20 Outsourcing Trends To Watch For This Year

Outsourcing in the modern market is more diversified, and the clients have a lot more expectations from each of the outsourcing vendors, regardless of their industry. As a result, modern vendors adapt to market trends in a new direction.

Today, we’re going to look at 20 such modern outsourcing trends from the current market that you should try and implement in your business model.

1. Companies Now Prioritize Quality

All companies now focus completely on providing the best service to their clients. An organization needs highly skilled employees and advanced technology to offer top-of-the-line services.

But both of these resources are not commonly available in every region, so the organizations have started to leverage different outsourcing methods, such as:

• Business Process Outsourcing
• HR Outsourcing
• IT Outsourcing
• Legal Outsourcing

Such a wide array of outsourcing methods allow a business to offer customized services to its clients, and it’s a win-win for both parties.

2. Companies Prefer Business Continuity With A Single Vendor

Any company can engage in outsourcing contracts with multiple agencies, but it affects the continuity of the business process when one of the contracts ends.

Companies like to engage in strategic contracts with single vendors to avoid this issue. Another benefit of this idea is to create a better bond by working with the same dedicated team of external experts for a longer period.

When a business signs a long-term contract with a single vendor, it ensures it will continue operating even during uncertain times.

3. Everyone Wants More Business Flexibility & Adaptability

Even in 2023, many organizations are still trying to recover from the setback caused by the pandemic. But according to a survey by Deloitte in 2021, the pandemic conditions have made both business and service providers more flexible with their work.

To keep pace with the more flexible demands of an organization, an outsourcing vendor should always be prepared to:

• Accept if the company pauses or stops a project without a prior notice
• Complete all work before the assigned deadline, regardless of the obstacles
• Increase collaboration initiatives

4. Increased Use of Modern Technology

Companies try to use modern technology for automation to simplify different processes and increase efficiency and productivity.

But software development and automation is a volatile industry that evolves every day, and yesterday’s inventions can be rendered obsolete very easily by tomorrow’s findings.

Service providers do their best to increase their knowledge in these matters to provide more specialized expertise that is better than any in-house team.

5. Hiring Niche Talent Is The New Thing

75% of employers find it hard to find their required talent in the US. As a result, most companies are forced to look for talents outside the US, preferably in the popular outsourcing locations where they can find specific talents to operate the advanced technologies.

With outsourcing from trusted service partners, companies can upskill their teams by bringing in niche talent for specific fields.

6. Better Cybersecurity Is In High Demand

82% of companies faced different kinds of cyberattacks in 2022. Because more and more companies are shifting to cloud-based operations, the percentage will only go up.

Outsourcing vendors who can provide cyber security services have increased demand in the market, and industry experts expect to see more vendors focus on this area.

7. A Surge In Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the best way of cost control while recruiting the best talent in the market for your business. This combination is perfect for startups and small businesses.

Small businesses require professional input on their operations to scale their business while spending as little as possible for the scaling process and additional hiring.

The idea of outsourcing makes it more feasible for startups to gain access to the best talent within a limited budget via outsourcing deals.

8. Nearshore Outsourcing Getting More Priority Than Offshore Sourcing

Nearshore sourcing is the idea of hiring an expert team from a neighboring country to complete projects. On the other hand, offshore sourcing is where you hand your project over to a team in a different region and time zone.

While both can get any organization access to top talents, companies prefer nearshore markets over offshore markets more than before, especially after the pandemic.

A 2022 Report by Bloomberg shows that 80% of companies in the US prefer nearshore sourcing.

9. Remote Work Becoming Mainstream

As we all know, remote work is slowly becoming a part of our lives, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Remote work can promote higher productivity and lesser amounts of stress.

More workers will shift to remote working slowly, and more outsourcing vendors will have to adapt to the new norm with an additional workforce and updated equipment to suit remote work.

10. Higher Focus On Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is how businesses get a competitive advantage. Businesses are constantly investing more and more in customer support to make every user journey as effortless as possible. Businesses use social media coverage to gain more customers to offer them the best services.

Companies can achieve multiple benefits from focusing on customer satisfaction:

• Easier Customer acquisition
• Increased rate of customer satisfaction
• Strong customer-business relationship
• Improved brand loyalty
• Higher chances of retaining customers

But here’s the thing: the volume of customers that may require support regarding a product is highly unpredictable. So a brand must have employees ready to support the influx of customers in any situation.

This opens up more opportunities for outsourcing vendors, especially outsourcing customer service. The Global Call Center Outsourcing Market’s 2022-2026 report states that the value of this sector will grow by $21.72 billion.

11. Focus On Cost Reduction

Throughout this list, you can notice a pattern: certain trends were set after the pandemic blew over, and the trends are still going strong. The same goes for this one.

Companies used to focus more on quality and scalability, but now 88% of companies focus on cost reduction instead.

Most outsourcing vendors admit that though the client expects the vendor to increase the agility and scalability of their organization, their first concern was cost reduction from working with an outsourcing team.

12. Workflow Transparency Becoming A Common Practice

Back when outsourcing vendors used to control the entire development process, their clients would have very little idea about what they were working on, leading to many inaccurate decisions.

But those days are past us all now since there are many options for the clients and vendors to collaborate and communicate. Expressive communication is crucial for transparency, which applies to outsourcing vendors even more.

The outsourcing vendors should create a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) so the business can understand the process in progress and establish accountability.

13. Constant Rise of E-Commerce & Automation

With cloud-based operations becoming increasingly popular, automation has become necessary for most e-commerce and online stores.

But to maintain complete automation of the shopping process, the demand for IT outsourcing increases. And with that comes the need to outsource automation and other processes.

14. Cloud Computing Is The Go-To Choice

Cloud computing can offer companies the desired scalability and flexibility organization needs. But the cloud computing market warrants high demand for sophisticated equipment and talent.

More and more companies are outsourcing their cloud computing to third-party vendors for easier access to these facilities. These vendors offer all the advantages of cloud computing with the additional benefits of professional expertise and reduced operational costs.

According to MarketsAndMarkets, the cloud computing industry is set to grow up to $246 billion by this year.

15. Blockchain Demand On The Rise Despite The Setbacks

Blockchain is slowly becoming more and more appealing to different industries because of the data security it provides. In the blockchain model, developers can create applications to store data with security across decentralized computers.

Blockchain technology has been disrupting the financial industry for a while, but it’s also slowly becoming the norm in the software development industry. To support blockchain integration, companies have no choice but to leverage blockchain outsourcing.

16. Focus On Artificial Intelligence Is At An All-Time High

We are already witnessing how ChatGPT is taking the world by storm with its exceptional AI and how more and more companies are trying to integrate similar features.

Both online and offline applications are getting the AI treatment, making this one of the trends that we are witnessing reach new levels in front of our eyes. After all, ChatGPT became so popular it was featured on the cover page of the Times Magazine for February 27th-March 6th Issue story.

17. Asia Is And Will Be The Preferred IT Outsourcing Market

More and more companies are hiring professional experts from Asian countries like India, the Philippines, China, etc. These countries are home to some of the best experts in any industry you can think of, and companies are eager to make the best use of this expertise.

Here’s why Asia is the hot cake of the IT outsourcing market right now:

• The labor cost is much lower compared to most other developed countries, while the workers are well compensated and treated fairly.
• The region has a highly educated population, which ensures higher labor quality.
• The business infrastructure is very well developed, making it easier for businesses.
• Due to the higher population counts, Asian countries contain experts from all different sectors in demand in modern industries, so the talent pool is much wider.

18. Gainsharing Is The New Best Thing

Gainsharing is where the outsourcing vendor creates a unique solution for their client, and they receive compensation through gain-share rather than resource-based pricing.

Gainsharing increases a vendor’s credibility while providing them additional benefits from the direct profit share. More and more agencies are leaning towards gainsharing recently.

19. Infrastructure Management & Application Development

When an organization internally develops an application, it can take up a lot of valuable time and resources. Outsourcing the activity allows the business owner and management to focus on core business activities and fulfill business goals while a third party develops the application.

Since all the current outsourcing vendors are focusing more on customer satisfaction through high-value product delivery, there is a bigger chance that your software development can bring better results than in-house development would give you.

20. The Price of Talent Management Is Increasing

Considering the competitiveness of modern industries, every business wants to partner with a vendor at the top of its game.

To ensure every client is satisfied, vendors are going out of their way to hire and maintain the top talents to work for their organization as well. As a result, the profits are high, but so is the price of talent management for any vendor.

To Wrap It All Up

Outsourcing has been the norm for ages, but most of the post-pandemic trends that are rising into their own unique thing have pushed the outsourcing scenario into an entirely new direction.

Have you already been following and applying these trends in your business practices? Here at Impala Intech, we are always doing our best to stay ahead of the game so our client never leaves our doors without a smile!

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