January Outsourcing Report: 1,380 inquiries, 2,114 full-time jobs worth $63m

January was a super strong month for outsourcing growth and inquiries – as is customarily the case.  The new year seems to bring a surge of businesses interested in expansion, and ‘trying new things’. Offshore staffing fits well in that context.

For January, the OA platform generated 1,380 inbound inquiries, which is up 18.3% on the previous month, from 49 countries representing 27 different sectors.

There were 827 outsourcing quotation requests (up 16%) representing an estimated 2,114* full-time staff with an estimated outsourcing value of $63,420,000*. See all statistics in the Source Partner dashboard.

The annualised quotation inquiries amounted to a total outsourcing value of $585,270,000* requesting a total of 19,509* full-time roles.

Website traffic has also improved in January, with 62,843 unique visitors (up 18%) and 206,519 page views (up 21.40%).

*Conservative client value calculation: take the lowest end of their role request numbers, multiply by conservative top-line revenue of $1,250/role/month, multiplied by 24 months (conservative team lifetime value & duration)

Inquiry analysis

We have initiated a new client quality score protocol, and have retro-analysed the prior 13 months of inbound leads. The platform now assesses lead quality on a range of validation, quality and engagement metrics. For January, overall low-quality inquiries dropped to an all-time low of 8.24%.

Significant enhancements

OA has just launched the new client dashboard. This is an interactive dashboard designed to help outsourcing inquiries browse their options and connect to outsourcing partners easier. The intention is to have the client inquiries spend more time on the website, further verify their needs, and progress further with their outsourcing journey – within one visit.

The Source Partner dashboard is also in development and will be taken live in 4-8 weeks from today. This promises to be an absolute game-changer for BPOs looking to grow their customer base. We will be opening up the waiting list and pre-sales soon.

Outsource Accelerator’s BPO directory is ramping up to include 3,200 firms globally. We are collating significant information about every BPO on the planet. We have enough data on each BPO to rank each of them.  This will become a new feature of the increasingly interactive – and powerful – BPO directory. A report collating all the data will be published in Q1 or Q2 of 2022.

There are a lot of exciting developments planned for 2022!

Key metrics for January

Total outsourcing inquiry value – (12 mo.)

Total outsourcing inquiry value – (Jan. 2022) 

Notable inquiries

OA generated over 40 inbound outsourcing inquiries for every day of the month in January. Of these, there were 827 quotation requests for the month – here are six interesting examples:

Outsourcing inquiry insights – January

The Source Partner dashboard provides live analysis and deep-dive insight into the traffic and inquiries coming through. Some insights from this month:

Number of roles initially required

Clients typically start with a smaller requirement and then grow the team once they settle the team.

Size of clients’ company

The inbound inquiries come from companies of all sizes – from startups to multi-national enterprise

Location of clients’ company

The client inquiries come from across the globe – typically from the high-cost English-speaking nations.

Clients’ company sector

The client companies cover almost every sector possible, and the roles they seek are also very varied.

Fast growth ahead

The entire industry is seeing incredible growth right now. The perfect storm of COVID-induced remote working, labor shortages and rising salaries across the West, plus a normalization of online tools and digital work means that outsourcing is gradually becoming the norm, rather than the exception.

We suggest that all small and mid-tier BPOs should shoot for 50% growth this year. Are you ready?