How outsourcing can help boost your business planning

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Whether it's the start of a new financial year or simply time for a change, building a successful business means continuous business planning. There should never be a time when you are not looking for ways to improve your strategic and operational plans.

From implementing social media marketing initiatives to revamping a service or product offering, the business landscape is always changing and your organisation should be prepared to respond. Adaptability and flexibility are key.

In this blog, we will take you through some key business planning statistics and how you can leverage outsourcing, to boost your efficiencies and help to deliver on your business plans.

The importance of business planning

If there is one thing businesses around the world have learned from the recent significant economic events like COVID-19, it’s that you can never be too prepared. In the wise words of the late Kobe Bryant, “if you want to be a better player, you have to prepare, prepare and prepare some more.”

This makes business planning integral for businesses of all sizes; but some may argue it’s more pertinent to the success of SMEs and startups. A report by Harvard Business Review found that ‘it pays to plan’ with those that write formal business plans 16% more likely to succeed than those who didn’t.

The facts speak for themselves:

• For innovators or startups, those who actually created a business plan were 2.5 times more likely to get their business into fruition and act on said plans
• 79% of leaders claim that a formal business planning process plays a significant role in developing efficient strategies 
• Of the businesses that manage to survive for five years or more years, around 70% follow a business plan
• During the initial stages of starting a business, those that have a business plan in place are 7% more likely to achieve high growth compared to those without
• More than 30% of the SMEs do not survive past the first three years of operations without a business plan 
• Larger business that have some kind of formal business plan have a 30% chance of sales growth
• Businesses that plan tend to scale 30% faster than those who don’t
• Businesses that planned were more likely to be approved or receive funding than those who didn’t.

In short - it pays to have an efficient business plan in place. It’s important to note you can have as many business plans as you need. Perhaps you have an overarching business plan for your entire business with top-level goals and action points to achieving them. You can also have departmental business plans that are those top-level goals broken down into achievable metrics for your teams to work towards.

Business planning template

We’ve created a step-by-step template that takes you from beginning to the end in creating the ultimate business plan. Your business plan is a living document that needs to remain dynamic to reflect the changes within your business.

Our business planning template can help you identify when you need to update certain parts of the plan, say when a component of your business plan changes.

Now that you understand the importance of business planning, how does outsourcing fit into all of this?

How outsourcing can elevate your business planning initiatives

The rise of remote working, cloud computing and a global skills shortage has made outsourcing to offshore locations popular for businesses of all sizes. The global business processing outsourcing (BPO) market is huge and it has a presence in every region. According to Fact.MR, the global BPO industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.5%, reaching a total market value of U.S. $620 billion by 2032. This growth can be attributed to businesses developing an increased reliance on the convenience of outsourcing services.

Let’s look at some examples of where outsourcing has been the solution or considered investment during different phases of business planning reviews.

Say you are reviewing your business plan and your primary goal for the next financial year is to reduce costs. In a report by Deloitte, 84% of those businesses chose outsourcing as the solution to reduce costs. How many achieved this goal? 88%.

Say you are a startup trying to grow quickly. In order to maintain this growth, a review of your business plan has highlighted the need for the standardisation of businesses process to support this growth and improve efficiencies. In the same report, 88% of those businesses chose outsourcing as the solution and 78% of them achieved this.

Other primary objectives of businesses looking to outsource in Deloitte’s report included:

• 73% wanted to drive business value; 63% achieved this objective through outsourcing
• 61% wanted a focus on digital agenda acceleration; 54% achieved this through outsourcing
• 59% wanted to develop business capabilities; 67% achieved this through outsourcing
• 36% wanted to improve overall business strategies and plans; 58% achieved this through outsourcing.

HR staffing challenges and outsourcing

If the terms ‘The Great Resignation’ or ‘The Great Re-evaluation’ mean anything to you, you’ll understand the current recruitment challenges all too well. If not, that’s fine, as the concept of struggling to find quality and available talent rings true for all businesses.

McKinsey & Company conducted a study that outlines the importance of retaining and hiring skilled employees in a competitive landscape. The study was released in 1997 and now, over 24 years later, the coined 'war for talent' continues. Think of it this way, by 2030, if the demand and supply for talented staff does not rectify itself, the global talent shortage is anticipated to reach 85.2 million people. That’s around U.S. $8.5 trillion in unrealised annual revenues.

Global unemployment has reached well over the 200 million mark thanks to the pandemic. With this many unemployed people around the world, you would assume job hunters would be able to choose from a large pool of quality, skilled workers who suffered sudden employment losses or financial turmoil during this time. However research suggests otherwise. Applicants are now in control. Whether it is a result of trust issues developed because of the pandemic, candidates are now consciously putting more time and effort into deciding who they want as their future employer, who they believe will take care of them during another economic disaster and who will make them feel valued.

An increase in demand and a decrease in supply will always result in the demand product becoming more costly and sometimes difficult to find; these are the principles of economics. Now, outsourcing is an alternative resourcing strategy that can help rectify this issue by allowing businesses to access a global talent pool - all while reducing employment costs by up to 70% in the process.

Real-life examples: outsourcing in action

Here are some real-life outsourcing success stories of Beepo clients who have benefitted from having an offshore team in the Philippines:

• Yamo, a small tech startup, leveraged outsourcing to scale quickly and resulted in a 100% customer satisfaction score within the first quarter of introducing outsourced staff into their business planning model
• This tech company implemented a specialist tech offshore team using a staged approached and grew new client acquisition by 72% as a result
• A business kept their marketing strategy, content development and project management onshore and outsourced all implementation functions offshore, leading to a 104% increase in lead generation over a 12 month period
• To keep up with the competition, a professional services business implemented an offshore team function and ended up growing their client base sustainably by 375% in just three years.

How to improve business efficiency levels at a lower cost

In addition to outsourcing, automation and remote work investments can also boost your business efficiencies and to help you plan for future growth. If there was one positive to come out of the unplanned “experiment” that was COVID-19, it is how embracing a new way of working can help improve business operations.