Over the last 30 years, businesses that tried outsourcing have benefited from partnering with outsourcing companies in the Philippines. With reduced operating and labor expenses and having applicants with college degrees, the nation provides tremendous business advantages to businesses in the west.
Since the first offshore contact centers opened in the Philippines in 1992, outsourcing is a trend that has only grown year on year, as not only the big companies but also small and medium-sized businesses have cottoned on to the opportunities that it presents them.
Even one-person entrepreneurs operating in the online space can benefit from outsourcing to the Philippines by hiring a virtual assistant.
With all these new technology options, and marketplaces such as VirtualStaff.ph allowing you to outsource to the Philippines without the middlemen, you have the opportunity to drastically reduce staff costs while simultaneously boosting your companies workforce and productivity.
Here's a comprehensive guide on outsourcing to the Philippines to help you grow your company.
Know When to Outsource
It's up to you, as a company owner, to decide when you should begin outsourcing. Here are three questions to ask yourself:
- What positions make the most sense to replace local employees with outsourced staff?
- What is your main goal for outsourcing? Is it to build a team from scratch or replace existing local employees due to the cost advantages?
- Would you like to cut the costs and hire direct staff somewhere like our outsourcing marketplace, or pay more and go through a BPO provider?
Determine What Tasks You Need to Outsource
It is common to assume that you may outsource only Customer Service (CS) departments in the Philippines, or if you're a smaller business, thinking that you need to hire virtual assistants.
While the Philippines is one of the world's BPO centers and has thousands of skilled VA's, there's a lot more skill and positions you can outsource than many people realize.
Depending on your business, you may hire virtual staff in the Philippines in positions as diverse as accountants to graphic designers or admin staff.
Find a Reliable Outsourcing Company
Think about outsourcing to the Philippines as a snowball. Every staff you replace locally with identically skilled staff in the Philippines will see you save thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per year in employee costs.
I'm really of the old-fashioned school of business. I believe in doing good, but profit and customer service are the two priorities above everything else. Maybe you're the same as me?
The fact is, the more staff you replace, the more the savings snowball grows.
As a result, your savings compound, potentially to the point where you are saving hundreds of thousands, or possibly even millions of dollars per year, depending on the size of your business and the volume of employees you are replacing.
I'd suggest a hybrid outsourcing option for medium to large companies, where you combine skilled local staff in leadership roles alongside your outsourced staff in the Philippines.
Perhaps hire the staff in the Philippines in positions such as customer support, virtual assistance, admin support, graphic design, SEO, and bookkeeping?
One of our enterprise service clients in the logistics industry currently outsources just under 100 staff with us. However, he also employs 300 staff in the USA, so in effect, he has outsourced 25% of his workforce and used the hybrid method to save millions of dollars.
Finding a quality outsourcing provider in the Philippines is challenging, mainly because many cowboys are operating in the space, who may have excellent marketing spiel, but in truth, don't have the expertise and background to back it up.
Of course, there are also many good-quality BPO providers.
Here are some considerations you may take when outsourcing in the Philippines:
1. Outsourcing to a company that ranked high in Google
A big red flag is if the BPO doesn't rank high on Google. For example, you type in something such as "virtual assistant in the Philippines," and you'll notice companies such as VirtualStaff.ph appear at the top... without paying for ads or splitting commissions with "influencers" and "affiliates."
The top outsourcing providers often provide high-quality material that clients will find helpful. The truth is that most credible companies have been operating for years with proven track records.
2. Outsourcing to a company with social media accounts and lots of followers
More than a billion individuals use Facebook and Twitter daily. Another red flag is an outsourcing company that doesn't utilize social media.
One of the new challenges for outsourcing businesses in the Philippines is to recruit new customers and workers via social media.
Its social media accounts must be attractively maintained and updated for its marketing and sales teams to operate effectively. You should notice that the legit big-time outsourcing companies often have active Facebook accounts.
3. Outsourcing company with established blogs
Having a social media account and a website is beneficial, especially if you rank high in search engine results and maintain existing clients. Also, you need a blog that is as successful as your social media accounts and company website!
When a website provides new content material regularly, search engines can rank your site, and users will be more likely to share your valuable posts. A Philippines-based outsourcing company may have a constantly updated blog intended to spread on social media, helping its customers seem reputable.
The final piece of advice on finding the best outsourcing companies in the Philippines
To find the most competent outsourcing firms in the Philippines, you must consider these three main factors.
As I mentioned earlier, be careful because many fly-by-night outsourcing businesses won't be there when you need them. So it would be best if you were very extra cautious in choosing the best outsourcing partner.
I know this for a fact because many outsourcing companies do their recruitment on the Virtual Staff outsourcing marketplace before marking the staff salaries up and then assigning them to you as their client.
You can, of course, cut all of that out and create your free account on VirtualStaff.ph and directly find and hire your outsourced staff in the Philippines.
Things to Keep in Mind When You Get Started Outsourcing
When you start building a virtual team in the Philippines, there are several things to keep in mind. Here's your simple guide to follow:
Post-Clear Job Postings
It's essential that if you're utilizing an outsourcing platform such as VirtualStaff.ph to find the right applicant you need, you thoroughly describe the job title and job responsibilities you are looking for.
Highlight the salary you want to pay, the work hours, and the schedule you require the staff to work. For example, $5.00 per hour, 40 hours per week, working 9am-5pm weekdays UK time.
Identity Specific Software or Tools You Need
Your staff is working remotely, so be sure how you want to keep them accountable.
Of course, you can use our free time tracker and task management software if you'd like. All staff you hire record their time manually or automatically via the VirtualStaff.ph work log.
Set Your Budget
If you're going through an outsourcing provider, set a specific monthly cost for her staff that would make outsourcing a winnable solution for your business.
If you're hiring staff directly on VirtualStaff.ph, then decide how much you want to pay per hour and how many hours you need your team to work.
It's as simple as saying, "I will pay $5.00 per hour, and I need my staff to work 40 hours per week, 9-5, Monday-Friday", which would mean you'd budget $5 x 40 hours, which would be $200 per week.
The good thing about hiring staff directly on VirtualStaff.ph is that you are in complete control of how much salary you pay instead of being told the price by a third-party outsourcing provider.
Set Your Expectations
When considering outsourcing, you should first set expectations with the provider and or staff.
If you are going to outsource customer care, back office, software development, and the like, you must first determine your objective. Work out in advance what you want your relationship with an outsourcing firm to accomplish for you.
While you may have outsourced your team's work, establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPI) can assist you in ensuring the success or failure of that project. In addition, even the most skilled and highly ranked teams will require time to become used to their new role.
This, of course, becomes much easier if you're hiring your staff directly because you can, just like hiring local employees, set the expectations directly with the Virtual Staff you hire.
Streamline Your Communication
Success in every company venture depends on effective communication. You should let your outsourcing partner know what you require, and they should let you know if they are experiencing any problems.
Your outsourcing partner must comprehend your needs and goals and mutually agree on what can and can not be achieved in advance.
For many companies in the US, sending jobs to India or the Philippines helps meet the consumer demands for the company. Therefore the workers in those locations often modify their work hours to suit customers in the US.
In the Philippines, millions of people work through the night to accommodate USA time. This is why companies like Goldman Sachs, Barclays Bank, and even Disney hire staff and outsource to the Philippines.
That's why the Philippines is the best place to build your outsourced team in, because English is one of the country's two official languages, due to the fact it was a former USA colony.
Learn more about outsourcing to the Philippines here.
Your options to outsource in the Philippines
VirtualStaff.ph is where most outsourcing providers come to do their internal hiring before assigning the virtual staff to work for you.
You can cut them out and go directly to the source by creating a VirtualStaff.ph employer account for free. It's then as simple as posting jobs, messaging and interviewing applicants, and hiring the people you want to hire.
VirtualStaff.ph is built as an all-in-one outsourcing solution. You find, hire, monitor, and pay your Filipino workers in one easy-to-use dashboard!
VirtualStaff.ph Marketplace: The DIY option
The first option would be to "do it yourself," using our DIY solution, you can post jobs and choose from thousands of virtual staff registered on our marketplace. This is the best for 90% of people.
VirtualStaff.ph: Enterprise Solution
Some businesses looking to outsource to the Philippines want to have the help and support of a professional outsourcing provider to take care of everything for them. If that sounds like you, feel free to reach out to my team and me, and we will see if we can help you.
Another advantage of our enterprise solution is providing you with legal protections and additional accountability.
