In the midst of ongoing economic uncertainty, as margins decrease while customer expectations soar higher than ever, marketing and procurement leaders are searching for ways to lower costs without sacrificing the quality or frequency of customer connections. The secret lies not in reducing the size of marketing spend or abandoning print altogether, but in slashing operating costs.
But where to start? And how can organizations dramatically reduce costs without overloading their already-overloaded teams?
At OneTouchPoint, we recommend starting with business process outsourcing.
What is business process outsourcing?
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a strategic approach companies can use to delegate large operational tasks and functions — from printing and inventory management to kitting and mailing — to external service providers, dramatically reducing overhead and freeing up both finances and staffing resources to focus on core competencies and strategic initiatives.
The right vendor can provide tailored solutions to streamline workflows, reduce costs and enhance efficiency among your marketing and procurement teams, taking the logistical burdens and tedious manual labor off your hands while delivering high-quality results and enabling you to allocate resources more effectively to drive business growth.
How does business process outsourcing save costs?
BPO enables companies to hand over non-core tasks to specialized third-party providers, which saves money in two big ways. First, outsourcing processes reduces overhead expenses associated with maintaining in-house teams, brick-and-mortar space and equipment, allowing for flexible staffing models and scalability required to significantly reduce costs without compromising quality or efficiency.
Secondly, leveraging third-party expertise (especially with the right partner) leads to efficiencies through economies of scale, resulting in the even important cost-savings. Think everything from fractional digital marketing resources, customer care to support your franchises (or dealer networks) to tangible savings such as postal discounts, conveniently located shipping facilities or bulk pricing on paper / printing — that individual marketing or procurement teams couldn’t necessarily access on their own.
All of this drives down costs without sacrificing impact.
What business processes can marketers outsource?
Different vendors will offer different combinations of services, so to maximize efficiencies, minimize the number of vendor contracts in play and streamline costs, you’ll want to find a partner who can handle all of your biggest management needs. These tend to be the four big ones:
- Inventory services. Your BPO partner can ensure physical product inventory is physically inspected and appropriately stocked. This includes warehouse management — and keeping warehouse costs down by minimizing overproduction and monitoring for and removing obsolete stock in a timely manner. From leveraging a fractional employee for 2 days a week to having them onsite, OneTouchPoint can deliver options that best meet your business needs.
- Print, promo & paper brokerage. Let someone with specialized expertise in print production and materials management strategies handle all of your print, promo and paper buys, ensuring consistency in quality while you enjoy cost savings and uninterrupted access to the materials you need. Outsourcing these procurement functions to a specialized provider allows marketing teams to save money (and energy) by streamlining processes, consolidating purchasing activities to reduce redundancies and enjoying the favorable terms their vendor has with suppliers.
- Onsite print & mailroom management. Staff and manage all aspects of your print and mailroom operations, from printing (large or small format, on-demand or high-volume) to kitting and assembly to fulfillment of even the most complex and sensitive mailings. Outsourcing these processes takes a big chunk out of labor costs, but it has an equally dramatic impact on equipment costs. Why invest in purchasing — and then maintaining — all the equipment required for printing and mailing (and the space to keep that equipment) when a trusted vendor comes with their own world-class equipment and handles the maintenance headaches for you?
Finding the right business process outsourcing team.
In a perfect world, you’d outsource all of your most burdensome management processes to a single vendor who could take all of them off your hands. At OneTouchPoint, we’re ready and equipped to handle all of the processes listed above — and that’s just for starters. Our expert teams are ready to join your team, dramatically reducing operating costs and lightening the internal load to make more room for needle-moving strategic initiatives.
Here are just a few of the activities we take pride in handling for our clients:
- Ensuring the right assets are ready to go
- Maintaining accurate (and relevant) inventories
- Brokering print and premium goods on our clients’ behalf
- Providing full onsite print and mailroom staffing and management
- Customer care
At OneTouchPoint, we understand the pressure marketing leaders are under in this economy to cut costs without sacrificing visibility. To learn more about how we can help, read about our vendor-managed services here and here. Then, when you’re ready, contact us to talk in detail about how a partnership with OneTouchPoint could transform your marketing and procurement teams.