Administration support is a crucial part of any business operation, allowing it to run effectively and without interruption. Organisation, attention to detail, and liaising with staff and customers and clients are crucial skills for any administration support officer or assistant. Naturally, for startups or small businesses that are looking to expand, outsourcing administration support personnel may have more costs than benefits.
Increasingly, businesses – including large to enterprise businesses – are looking to source their administrative support talent offshore to the Philippines.
As we’ve discussed in previous posts about outsourcing to the Philippines, the Philippines is a unique country that is almost “set up” for outsourcing. Public services are excellent; there is a high tertiary-educated population; over half of the country speaks English fluently and ranks 20th in the world for English proficiency; the cost of living is a fraction of that compared with Western countries; and there is a distinct confluence of culture owing much to Spanish and United States historical influence.
What are the advantages to hiring administration support from the Philippines?
Transferable skills at lower cost – admin support
An administrative assistant must have good oral and written communication skills in the native language of the company; have high organisational skills to plan meetings and schedule appointments for others; assist in taking minutes and preparing reports; order office supplies and look to cut costs where applicable; maintain contact lists; develop and maintain a filing system; act as the first point of contact for internal and external stakeholders; and liaise with executive or senior administrative officers to handle requests from senior managers.
This requires skills in business administration, proficiency in Microsoft 365 (formerly Office), excellent time management, delegation, and prioritisation skills, and have high attention to detail as well as “soft” skills like emotional intelligence and empathy (helpful for dealing with irate customers or clients!)
Some admin assistant jobs may have overlap with customer service or office manager roles. They may also assist with distributing communications, posting to social media, and proofing/sending emails from executives to department heads or individuals.
Typically, there is a 50-70% cost reduction when outsourcing administration assistants from the Philippines. As of April 2024, the median annual salary of an administration officer in Australia is $65,000p.a. Seeing as most industries with a back office will need administrative support, there is a strong business case for outsourcing many, if not all administrative tasks to highly skilled, trained, and motivated workers in the Philippines. The only thing they can’t do is pick up the mail or greet visitors at the door!
Simplifying administration tasks through outsourcing
A startup or small business looking to scale will need to implement streamlined, repeatable, and if possible “turnkey” processes to ensure smooth and efficient business operations. Having “unspoken rules” or processes “by convention” can often be a recipe for disaster, with gaps being filled on an ad hoc basis by untrained or unprepared staff – or certain things being left by the wayside.
Outsourcing administration support officers can centralise business and back-office processes as the central point of organisation. If your business is reliant on manual entry of data, admin assistants can record, modify, and retrieve data as needed for various departments. Owing much to a high level of written and oral communication skills, administrative assistants can generate reports and memos, as well as presentations based on data from other departments and sources.
They may take minutes or transcribe audio – or clean up AI-transcribed meetings for broader consumption.
Some administrators focus solely on customer relationship management (CRM) and associated software. Though there is some overlap with customer service staff, they can help in creating, managing, and evaluating strategies for customer relationship systems and nurturing business relationships.
What a business gains from outsourcing administration support
This naturally lends itself to greater business efficiencies. An administration officer or assistant can formulate and consolidate business processes – such as automating travel bookings for staff or recording sick leave – and reducing manual handling of documents or information as much as possible.
Administrative assistants can also take on the bookkeeping, payroll, calendar management, and bill payments which would otherwise eat into the core business of other employees. Having a dedicated administration officer also reduces the number of errors in documents, invoices, etc.
Above all, companies can cut costs and enhance their competitiveness.
Best Practices for Outsourcing Administration
A business needs to set clear expectations and define what they need an outsourced administration professional to achieve. This means setting down a scope of work, timeframe, and ongoing deliverables.
The outsourced administrator needs to participate in regular communication processes with management to ensure the scope of work is being fulfilled. This could take the form of rolling weekly or monthly meetings with management and outsourcing company representatives or including outsourced administrative staff in regular meetings to ensure they’re up to date with company news and events.
Continuous improvement through feedback and performance evaluation is also critical to the success of an outsourced administrative officer. This will help identify issues, allow for re-adjustments, or re-evaluate whether your administrative assistant is suitable for the role. This reporting is also valuable for your outsourcing company, who can use the information to source a better match for your organisation in the future.
Also remember to use best practice data security and protection measures to mitigate cybersecurity risks. Training and re-training in cybersecurity protocols is also recommended not only for outsourced employees, but company wide.
Solutions for eCommerce administration – an overview
Where non-specialists may track inventory and customer requests using spreadsheets and other static, non-connected apps, an administrative assistant can set-up, unify, and execute processes for a CRM, integrate it with other sales and marketing applications such as Meta Business Suite, X (formerly Twitter), email marketing software like Klayvio or Mailchimp, as well as finance and accounting suites like Xero.
As an engineer of these processes, they are also the coordinator of such tasks, ensuring that other business operations flow into one another – this support could extend to coordinating shipping or third-party logistics, delivery tracking, customer updates, credit card payment processing, and routing customer inquiries to department heads or experts.
Administration personnel can also affect duplication or penetration into ancillary marketplaces such as Amazon, Shopify, or Etsy, which could then be managed in a comprehensive dashboard which also gives an eCommerce business insights and reports into sales, revenue, profit margins, and return on ad spend (ROAS.) Admin staff can also respond to reviews – both positive and negative – to ensure maximum customer engagement and brand responsiveness.
Virtual assistants – is there a difference?
An administrative assistant sourced and hired by an outsourcing firm like Fullstaffer means they would be working for your company full-time instead of having various commitments elsewhere. They would be screened and vetted to ensure they’re a good fit for your business, at which point you may onboard them with your own processes and procedures. As your business grows, you can take on greater numbers of administrative assistants or officers to handle the increased workload.
The Fullstaffer Difference
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