clear business budgets, objectives and milestones.
• Discover what you are promoting structure.
• Help lenders and investors understand what you are promoting idea.

While it’s necessary to develop an excellent plan, it is advisable to review and update it frequently. This ensures that you simply’re all the time capable of adapt to any latest changes available in the market.

3. Do the paperwork

Once what you are promoting plan is prepared, you’ll should handle all of the essential paperwork involved in organising an organization.

As this varies on a country-by-country basis, you’ll have to learn the way the method works in your country.

For instance, for those who’re trying to start your BPO business in Bangalore, Chennai or anywhere else in India, here’s how you’ll be able to register what you are promoting:

• In India, it is advisable to register what you are promoting under the Corporations Act 2013. This law regulates the responsibilities and operations of firms within the country. You furthermore mght have to register with the National Association of Software and Services Corporations (NASSCOM) to be certified as a BPO provider in India.
• Should you are a call center or offer telemarketing and other IT services in India, what you are promoting have to be listed as a Private Limited Company. You furthermore mght have to obtain the Other Service Provider (OSP) license from the Department of Telecommunications (DOT).
• When you’ve received the OSP license, chances are you’ll also have to register what you are promoting under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), depending in your BPO offerings.

Laws and tax regulations are all the time complicated and confusing, so why not seek the advice of a legal expert to aid you out?

They’ll easily break down the complexities of your registration process and discover laws which may be useful for what you are promoting.

4. Spend money on the essential equipment and technology

Whatever the sort of services you offer, you’ll need to speculate in some essential equipment and technology.

For instance, most BPO corporations need resources comparable to:

Some BPO firms comparable to call centres may even need specialized equipment comparable to headsets and recording systems.

Remember, the equipment you would like will vary based on the style of business process outsourcing service you’re offering. So go over what you would like and only spend money on that software.

Most corporations spend tons of cash on tools they don’t need!

With that being said, listed below are just a few key tools that each BPO firm must have:

A. Communication tools

You’ll need a set of excellent communication tools to maintain your projects running easily. These tools will help your team collaborate over projects and share updates and relevant files.

Messaging tools

Messaging tools like Fleep and Slack aid you quickly collaborate over projects and share relevant data together with your staff. You may even create individual channels for team-specific conversations. For instance, you’ll be able to create a sales message channel for focused discussions together with your sales team.

Video conferencing tools

Video calling tools like Skype and Zoom aid you easily interact together with your BPO staff. You may host team meetings and product reviews even in case your BPO staff is spread across the globe! It’s a superb solution to construct team chemistry and make sure that everyone in your BPO team feels connected.

B. Performance tracking tools

Performance tracking tools aid you monitor the productivity of your employees.

Most corporations use them to:

• Determine how lively their employees are while working.
• Discover if someone’s passing idle-time as work hours.
• Track how long projects take to finish. Create accurate records of time worked to bill clients.

It allows you to:

• Track time an worker spends on each task.
• Monitor their web and app activity during work hours.
• Discover poor-time usage to carry the worker accountable.
• Make sure that your staff is actively working.
• Access tons of accurate reports for client billing.

1. Easy time tracking

Most time tracking tools will be confusing to make use of.

That is a problem because when your staff is wasting time determining find out how to use a tool, they’ll have less time to work on their tasks!

Luckily, TimeDoctor is super easy to make use of.

The tool allows you to track time in 4 easy steps:

1. Open Time Doctor.
2. Enter the duty or project name.
3. Start the timer (the app then starts tracking time quietly within the background).
4. Stop the timer whenever you’re done together with your task.

2. Powerful and accurate project records

Because the reports are accurate to the second, you’ll be able to even use it to bill your clients on an hourly basis.

What’s more?

• Timesheet report – shows the entire hours worked by all of your BPO staff over a given period.
• Time use report – displays the time spent on tasks by each worker over a selected period.
• Timeline report – displays each worker’s every day work activity in chronological order.
• Attendance and late report – shows who was absent or late on every day and their reason for it.

3. Keep your team focused on their tasks

You may’t have your employees get distracted while they’re working, right?

For added flexibility, you’ll be able to customize which web sites and apps are categorized as unproductive.

4. Seamlessly integrate together with your other workplace software

5. Staff your BPO firm

You’ll now should staff your individual business process outsourcing company.

A. Determine your requirements

Because you’re only starting out, it’s safer to rent around 15-20 experienced people on a full-time basis. As they’re experienced, they won’t require much training in the brand new job and may aid you scale up quickly. When you grow, you’ll be able to begin to expand and hire more people.

Nonetheless, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.

The number of individuals you hire and your hiring criteria will vary based in your BPO specialty.

For instance, when staffing an on-site call center, chances are you’ll have to hire not less than 50-100 people. Nonetheless, for those who’re choosing a remote-based call center, you’ll need a 25 seater BPO.

When hiring call center agents, your chief evaluation criteria have to be communication skills. You’ll have to hire people who find themselves fluent in your chosen language, can communicate effectively and empathize with customers.

B. Finding candidates

Finding the best candidates is rarely a simple task.

Nonetheless, when you’ve a transparent idea of the number of individuals you would like and the type of individuals you’re on the lookout for, this becomes easier.

Create an in depth job description that outlines:

• The activities they’re expected to perform.
• The qualifications needed.
• The abilities required for the job.
• What your organization is about.
• How this job might help them.

Outlining all of that is important because it’ll give the candidate a transparent idea of what they’ll expect from the job. It will help narrow your selection pool to incorporate only probably the most committed candidates who fulfill all of your requirements.

Post this job description on sites comparable to LinkedIn or AngelList to get the applications rolling in! Alternatively, you’ll be able to hire a part-time hiring manager to search out candidates for you in case it is advisable to staff up quickly.

Once you’ve a set of reliable employees, you’ll be able to create a referral program where they recommend talent from their networks to affix your BPO firm. That is one other good staffing option as your employees understand your company culture and can only recommend candidates who’re an excellent fit.

6. Marketing what you are promoting and getting clients

Now that what you are promoting is up and running, it is advisable to promote it to realize more clients.

A. Construct a top-notch website in your company

Start by constructing a user-friendly website in your company. Hire skilled copywriters and web designers to create your site.

The advantages?

• A user-friendly website helps you construct brand credibility and improve the search engine discoverability of what you are promoting.
• Your website clearly describes who you’re and what you do—helping you inform leads of your services.
• It makes it easy for people to contact you in the event that they need your services.

Essential Tip

When getting a domain name for what you are promoting, avoid .net domains for those who can. All the time try to get a .com domain as that’s normally the go-to extension that folks use when searching Google.

Should you go for a .net domain, someone might type your organization’s name, follow it with .com and be directed to a competitor’s site!

B. Networking

Using your current network to search out clients is your best bet whenever you’re starting out as a small business. As these people already know you, they’ll be greater than willing to offer your BPO firm a shot. You may even ask them to recommend you to their connections to construct your name within the BPO industry.

C. Spreading awareness

Traditionally, BPOs relied completely on sales teams for leads, since they were targeting enterprise clients only. Nonetheless, with the scope of BPO expanding to mid-size and small businesses too, it’s also possible to go for several different marketing strategies comparable to:

1. Using social media to spread awareness and find clients.
2. Using search engine marketing and content marketing to get found on engines like google.
3. Using paid ads on LinkedIn and Google.

Conclusion

Starting your individual BPO company isn’t rocket science.

It’s essential analyze the BPO industry in your area of interest, outline a powerful marketing strategy, complete the essential paperwork and spend money on the best tools to run what you are promoting. When you’ve done that, you’ll haven’t any trouble running your BPO firm and growing it very quickly!