Are you a business owner, leader, or manager struggling to balance front-end and back-end processes within your organization?
The truth of the matter is that everyday business tasks can be overwhelming to most. A company with ineffective business processes can affect an organization’s business efficiency – which impacts operations, customer experience, customer service, and workflow.
More often than not, management will prioritize a business’ front-office tasks and consequently neglect back-office processes. In some cases, an organization’s image is much more important than streamlining back-office operations.
Back office operations are a crucial part of delivering client service-related requests. Imagine handling client requests without having to worry if your back-office operations can deliver results.
Unbeknownst to some, having effective and efficient back-office operations will go a long way that is beneficial to front-end processes. There are several reasons why back office processes are often insufficient to fulfill business needs, and in this article, we’ll tackle various adjustments or solutions to your backend business activities that will benefit you in the long run.
What Is Back Office?
The back office is a segment of the company that includes administrative and support functions. Back office functions include accounting for payroll, income statements, bookkeeping, and other financial responsibilities of a business, IT functions for continuous business operations of front office activities, and finally other back office functions such as maintenance of facilities and human resources.
Back office functions work behind the scenes of marketing and sales which are front-end operations. The primary purpose of back-end operations is to support the client facing portion of the business, as mentioned above with the responsibilities they have. It helps streamline workflow for the delivery of services.
How Shortcomings In Back Office Processes May Affect Operations
Lacking effective back-office business processes impacts workflow efficiency. There are a plethora of reasons why back office operations are insufficient in fulfilling their purpose such as: a business may be short-staffed, lacking the required experience to deliver results, and startups or new business owners may lack the necessary experience to handle an influx of tasks.
Those shortcomings are often the reasons why there are longer turnaround times, which affects customer experience. As a result, lower customer satisfaction scores and retention rates decrease at the same time.
Essentially, a company is dependent on its profitability, which requires a steady stream of new customers. The pitfalls of an ineffective back office operation affect the delivery of services to front-end employees, from intermittent internet connectivity and accurate billing to name a few.
Small to mid-sized businesses often face challenging situations in adjusting their operational workflow that will complement both front and back-office functions due to their limited budget. The truth of the matter is that it requires infrastructure investments and employee training to meet any required metrics for balanced front and back office processes, which will cost more money for a company.
Outsourcing Backend Processes
In this day and age, back office functions can be fulfilled by third-party service providers, specifically outsourcing companies. Outsourcing companies are offering services that businesses were traditionally performing in-house. These include processes such as accounting and payroll, IT services, recruitment, and other backend processes. Instead of hiring in-house employees which in fact will cost more because of the high price of recruiting, onboarding, training, wages, and benefits.
The outsourcing of backend processes to business process outsourcing (BPO) companies is a proven method to keep a company’s profit margin within acceptable levels and will leave more resources for future growth and expansion. It’s not just limited to cost-savings, the availability of talented candidates that an outsourcing company can pull will benefit a business in terms of workflow and streamline back-office functions to improve front-end operations.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, if your business is missing its mark, you might want to look into your back-office processes. Front and back-end operations are intertwined with each other. Back office is a segment of the company that includes administrative and support functions.
Now that we live in a continuously changing business landscape, understanding the changes and adjusting your business processes to meet demands and gain favorable customer satisfaction cannot be achieved without an effective back office function.