The advantages of outsourcing services are well known. Surely the most outstanding of them is the reduction of costs, and the saving of time, which this practice, also known as outsourcing, allows, not only in the most obvious aspects, but also in the costs associated with hiring, internal training , the necessary infrastructures or technology.
But this is far from the only advantage that outsourcing offers. Another aspect highly valued by companies is the possibility of maintaining a permanent technological update. Technology advances at great speed and many companies do not have the necessary resources to face the continuous changes.
Of course, it also allows access to specialized professionals -and also the human resources department can dedicate full time to activities that add real value to the company, and not just recruiting-, and ultimately has a direct impact on productivity of the company. Companies that do not have the necessary resources to deal with certain projects can outsource to third parties that integrate new talent.
The flexibility offered by outsourcing has become vital during the mandatory confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The question now is to see how the pandemic influences the outsourcing processes of companies.
One of the companies that offers this type of service is Canon. The image technology company has a printing and document management department, which are the areas in which outsourcing has grown the most. “It was a trend that was already in the market,” says Luis Olaya, director of the Canon Business Services Channel at Canon Spain. “There were three areas that we identified that would need to change and where we saw potential for more outsourcing,” he says. These are the more traditional printing services, document management and digital services.
“What we are seeing now is that there is going to be a significant acceleration in this trend,” says the expert, who acknowledges that “customers are seeing the advantages offered by outsourcing services, such as greater flexibility.”
outsourced logistics
Alberto García de Castro, Director of Business Development at ID Logistics Iberia, a company specialized in the entire logistics process and its outsourcing, and which covers the entire process, from transport, storage, preparation and management, manifests itself along the same lines. of orders, predictability models and in some cases even copacking -outsourcing the packaging service-. “Outsourcing is a trend that is growing little by little, although it remains far from the level reached in neighboring countries, such as France, Germany or the United Kingdom, but it will continue when the different sectors of activity recover,” he predicts.
In this sense, he anticipates that it will be important to take into account that each sector will recover at a different pace. “For example, the automotive industry will be the slowest and will suffer much more, textiles will recover faster, and e-commerce will continue to grow, but at a more normal pace, but not multiplying by three or four, as during this pandemic” .
This expert points out that for a company, having its logistics outsourced, in general terms, has the advantage of saving costs, as well as making them more flexible in the medium and long term. But, in addition, “it means a reduction in the workload, so that companies can focus more on their core business, placing everything related to logistics activity in the hands of specialists.”
Another advantage, García de Castro points out, is that international development is easier, especially if you partner with a partner with experience in countries where the company wants to develop its commercial activity.
From ID Logisctics they highlight the peak of work that they have experienced during the pandemic, despite the fact that some sectors such as automotive or textile have been stopped, but with pharmacy, retail and food in full operation, to which is added “the extraordinarily high activity of the electronic commerce”, which has been like “a continuum. “We have had to adapt to this game of having some warehouses stopped and others overexploited.”
Despite everything, this excess of work has not generated new clients, but rather came for the current ones. “The new hiring and the new agreements have been paralyzed a lot, it has not been a stage of closing deals,” he admits.
‘Coworking’
One of the great protagonists in the work environment during the pandemic has been teleworking, a trend that has accelerated and could become part of the daily routine of companies. And that will also have effects on outsourcing.
Óscar García, founder and CEO of First Workplaces, a pioneer company in flexible workspaces, points out that the sector will emerge stronger in the medium and long term. “Because we provide the flexibility that companies need to carry out their activity with a certain normality and reduce uncertainty,” he points out. “With us they can use the spaces from hours, to days, months or years, when in traditional offices contracts are usually signed long-term, even though you don’t know how tomorrow will go.”
Regarding the influence of teleworking on the increase in outsourcing, he believes that it must be taken into account that, although remote work can be done from home, it is not as productive or efficient as when it is done in facilities with all the tools necessary to carry out the activity. “We have been forced to telework, locked up at home with the children and with our partner, and with a limited connection, but when it comes to carrying out a serious and formal activity, better resources are needed,” García points out.
“We are noticing, especially since a certain normality has been recovered, a lot of interest from companies in flexible solutions to adapt to this new normality or to this new lifestyle, in which flexibility and mobility must prevail, but without losing sight of given productivity and efficiency,” says García.
What he believes is that many companies are going to reduce their headquarters, leaving only one reference office, but then have many satellite offices for their employees, to avoid, for example, having to take public transport, but also to be more efficient, more productive and can better reconcile their personal and work lives, says the founder of First Workplaces.
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