The Philippines is well known as a provider of offshore staff for technical and customer support roles. But in recent years, it has also become a leader in providing even more high-quality support in various departments. This support isn’t limited to task-based or includes specialised such as marketing, finance and bookkeeping, and human resources. 

Basically, any backend task in your business can go offshore outsourcing and be managed by your team in the Philippines. 

The benefits of thinking more widely about offshoring

Many business owners understand that moving technical and customer service roles offshore is smart, offering higher quality service at a lower price point. 

When you start to think more widely, you can see other benefits.

When you transition to being an offshore company, you can finally dedicate time to tasks that are important, but which are currently outside your time or financial bandwidth. You also free up the resources of your onsite staff so they can tackle the really big questions.

So what other tasks can offshore staff take on? Let’s take a look.

Marketing

Having an offshore marketing team is essential in today’s climate. Marketing is an important part of your business but can take up a big chunk of your budget. Moving tasks offshore means getting the job done efficiently and at a lower cost.

• • Digital strategy

If your marketing strategy so far has been haphazard, utilise the power of your offshore team to develop a unified strategy based on best practices and solid research. Your outsourcing Philippines team can do more than just marketing tasks (we cover those below), but can also take on digital and marketing strategy management, encompassing increased brand awareness and reaching customer engagement and conversion. They can do this by supporting your marketing manager, or you can hire a fully-qualified offshore marketing professional to oversee everything.

• • Social media

The biggest barrier businesses face when it comes to effective social media management is time. Social media tends to be incorporated into the role of a junior team member instead of given the attention that it really deserves. With an offshore social media staff member, you can stay on top of conversations across all your platforms and meet your customers where they actually are, with a unified voice that aligns with your digital marketing strategy.

• • Marketing research

Similarly, you may spend a lot of money on marketing strategies, but how much research have you really been able to put into it? Get your offshore marketing team to deep dive into the data. What do customers actually want? What are they searching for? What are their needs right now? What’s trending? What are your competitors doing? Information is a weapon and the more you have the stronger your business is.

• • Marketing materials

Every business would love to have gorgeous graphics custom designed and created in-house, but for most small companies it’s just not feasible. Graphic design is expensive – until you take it offshore. Finally have the visual and other marketing assets that you’ve always dreamed of.

Finance and bookkeeping

Many business owners are surprised that important tasks like finance and bookkeeping can be easily taken offshore. From simple data entry tasks right through to financial reporting and auditing, they can all be handled by your offshore finance team. And no, you don’t need to worry about security; it’s exactly the same as your in-house systems.

• • Accounts payable and receivable

Most accounting tasks are done entirely online, so they’re perfectly suited to be handled by your highly-skilled Filipino staff. Set up processes so that invoices are automatically forwarded to your offshore accounts teams and they’ll be processed efficiently and securely.

• • Internal accounting

Somehow, expense processing is always a chore and takes far longer than it should. With your Filipino accounting team, expenses will be a breeze as they chase up receipts, reconcile accounts and handle reimbursements.

• • Payroll

Payroll, taxes, superannuation, health funds, pensions, leave processing and bonuses can all be done by your dedicated offshore payroll staff member.

• • Financial reporting and management

As we mentioned in the marketing section, you don’t have to limit your offshore work to admin tasks. You can find highly-skilled staff who can take on all of your high-level financial requirements, including budgets, reconciliation, compulsory reporting, annual reports, tax statements and more.

HR

One area that is often overlooked for offshoring is HR management. Even if you prefer to keep hiring and staff management in-house, there’s plenty that your offshore HR team can do.

• • Job ad and application management

Looking for new staff can be a bit of a scattergun approach, with ads across several different sites. Offshore recruitment staff can make sure ads are accurate and up-to-date wherever they are, collate applications and triage them to get rid of any junk or low-quality applications.

• • Shortlisting applicants

If you have very clear criteria, then there’s no reason you have to personally comb through every job application looking for people who match the job description. Set your offshore HR team to carefully curate a shortlist of the best applicants.

• • Headhunting

If you prefer to hand-select your own staff, then your offshore team can comb through LinkedIn and other profiles looking for people who meet your criteria and prepare dossiers on each one. Then you just need to choose the people you’d most like to talk with and reach out to.

• • Appointment and diary management

When you’re ready to set up interviews – whether it’s via Zoom or in-person – your offshore HR team can do the hard work of coordinating everyone’s diaries. 

And then think bigger – diary management tasks go well beyond interviews. Think of all the staff meetings that need to be set up regularly: team meetings, performance reviews, project updates, team building events, department updates, town halls… If you have more than a few staff, it can be hard to keep on top of all these meetings. Your HR management support staff can make sure everyone knows when and where they need to be, and follow up afterwards with minutes and reports.

Offshore outsourcing in the Philippines – what can’t be done?

Instead of limiting your ideas of offshoring to technical and customer service roles, it’s time to ask yourself – what can’t be done? With the right processes and communication channels in place, anything that can be done entirely online or over the phone can be off-shored. 

Is it time to take another look at your business? Think about what elements can be outsourced – and then start dreaming about the tasks and roles you’ve always wanted to implement but didn’t think you would afford. You will be surprised at what you can outsource efficiently and affordably. Stop limiting yourself by thinking about what can be done – open up your possibilities and realise that almost any part of your business can go offshore.