Outsourcing bumps up company profits
June 2004 - Business website
Outsourcing has long been a key method employed by management looking to cut costs and increase profits. Everything from telephony and customer care to invoicing and mailing can be processed by sub-contractors offsite. Excessive UK wage costs, increasingly onerous employment legislation, rising office costs and lack of qualified staff have all combined to make outsourcing an easy and natural option for any expanding SME.
The national roll-out of broadband combined with lower costs of digital technology has meant that any part of the supply chain can now be processed within a global workplace. The Indian sub-continent has attracted much publicity over the past few years for its ability to attract UK clients. Lower staff costs have led many UK companies to re-locate call centres and other non-essential functions overseas. There has been negative comment and some press backlash against this perceived exporting of UK jobs but it is a trend that will continue. The switch is part of a move which Deloitte Research calculate will result in the migration of 730,000 UK jobs to India by 2008.
One area where outsourcing to India has not been so successful is in the area of transcription and secretarial services. The specialist knowledge required to produce accurate documents from dictation cannot be easily replicated. It is now possible to access a large workforce with UK experience through companies such as OutSec who provide British secretaries in areas as diverse as the legal, medical, estate agency, chartered surveying and inventory sectors. The key difference to a temp or employment agency is that these typists are available online at any time and may not necessarily be located within Britain. The secretary becomes part of the workflow process when required and works closely with the dictator, linked through a web-based file transfer system.
There are many benefits in outsourcing the typing function to a fully qualified UK secretary. Key staff can concentrate on core proficiencies and focus on what they do best. As one OutSec client said, “ I want my sales team to sell, not type. Any time they spend on the keyboard is dead time to us as a company”. The fact that an OutSec secretary can normally type faster and more accurately means that work is processed faster, reducing backlogs and improving cashflow. With the high rental cost of offices now accounting for up to 40% of the cost of a secretary, the ability to free up valuable space and introduce hot-desking is an important factor for those companies looking to expand but remain in existing locations.
As more people in the UK opt for a better work-lifestyle balance, outsourcing of typing offers a single route for both employer and employee. Working from home, abroad or on holiday is now an easy option employing services such as OutSec, with dictated work being uploaded direct from any location to their website for transcription. Any company with typing requirements now has another weapon at its disposal in the quest for greater efficiencies and better working environment. An office without walls is now a practical option.
