What are Business Process Services?

Business Process Services (BPS) involves a third-party service provider taking over the operations and responsibilities for a business process under contract.

What are some examples of business processes or workflows that can be outsourced?

BPS enables a wide variety of processes to be outsourced, including social media marketing, customer support, payroll, accounting, telemarketing, and data recording. Some processes might be highly technical, while others are simpler and more straightforward. BPS usually takes over non-core or repetitive business functions which are necessary for the business to operate, but not strategically differentiating. Some processes might be in the front office and others in the back office, such as billing or purchasing, while front-office examples usually involved the company’s customers, such as technical support.

What kinds of business can benefit from BPS?

Just about any business in any industry regardless of size can take advantage of BPS, whether it’s a Fortune 500 company or a young startup. Industries that commonly use BPS include finance and insurance, transportation, medical and even the public sector.

Where is the BPS provider located?

Your BPS provider might be just around the corner or halfway around the world. A BPS provider that operates with the same country but in a different city or province is considered “onshore.” A “nearshore” vendor is based in a neighboring country, and an “offshore” provider be in another country several borders away. For example, a Toronto company might use a BPS provider based in India.

What are the benefits of BPS?

There are many benefits to outsourcing a process or even multiple processes to a BPS provider:

• Increased global footprint: Companies that want to serve multiple regions and time zones in multiple languages can partner up with a BPS provider who is already in business where they want to be in business with minimal investment and risk.
• Increased flexibility: A BPS provider can scale up on demand to support noncritical / repetitive processes so their customer can focus on strategic business initiatives, such as introducing new products and services, while allocating their internal resources to the most critical business activities.
• Lower costs: Turning to a BPS provider decreases internal labour costs, as well as the resources required to onboard and train new employees, as well as office space. This is especially important for business processes that fluctuate in volume because of the ebbs and flows of the business.
• Increased efficiency and better results: A good BPS provider hires specialists for specific workflows and processes which means more can get done faster with better accuracy. Some providers may specialize in certain industries and a have a firm understanding of the relevant regulatory framework and compliance obligations. Because the BPS provider is an expert in executing those processes, the customer often sees better results.

What do companies need to consider when looking to outsource a process to a BPS provider?

Even if the process is simple, a relationship with a BPS provider must be entered with care and with the right partner. It’s important you ascertain that BPS makes sense for your organization and whatever workflows you are considering handing off. You should define the scope of the arrangement and have a solid business case for doing so. You should have a clear understanding of what the operating model will be at the start and in the future, as well as what’s necessary to manage the relationship.

What the risks involved with BPS?

Like any business arrangement, there are risks when outsourcing processes to a third part. In some cases, they are related to geography, culture and political climate, as many BPS providers have operations offshore.
The risks of BPS depend in part on your industry and the structure of your organization. For large companies with many business units, outsourcing a single workflow such as data entry doesn’t expose it to a great deal of risk, but for smaller organizations, the process may be more integral to your overall operations and delivery of your products and services. Regardless of company size or industry, the most common BPS risks are data breaches, either through employee error or hacking, non-local employees, quality control, maintaining strategic alignment, political instability when processes are moved offshore, and changes in technology.

What risks should I be most mindful of when entering a BPS relationship?

In any BPS arrangement, you should pay special attention to risks around communications, costs, overdependence and security.

• Communication: BPS usually delivers the most value cost-wise when you work with an offshore provider and this means you may encounter language barriers that delay ramping up of processes and workflows, hamper feedback, and impact customer service.
• Underestimating costs: There’s more to think about than just how much you’re paying for a BPS provider to take care of a workflow for you. You also need to think about other costs such as upgrades, renegotiating contacts, and the resources in terms of time and money necessary to select a vendor. If you’re using a provider outside of your own country, you will be subject to currency fluctuations. Other changes that might affect your BPS costs include layoffs, internal changes with your organization, and upgrades to software and hardware that support the processes on your side.
• Overdependence: Once you’ve chose a BPS provider, they can become integral to your workflows, and their internal challenges, such as the cost of hiring workers or productivity, can impact the quality of their work and in turn what products and service you’re delivering.
• Security: Today’s BPS arrangements generally involve information systems and Internet communications, which means security and privacy risks. These risks can be accentuated if your provider is in a different jurisdiction with different privacy legislation and regulatory frameworks. You must also be prepared for the possibility of data privacy breaches and vulnerability disclosures, whether through error or hacking by various threat actors.

What are the characteristics of a good BPS provider?

A good BPS provider will help you decide where it makes the most sense to outsource processes and workflows, while not trying to touch your core business processes. They also understand that their employees play a critical role in creating a partnership with their customers by supporting their productivity. Ultimately, they know their role is to help you improve your bottom line by increasing your sales while reducing your operational costs.

What do I need to consider when choosing a BPS provider?

There are several things you must consider when selecting a BPS provider if you’re to get the benefits that come with outsourcing processes and workflows. Most of all, be prepared to take the time necessary to evaluate candidates and clarify the business relationship. Choosing a BPS provider should be extensive and formal. Start by defining and reviewing potential providers, as well as your stakeholders so you have a clear understanding of your requirements. You need to understand all the key objectives, risks and exactly what you are looking to hand over to a BPS provider. Ultimately, this should be articulated in a request for proposal (RFP) that’s shared with a short list of vendors based on your research.

What must I keep in mind after awarding the contract to the winning BPS provider?

Once you’ve selected your BPS provider, you need to actually transition the workflows and processes—they can help with this based on their domain experience, but you need to develop and implement a plan to move to the new model, and communicate it effectively internally and to your BPS provider. Once the processes have been outsourced you need to be ready to manage the relationship through governance and performance monitoring so that you get benefits that coming from engaging in business process outsourcing.

What industries does Supra ITS serve?

Currently, Supra ITS’ BPS practice focuses on the transportation industry, but our offerings and capabilities are adaptable to any industry that requires data to be processed from one format to another.

What processes can Supra ITS take over?

ORDER ENTRY	Billing	Rating	Call Taking
Customer Service	Driver Payable	Cube Entry	Dispatch Entry
Dock Payable	Pod Entry	Interline Payable

Where does Supra ITS carry out its BPS operations?

Supra ITS has offices in India, Canada and the US. The Canadian presence is supported by more than 100 trained employees in New Delhi. The data processing is performed and routed through a Canadian Data centre which in turn links to the customer. There is no direct connection between India and the customer.

How does Supra ITS secure data?

Being a vendor of record with the Government of Ontario and thoroughly vetted for the government’s security requirements, Supra ITS has developed a comprehensive set of information security policies & procedures which meet or exceed the government’s IT standards.  These standards and the ISMS have been audited to comply with ISO: 27001 standards.

How is Supra ITS different from other BPS providers?

Many businesses see BPS as mainly about saving money, but Supra ITS approaches our engagements by infusing key business activities with technology levers. Our goal is to use BPS as an opportunity help our customers more precisely manage rule-based tasks and continuously increase process effectiveness and efficiency. This adds significant value and direct business impact beyond the bottom line.

How does being an IT services company enhance Supra ITS’ BPS offerings?

As an IT services company, Supra ITS has extensive experience optimizing how knowledge workers and advanced algorithms can be combined to automate key operational activities. Our entire services portfolio is geared toward helping organizations across industry and functional silos effectively lash together the collective strengths of global talent, standardized processes and the latest technology to deliver continuous business impact. Supra ITS’ ability to dynamically scale allows our customers to not only leverage us as a partner today but in the future as the world of technology and processes shift and evolves from today’s operating structures into an ever-changing future around delivery models which align with revenues and quality.

How does Supra ITS resource its BPS practice?

Our BPS practice comprises a team in North America with deep business knowledge, offshore analysts, supervisors, data entry operators, managers and IT support teams, all of whom are Supra ITS employees. We are committed to providing our customers with a single point of contact through local managers who support the ongoing relationship and steer overall governance. Our customer contact team includes a Practice Manager, Project Manager and Local Team Manager. During the initial transition phase, Supra ITS allocates additional personnel as necessary. As employee turnover is expected, we engage recruiting teams to keep a current list of available resources on file and short-listed in the event of a staff change and/or the need to hire additional resources due to changing circumstances.