There will be extra costs incurred by having a lower quality piece of work.

If information is incorrectly inputted, someone will need to review this. Someone will need to investigate issues with errors on the invoice. And if the report isn’t fully completed, someone may need to ask management for it.

This can take up time and incur costs.

However if you have an outsourced team dedicated to this, they can do this several times a day resulting in more consistency.

You can’t just assume you are going to get a better quality. You should have clear criteria for this. Some great metrics to track are:

• Error rate
• Turn around time
• First time accuracy
• Number of corrections
• Late deliveries
• Amount of work done

At Wisemonk we recommend looking at metrics like cost per transaction, cycle time and first time accuracy rather than just looking at the number of people you have. This will give you a much clearer insight.

For example if you have a slightly higher cost provider who provides accurate work you will save more money than a cheaper provider who constantly have corrections. Always ensure that you are measuring cost and quality.

Strategy 6 – Scaling Support according to Business Needs

Your business will almost never be running at a steady speed throughout the year.

It might be much busier when your online shop is busy such as over the holidays.

Or there might be more work around month end for the finance department.

Sometimes new clients come on board at short notice and put pressure on your growth.

One solution is to hire permanent staff.

However, there are ongoing costs to having permanent staff.

Maybe you could outsource your support.

If your business is busier you can scale up the support you require.

If your business gets slower you can scale back down.

ARDEM mentions scalability as one of the key reasons why businesses use back office support. By outsourcing you can have flexible capacity.

This can be really helpful to growing companies.

You might know your business is growing but might not know exactly what level of support you will need in 6 months time.

By outsourcing you can be flexible with your needs.

This can be beneficial when trying to plan your costs.

Strategy 7: Save your employees time.