Why OutSource

Maintaining Credibility in a Sea of Outsourcing

Companies initiate outsourcing exercises for many reasons, with cost reduction at the heart of most, if not all, of them. Despite the fact that cost reduction is central to many initiatives, the catalyst for outsourcing varies from company to company. In some cases, outsourcing initiatives begin as a “top down” mandate from corporate executives. When this happens, it often is the result of a “credibility crisis” that exists between the CIO (for example) and the rest of the “C-level” suite. Ironically enough, a crisis such as this might have been avoided if only the IT organization had undertaken a proper investigation of outsourcing as part of their annual planning and budgeting process.

We find that the more successful CIOs, and other service delivery executives, proactively evaluate outsourcing options on a regular basis. When senior business leadership asks about outsourcing, these CIOs typically have already conducted a detailed evaluation and are prepared to address very specific questions about the relative merits of various options. Rarely do these CIOs have to “defend themselves” against claims of significant cost reductions when (and if) the outsourcing mandate comes down from above.

All senior executives, including CIOs, should proactively evaluate outsourcing alternatives on a regular basis using a suite of tools prepared specifically for this purpose. These tool-kits aid in the preparation of critical analyses including a detailed baseline of current IT expenditures, a market pricing evaluation or ‘benchmark’ showing what services would cost from third party providers, and an unbiased evaluation of critical services, identifying those which have the highest potential for value or suitability to be sourced to a third party. These evaluations should be done despite pre-existing beliefs about the advantages or disadvantages of ou Read the rest of this entry »

Let Someone Else Take Your Calls

If you are running a business, you hope to be busy all the time: making sales, connecting with people, planning … doing the work! Even with mobile phones you cannot be in a position to take every phone call that comes through to your business. But if you miss a call, you might be missing the best business opportunity of the day, the week, the year! That’s not the way to run a successful business.

Statistics show that 80% of people who reach an answer phone will not leave a message and call the next company they find. That is a lot of business you could be missing out on.

These days there are plenty of specialist companies who offer a telephone answering service to make sure that your business will miss nothing.

A telephone answering service will act as a virtual receptionist to answer calls for your business when you can’t, ensuring that callers are never left hearing an endless ringing tone or the beep-beep of the engaged tone.

Most call answering services give you 24-hour, 365-day availability - something you couldn’t manage with the best will in the world! So a call answering service will not only fill the gaps when you’re elsewhere, but it will also expand the capability so it’s 24*7 and available to the whole world at any time. Whether you need them all the time, some of the time, for large call volumes, or the odd one or two, a telephone answering service won’t mind. They exist to be there when you are not.

Telephone answering services exist to help you make more of your business, so it is you who decides when you want the telephone answering service in operation, and when you will take the calls. You can specify the customised greeting that will be used on your behalf, and with professional operators, they might, just might, make a better job of answer Read the rest of this entry »