Outsource ecommerce data entry services

Outsource ecommerce data entry services ? Behind the convenience of Ecommerce lies a complex web of processes and hard work, none more important than the humble task of data entry. When we search on an Ecommerce website for a smartphone, we find smartphones there and not loaves of bread or Nike shoes, because someone has taken the trouble to classify the products correctly by keying in the right data in the right places. Not just that, priced them correctly and provided other relevant details accurately.

ecommerce data entry outsourcing  services of any type, for example catalog data entry services, to a company that specialise in the task is the norm today and allows the principal, or client, to focus on their core competence, producing smartphones, or publishing books or cooking food.

It has to be done accurately and speedily too. A data entry service provider is often the lifeline of the business. Hence it is important to choose your provider with the utmost care.

What factors should one consider when choosing a vendor for outsourcing your ecommerce data entry services to ?

Outsource ecommerce data entry services : an Alignment of Vision and Values.

In B2B (business to business) relationships, partnerships are sought with a long-term view as they can add or subtract value for both the client and the vendor entities. Hence, getting into a partnership becomes a deliberate process that consumes a significant amount of senior resource time and money, and also takes time to settle down once finalised. It is unlikely that two organisations will enter into a partnership with a view to ending it quickly and looking for the next partner.

The environment keeps changing. With each change, the relationship could become more or less profitable for either partner. But, if the provider were to terminate or suspend the contractual services each time the environment changed for the worse, looking for a provider would become a full-time job for your business. Hence, it is important to get an understanding of the long-term Vision and Values of the provider and its senior leadership team and ensure there is alignment. After all, you don’t want a partner who is just a fair-weather friend. Some areas you should look into to ascertain this:

• Are they interested in opening up their services for external review? Do they encourage IS the provider ISO/IEC 27001? (yes we are)
• Do they promote an open environment in the company? Like an Open Door policy?
• Do employees feel comfortable in sharing challenges with senior management?
• Do they value long-term value creation or short-term profits?
• Does it feel like a welcoming environment for women?

Ecommerce data entry outsourcing : a Performance Track Record

Very often we find companies positioning themselves as Technology experts when they are pitching to a client for a Tech support process. The same companies will position themselves as experts in Customer Service when pitching for an inbound Contact Centre project. No doubt, if you are looking for a vendor for outsourcing catalog data entry services, the vendor pitch will probably say they were born to do catalog data entry. So, one needs to tread with caution and ask the right questions to determine the truth.

References from other clients for whom similar work is being done is always helpful, even though some amount of conflict of interest exists. They may not want to tell you the full picture. After all, they are competitors. You may not like to reveal your plans to them.

This is not to say that a provider cannot expertly execute services in two areas that are totally different. As consumer franchises have grown, so have the scale and diversity of BPO (Business process outsourcing) enterprises supporting them. And many have excelled in execution of a variety of contracts.

At the same time, not having experience with ecommerce data entry should not be a disqualification for a vendor. Neither should being a newcomer be a disqualification. Everyone needs to start somewhere. What we are saying is that what is stated by the prospective vendor needs to be validated by suitable evidence. A vendor could pitch for your business by being upfront in saying that they do not have experience in this kind of work but have a proven model for supporting a variety of services, like a Hiring engine that scours the landscape for available talent, a Training engine that converts the ‘boys to men’ in a short time, like a Quality monitoring system that identifies and eliminates errors and rework, and are committed to building a new skill-set if selected.

While it will take greater effort on your part to help the provider get accustomed to the rhythms of your business, there could be compensating advantages. Like a greater opportunity to fall in step with the way you do ecommerce data entry. If they already do similar work for another client, they may have set ideas which could be difficult to break.

The other advantage is pricing and contractual terms. For the benefit of opening up a new line of work, the vendor will be open to offering better terms for your business.

Oworkers has been the preferred choice of several unicorn marketplaces for several years. Performance speaks for itself.

Compliance with local regulations for outsource ecommerce data entry services

Business Process Outsourcing is a global industry today. Adjudication of claims on health insurance policies issued in Canada could be done by a provider in India, while Payroll processing for a German automobile company might be done in Poland by its own Global Inhouse Centre (GIC).

If you have to compete with the best, you also need the best outsourcing partner in the world for your business. The entire world is your playing field when looking for one. Therefore, you can rightfully look for a provider anywhere in the world.

However, each location will have its own regulations. Some could even be specific to the BPO industry. Like, for example, BPOs are considered as essential services in some locations. This allows the BPO to operate continuously, holidays included, and provide compensatory leave to staff who are working on days that would otherwise be holidays for them.

Local regulations cover different areas, starting with registration. The provider being considered for your catalog data entry services should have a valid registration and the right to do business of the kind that it is engaged in, BPO in our case. As a number of service providers operate from locations where plentiful inexpensive resources are available, invariably there are regulations that seek to prevent the exploitation of these resources. Hence, compliance with local labour laws like compensation level, working hours, safety of women, are common requirements. There are others, like data storage related guidelines, especially if it is a cross-border provider.

It is important for the provider to demonstrate their compliance and for you to ensure that they are compliant.

Oworkers relies on employees, not freelancers, for their activities. It might be considered as being a higher cost choice, but it provides stability to staff and gives Oworkers the flexibility and strength required to meet varied demands from clients. With all delivery centers registered as local companies, fulfilment of social taxes requirement for all employees, and a rating of 4.6/5 on Glassdoor, Oworkers can focus on meeting client requirements.

Financial soundness for ecommerce data entry outsourcing

The outsourcing partner runs a business, like you do. Businesses are buffeted by competition and changes in the environment. Attrition might spike, leading to the company spending a lot of money on just hiring and training without getting productive output. Currency movement could reduce realisation and make the business unviable. Lots of things can happen in the real world.

The greater the financial pressure on a business, the greater the propensity to cut corners. You don’t want your business and customers to be impacted because of that.

You don’t want a provider whose ship starts lurching and tilting at the onset of the first wind, ready to capsize, as that will again set you off looking for another provider. You want a provider who sails a ship with a deep hull that can keep it steady when passing through strong winds.

Financial soundness is the deep hull that you need to look for. Not merely at present but for the foreseeable future as well.

While as a supportive partner, you will be sensitive to changes that have a long-term impact on your partner and may be willing to renegotiate the terms, it should be an exception and not the norm or expectation. As a savvy business, the vendor should be able to forecast trends to a great extent, that could impact the ecommerce data entry services they provide.

Apart from changes in the environment, at times, the vendor may make a pitch for work at below cost, generally for bragging rights either on account of the brand or type of work. Of course, they do hope that future contracts will enable them to more than make up for this financial compromise. While you will get the advantage of lower prices, you need to ensure that the vendor has the financial depth to be able to support it, at least for the contractual term.

As a demonstration of its financial soundness, and confidence in ability to deliver, Oworkers is in a position to offer a choice between Price per unit and Price per hour backed by a guaranteed productivity SLA.

Manpower Resources a good provider for outsourcing your ecommerce data entry services

Frontline agents are the lifeline of the BPO industry. You don’t need anyone to tell you that. You know it.

We also know that attrition at the agent level is a norm. Even if volumes are not increasing, the company will need to keep hiring and training fresh resources to take the place of attriting agents. Whether it is a Call Centre, or telecom order processing, or ecommerce data entry.

Assessing the vendor’s ability to attract, train and retain talent for your processes is a critical part of the evaluation process.

How deep is the resource pool? Are there educational institutions in the catchment area whose graduates would be suitable hires?

Does the vendor have a hiring team and process that is efficient and able to screen and identify suitable candidates? Not over qualified as they will not stay. Not under qualified as they will produce low quality work.

Does the vendor company occupy some prominence in the area and is it considered aspirational to be working for it? This will reduce the cost of hiring as candidates will come on their own.

Are they active participants in the affairs of the local community and interested in the long-term success of their business along with the community?

Do they pay competitive salaries to keep employees interested?

Oworkers continues to rely on a stringent screening process for hiring, which includes IQ, EQ and personality tests on the thousands of candidates who apply in the hope of a highly regarded job.

Infrastructure for outsource ecommerce data entry services

A BPO is not just people and technology. It is a full fledged enterprise. Therefore, it needs the infrastructure for a full fledged enterprise. This could be divided into on-premise and external infrastructure.

On-premise

First and foremost, does it have access to adequate, uninterrupted bandwidth that is needed for our ecommerce data entry work? Is there a redundancy built in?

What about power supply? Is the grid supplied power adequate to run essential services? Is the supply uninterrupted? If not, are there back-up arrangements like diesel powered generators in place to take over at times power is deficient?

What are some questions you should seek answers to:

• Does the facility provide a neat and clean and secure environment where people are comfortable and can focus on the work at hand? Of course, in the present times, with many people working from home, this could be a lower priority.
• Is there an adequate arrangement of food and refreshments for staff? Either on the premises or in close vicinity?
• Is there a provision for rest and breakout areas for unwinding and informal meetings? What about toilets?
• Is there an arrangement for handling medical emergencies? How long does it take to get help from a professional medical facility?
• Are they able to commit restricted access to the location where our work will be done, in order to prevent misuse and theft of data?

External

How is the road, rail and air connectivity to the location? Travel between your facility and the vendor’s would be required, for your staff to supervise onsite work, and for their team to get trained.

Does the location have adequate local transport available for staff to travel to and from work? If not, does the vendor make arrangements for transportation?

Is the facility prone to events that could cause disruption, like floods, snow, etc.? Is there a Business Continuity plan in place to handle work in such a situation? Does the vendor provide a back-up location as a fallback or is that something you need to work out by dividing the work between multiple vendors?

With all delivery centres registered as local companies, social taxes paid for employees, and deep connects in local communities, Oworkers not only manages all infrastructural needs efficiently, it is also positioned to proactively identify and address challenges that may arise from time to time.

Readiness for 24×7 ecommerce data entry outsourcing

Much of the work done in a BPO can be queued and handled based on defined queue clearance protocols. This enables the BPO to take advantage of efficient handling of transactions rather than keeping idle resources as might be required while handling live transactions, like in the case of an inbound Call Center.

This allows the BPO the flexibility to work 24×7. Our ecommerce data entry services can work 24×7.

How does this help?

If they have committed to deliver 300 FTE (full time equivalent resources) to the client, they can do it from a facility which has 100 seats. In other words, the same 100 seats can be used thrice by three different sets of agents. Or, at worst, 150 seats to be used twice. This enables the establishment to keep costs in control. Even the client benefits as they get a more competitive price.

24×7 work, however, brings in its own challenges. Some questions you might need to ask:

• Is it safe to commute to and from work at night?
• Is transportation even available? Or does the vendor provide pick-up and drop facility for the hours when nothing is available?
• Are there zoning laws that prohibit work at night?
• Is it socially acceptable in the community for people to be working at odd hours of day and night?

With existing operations catering to clients from around the world, Oworkers has been running 24×7 operations for many years. 

Scalability for outsource ecommerce data entry

Every business goes through some seasonality or reaction to events in the environment. For example, the Covid-19 epidemic has created a surge in demand for bandwidth as well as new phone connections as the internet has become a lifeline for many people. As a response, handset manufacturers have introduced many new models to cater to the spike in demand. This new demand and newer models would have increased the demand for ecommerce data entry as well, so that these new models become available on time.

We obviously don’t want to lose business because we could not get the details up and running on an ecommerce website fast enough. As we know, the first few hours and days often provide the maximum sales for popular brands and models.

Will the BPO provider be in a position to handle a spike?

Equally, in periods of low demand, will he be flexible enough to reduce the manpower dedicated to our work, thereby reducing our costs?

As mentioned elsewhere, Oworkers is a preferred employer in all the locations we operate from. This gives us the unique advantage of being able to ramp up by 50/ 100 workers within 24/ 48 hours. In a people centric activity, this can be a key differentiator.

Multilingual capability for outsource ecommerce data entry services

Not only can a client be looking for the best provider anywhere in the world, they can also be doing business anywhere in the world. Each time you expand to a new geography, or even widen the customer base in an existing one, you don’t want to scramble to identify yet another partner, in yet another location, to do some more of your data entry work. And for work that may only be a trickle to start with. You don’t want to refuse taking on a new customer because his primary language is not catered by your partner.

It may not have been as important a generation back, but today it is important to have a partner that is multi-lingual. Not only should they be multi-lingual, they should have the willingness and capacity to add more languages to their portfolio as and when the need arises.

Oworkers has been expanding their language coverage and currently supports processing in 22 languages.

Outsource ecommerce data entry : a Specialisation

Some may consider this criteria to be a part of Vision and Values. Some others may consider it as a subset of Performance Track Record. But it merits an inclusion all by itself. We are talking about specialisation.

Does the company consider itself to be a specialist in our area of work? Do they take pride in being on the cutting edge of knowledge, process and technology in this field? Do they participate in and contribute to the development of the ecosystem?

It is a good sign if the answers to the above questions are a ‘Yes.’

In a bid to grow, some companies bite off more than they can handle and struggle to manage the disparate and unwieldy units that get created. Others focus on a field or specialisation and concentrate their growth efforts around that area. This often leads to them acquiring knowledge and competence, and credibility as a result. They become leaders of a sort in that area.  

Oworkers has developed its expertise in this area through committed work with clients and is often seen as the go-to provider in this field.

Price of ecommerce data entry outsourcing

Particularly in case of a large enterprise the final discussion on behalf of the client will be done by the Procurement function. While that is a good control mechanism, the downside is that lowest cost often overshadows all other considerations.

However, that is not the only reason pricing appears towards the end of the list. The main reason is that pricing should be one of the last considerations. After an evaluation on other parameters has been done.

While low price is always desirable, if it is being offered only for the purpose of snatching the contract, it has attendant risks, as argued elsewhere in this article. Hence, the lowest price may not always be the best. The vendor could throw up his hands at a later date and say they are unable to deliver the catalog data entry services at those rates. While contractual penalties will kick-in, there will still be a customer and business impact.

Unfortunately, in most deal negotiations, the focus of the buyer is on saving dollars. How can I save an extra hundred dollars? The question should be, “By spending another hundred dollars, can I create value equivalent to five hundred dollars for the company?’

BPO providers can often deliver value beyond the scope of a contract. For example, BPOs have access to information much before the client. Creating confidence and a process of information sharing can add muscle to the client’s marketing efforts.

As stated elsewhere, Oworkers is in a position to offer a choice between Price per unit and Price per hour backed by a guaranteed productivity SLA. With centers in Bulgaria, Madagascar and Egypt, identified as locations that offer the best value, we can offer you the best price AND great quality.

Technology 

This is the enabler. The medium that will facilitate all the work. Technology is the reason why it has become possible to outsource ecommerce data entry to the best provider, whichever part of the world they may be in.

Obsolescence in technology is a known phenomenon. The vendor should have access to technology that is current and proven. In addition, if we need him to work on our systems, his technical infrastructure should permit easy integration.

Where the vendor also works for a competitor, it becomes critical to ensure that your data and systems are secure and there is no possibility of accidentally or wilfully sharing of any information between the two.

Openness to external review and certification will always add value to what a company says about itself. In the context of information security, it would be relevant to check if the provider has earned an external certification, like ISO/IEC 27001?

In addition, there should be fallback plans for the critical elements of the technology, like access to the Internet.

As an ISO/ IEC 27001 certified provider, Oworkers offers to take on business for clients, with the confidence that it can deliver on information security expectations. The proof of the pudding being in the eating, a client list that is 85% made up of technology companies, should inspire confidence in our capability.

Balanced Scorecard

Where a decision needs to be taken, it is often useful to summarise information into a pre-designed summary form. This ensures that all factors that were considered relevant for the decision are being taken into account.

Oworkers provides a host of ecommerce data entry services to clients around the world. If you are looking for a partner for your ecommerce outsourcing, check us out at oworkers.com. You will find us suitable on all the parameters discussed in this article. And many others.