Outsourcing to Canada in the 21st century

Various industries and sectors embedded outsourcing in their business practices, each outsourcing job functions early on.

It’s not surprising that companies keep choosing to outsource to Canada, the Philippines, India, Mexico, and other European nations. Beyond their obvious advantages, outsourcing is an effective strategy for expanding corporations. A practice that has since helped entrepreneurs and businesses grow exponentially in terms of revenue and connections.

The 21st century is full of trends and marketing campaigns that round up competition between businesses.

Canada’s outsourcing industry

Outsourcing in Canada is handled by the federal government (located in Ottawa) and the country’s ten provinces and three territories. Canadian outsourcing companies need to comply with local laws and regulations about operating on Canadian soil. These regulations may slightly differ from province to province, but corporations make sure that they follow through.

Outsourcing is a common practice in Canada. It’s not news that there will be federal laws based and specifically made for the sector.

Why US-based companies outsource to Canada

Just on the south border of Canada lies the United States of America. It’s not a surprise that these two countries are often the top contenders for foreign investors looking to build a company.

Newly established US-based businesses usually outsource their services to India, China, Mexico, and South Africa. These countries have thriving outsourcing sectors, not to mention that their rates are significantly lower than those of developed countries. So why Canada then?

The country is pretty much known for its proximity to the US. There are two main reasons why some choose to outsource to them.

Reason #1: Minimal time zone differences

For instance, Ottawa (Canada) and Washington, DC (USA) have no timezone difference. Meaning businesses and operational hours go hand in hand even if their outsourcing partner is in another country.

Having an outsourced team working simultaneously with your operations is crucial in some businesses, especially if it’s strict about office hours.

Reason #2: Nearshoring

Nearshoring is a branch of outsourcing and offshoring. By its definition, nearshoring is the practice of delegating responsibilities and tasks to countries near your own. For example, Canadian-based companies are nearshoring to the US and Mexico. London-based businesses are partnering up with Dublin offices and so on.

Nearshoring makes for good connection and growth between these companies—and to an extent, to their respective sectors and economy.

Nearshoring and why it’s important

The practice of nearshoring—along with the general outsourcing and offshoring sector—is about geographical proximity. It’s crucial in a sense that you’re choosing a partner that has minimal friction in terms of location and working hours.

Tip: When working with people, whether outside your immediate location or not, flawless communication is imperative to keep things running smoothly.

Services companies can outsource to Canada

When outsourcing to Canada (or anywhere in the world), it’s essential to identify which departments and roles you need to assign to your chosen outsourcing partner.

Some responsibilities should stay in-house as they may act as the backbone of the company. Like some might say, no one knows the employee better than the people around them.

Responsibilities for roles such as the HR manager, employee compliance, executive leadership, board of directors are better off in your hands as they deal with the general workforce — not to mention that these are decision-making roles.

Sales and marketing

These two go hand and hand, and to some extent, they co-exist to support each other. In most campaigns, the marketing department lays out the entirety of the plan before executing it. Then the sales department makes the conversions via different channels.

According to the Oxford College of Marketing, “the sales team can give a unique insight into what makes the customer tick from firsthand experience. Using this information, marketers can then create more tailored strategies that target these issues and show how your company can solve them.”

Telesales

One of the goals of telesales is to increase returning business by satisfying the customers. Telesales agents contact customers to push deals or set up appointments to assist field sales staff.

When outsourcing your telesales department, ensure that you will be getting the best possible service from your chosen agency. Make sure that your mission and vision align entirely with their core values.

Telemarketing

Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which telemarketers contact prospective customers and clients, usually over the phone. 

Contrary to popular belief, telemarketing and telesales are not the same. The methods may look the same, but several points contrast each other. In simplest words, telesales is the act of pushing in to make a sale, whereas telemarketing is the initial stage of gauging a customer’s interest in a product or service.

Contact center solutions

Contact center solutions hold most of the roles in the outsourcing sector. Most (if not all) revolve around customer service support.

Inbound and outbound calling

These campaigns are one of the more fast-paced environments in the contact center world. With thousands upon thousands of calls coming in and out every second, it’s no doubt that a company would need more hands to handle the call volume.

Nowadays, most customer service campaigns are outsourced.

Chat support

Chat support specialists handle real-time inquiries from curious customers and clients who seek after-sales support. To provide efficiency, they usually have one ticket open, but in some cases, chat support agents may handle more than one client at a time.

Email support

In today’s digital world, we sometimes opt to send emails rather than calling a customer hotline,especially if the problem or the issue isn’t that urgent. Most often than not, email support agents go back and forth between different tickets while awaiting replies.

Back-office services

Data entry, encoding, and report analysis are considered back-office responsibilities. They usually don’t face customers or clients, as most of their tasks are focused on supporting the front and middle office.

Accounting and bookkeeping

According to Yahoo! Business, “With a team of [outsourced] accountants, the manpower is right for separating all of the departments and really getting down to the nitty-gritty of each sector, allowing the fine-toothed comb to find more ways for you to keep your money.”

There are more reasons you should outsource your accounting and bookkeeping departments, and being cost-effective is one of them.

Reasons to outsource services

There are a plethora of reasons why outsourcing is suitable for your business. Some apply to the majority while others may present specific advantages, only effective within your sector.

To be cost-effective 

Instead of spending all your time worrying about where to allocate resources and how to save on expenses, outsourcing can take these thoughts off of your head. No more extra overhead expenses, no more worry about additional employee taxes, no more hassle with bulk onboarding.

To be flexible and scalable

All companies aim to expand their business to multiple locations in a span of, say, five years.

And to expand is to allocate resources to the departments or sections of the organization that needs extra hands. It can be expensive and time-consuming, especially with the pandemic still raging on. So why not delegate the responsibilities of expanding the team to a trusted agency?

As briefly mentioned, outsourcing firms (also known as business process outsourcing firms, or BPOs) take care of the extra expenses that come with scaling your labor force.

Having the power of flexibility and scalability is crucial if you want your company to thrive in the incoming years.

To promote growth

All in the sense of the word, growth is welcomed everywhere. We can see it as companies open their hirings. We can see it as speakers talk about how they grew from one role to another.

In a company, growth can come from revenue, connections, investors, and employees. By acquiring an organization that provides services, you are also entering another sector of the industry. Use this to your company’s advantage.

Growth may not present itself as fast as you could hope, but every employee and worker will see how far the company has grown with data, perseverance, and patience.

To be competitive

There can only be so many different services and products. You will inevitably encounter businesses that offer the same thing as you.

So what can you do to stay on top of the game? Keep your core services and products but reinvent the way that you market them. Outsource your marketing strategies, get content creators from different industries and countries, employ telesales agents that provide multilingual support so you can surpass language barriers.

There are many things that you can do to develop an edge against your competitors. Some of it starts with outsourcing.

Offshoring to North America: The Canadian sector

Canada is known for its thriving economy, alongside its inclusive and sustainable labor market. With the country’s strong workforce, most of which hold college and postgraduate degrees, there’s no doubt that multinational companies would agree to outsource to them.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason why these two economic giants are always in competition with each other. Yet, at some point, they support each other when it comes to nearshoring. The US has been a direct competitor for offshoring and outsourcing, and yet, Canada remains one of the top destinations for companies to hire outsourced workers.