Top 10 Business Process Outsourcing Trends to Watch for in 2014
El Paso, TX (PRWEB) December 21, 2013 -- DATAMARK, Inc., a leading provider of global business services to Fortune 500 companies and government organizations, has released a new complimentary white paper naming its Top 10 Business Process Outsourcing Trends for 2014.
Trends expected to shape the business process outsourcing industry in 2014 and beyond include robotic process automation technologies, a focus on the midmarket for business opportunities, and a surge in the “mobile-app-for-business” revolution.
Below are abridged versions of five of the top BPO trends, in no particular order:
1. Pioneers and new entrants gain traction in the robotic process automation/autonomics space.
Automated systems, such as forms classification and data capture, have been around for years, but these new platforms (with fancier names) purport to be the second-generation of business process automation. Pioneering UK provider Blue Prism and its U.S-based arm, Virtual Operations, describe its product as robotic process automation, “software robots” that integrate with legacy business process systems to handle mundane, rules-based tasks. Another provider, IPSoft, uses the term “autonomic” to describe its systems, which also are designed to free IT and business process staff from dull, low-skill, repetitive tasks. Because these software robots operate at a fraction of a cost of a human, and can work 24/7/365 without any breaks, industry analysts predict this technology will completely transform BPO.
2. We’ll see more BPO movement onshore and nearshore.
Several factors continue to work together to shift outsourcing activity back to the U.S. and its nearshore neighbors: rising wages in China and India; consumers demanding contact-center service from agents who speak American-accented English and Latin American Spanish; and companies preferring to work with outsourcers who are geographically close and within familiar time zones.
3. Mature client-outsourcer relationships will lead to a gradual shift to outcome-based pricing models.
Outcome-based pricing—paying for a predetermined business result—can be very complicated, so expect to see this happening among highly experienced clients and outsourcers who have built mature relationships. Partners who have developed a good sense of trust and fairness for both parties will develop contracts that have a sliding-scale of rewards for approaching desired outcomes—they won’t lock providers into an adverse all-or-nothing scenario.
4. Customer contact center services reach higher levels of sophistication.
The world will recognize the evolution of “human-powered” customer service. Once a customer has exhausted self-service options {FAQs; intelligent, web-based CSR robots; interactive voice response (IVR); etc.} and needs a “real person,” the customer will likely speak to a highly skilled agent trained to handle complex problems in more than one language and through multiple communication channels.
5. BPOs engage the midmarket for opportunities.
BPO providers love the big fish--Fortune 500 companies with scores of outsourceable FTEs and straightforward labor-arbitrage deals with attractive margins. But in a saturated market, these plum deals are harder to come by. So BPO is turning to the midmarket, which presents a different set of problems. Smaller companies often are not mature outsourcers, so it takes time to build trust and good relationships. The labor economics are smaller, which means companies seek pricing based on outcomes—a tough proposition for big BPOs comfortable with transactional pricing.
For a complete overview of all the trends, download the complimentary white paper, “10 Business Process Outsourcing Trends to Watch for in 2014” at this link: http://info.datamark.net/2014BPOTrends_BPOTrendsWhitePaper.html.
About DATAMARK
DATAMARK, Inc. is a leading business process outsourcing company specializing in high-volume digital mailroom management, document processing, document management, bilingual customer contact centers and business process consulting for Fortune 500 firms and other large organizations.
Headquartered in El Paso, Texas, DATAMARK employs nearly 2,200 people in its U.S., Mexico and India facilities. For more information, visit http://www.datamark.net. Follow industry news and trends at DATAMARK's Outsourcing Insights blog at http://www.datamark.net/blog.
David Peregrino, DATAMARK, Inc., http://www.datamark.net, +1 (915) 242-6299, [email protected]
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