Operational Assessments from Integrated Financial Technologies Identify Top Back-Office Deficiencies Among Businesses

MSPs Can Leverage Evaluations to Deliver Value-Added Services

BURNABY, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2024 / Leading business process outsourcing company Integrated Financial Technologies (IFT) reported today that its Operational Assessment projects have identified six back-office areas where many businesses lack efficiency. These areas include use of antiquated technology, inadequate data storage, siloed departments, the assignment of specific employees as a single point of information, the inability to cross-sell products, and lack of corporate documentation.

During its assessments, IFT reviews each organization's processes, workflows, procedures, and infrastructure to help evaluate operations. Based on the results the assessments generate, IFT offers a series of recommendations that companies can pursue to optimize their workflows and procedures.

According to IFT's assessments, the top areas for improvement include:

- Use of legacy technology: Many organizations rely on networking systems, applications, and processes that are outdated. This creates complex environments that are difficult to manage and upgrade. As an example, IFT found that many companies still depend on manual data input compared to automated systems for tasks like data processing, employee scheduling, CRM, and other crucial areas of documentation.

- Data storage: A surprising number of organizations utilize on-premises data storage systems, such as on-site server closets that house much of their data. In contrast, cloud-based systems offer increased security and redundancy, often delivering automated back-up and fail-over systems to protect against downtime and data loss in the case of an outage or disaster.

- Assigning staff as a single point of information: Many companies assign a single person to know everything about a product or job function, such as payroll, CRM, or software development. If that person decides to leave the company-or suffers a serious illness-disaster looms. Ideally, company knowledge should be shared with several employees to create redundancy.

- Inability to cross-sell: Many businesses are unwilling to cross-sell added services, leaving money on the table. Companies can use historical data to turn any inbound customer service inquiry into a sales opportunity. Remember, existing customers already have a propensity to buy, so savvy businesses should use nearly every interaction as a sales query.

- Siloed communications: At both small and large companies, there is a tendency for departments to use disparate technologies and proprietary processes. The inability to freely communicate and share information via common platforms and procedures between departments impacts productivity.

- A lack of company-wide documentation: Even businesses that maintain organized, company-wide processes typically do not document procedures and best practices in any concrete way. Communication of workflows, customer engagement practices, personnel policies, and job postings should be provided in a format that is accessible to the entire organization. This helps to create consistency and equity throughout the company, giving everyone equal access to the company's best practices.

Creating MSP Opportunities

IFT has developed a general assessment manual that MSPs can leverage to conduct assessments for their customers. These assessments enable partners to demonstrate additional value to businesses, and provide channels with a high-margin opportunity to deliver much-needed solutions. MSPs can offer the assessments as a white-label service and can tap into IFT's market-leading BPO solutions to provide trusted, economical, and scalable back-office solutions to businesses.

"Many of the organizations we assist are successful companies with effective practices, but we find there is always room to drive efficiency and lower costs. This opens the door for MSPs to work with us and fill those technology and service gaps," said Tod Chisholm, president at IFT. "We typically go on to fulfill opportunities in close to 75 percent of the organizations we assess. In the end, the process delivers value to businesses, while enhancing the MSP's customer relationships and establishing new revenue streams."

For more information on IFT's Operational Assessments and how its smartsourcing program can generate opportunities for MSPs, visit www.iftsolutions.com.

About Integrated Financial Technologies

Integrated Financial Technologies (IFT) is a market leader in delivering efficient, reliable, and secure back-office solutions to channel companies across North America. Based in Vancouver, IFT's unique combination of deep expertise and robust technology enables them to provide a multitude of services for resale by MSPs in areas like sales, collections, reporting, and customer care. IFT's North American-based agents are fully trained in financial services processes and a host of service-related industries, and adhere to strict data privacy and security mandates. These white-labeled services enable end-customers to increase revenue, lower operating costs, and improve customer service-without incurring added overhead. For more information on IFT's channel offering, please visit www.iftsolutions.com.

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SOURCE: IFT