Literature Review

This research proposal wants to study the advantages and disadvantages of Business Process Outsourcing in the context of Australian businesses. Companies gain different advantages such as flexibility in business, low entry cost in the market, access of technology, accessing market opportunity by outsourcing business (Mani, Barua and Whinston 2012). Business process outsourcing has several risks such as confidentiality of data and complex adaptive knowledge management.  Research proposal seeks to find out the gaps of the literatures studied in the literature review chapter.

Business outsourcing is a result of globalisation of business. Business process outsourcing has become a useful tool of both small and large companies and individual professionals of Australia, who do freelancing. Business process outsourcing has grown significantly in recent years and the trend is expected to rise in future (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). Demand for BPO comes from demand for technical talent especially in IT, human resource and financial services. Along with theses services, legal service, article writing and translation services have been growing in Australia (bpoconnect.com.au 2015).

Business process outsourcing now has become an integrated part of business, which facilitates in the internationalisation of business and increasing revenue. Over the years several BPO companies in Australia has supported customer relationship management on behalf of business companies to help them in finding and acquiring new customers, retaining customers and extending customer loyalty (bpoconnect.com.au 2015). Sitel Australia provides CRM services. Similarly, Unisys Australia provides three types of BPO services including mortgage processing, deposit processing and direct debit and credit payment processing. They removes capital investment burden in the international market and helps to improve quality of services. BPO sector mainly acts to reduce risks of international business operation and brings efficiency in business (Avram 2014).

There is gap between previous literature conducted in the literature review chapter. As pointed by Jaworski (2003), business process outsourcing is undertaken by the manufacturing business organisation in order to make supply chain stronger. However, service sector uses the BPO concepts widely in the business, which is required to consider. Some of the literatures have mentioned outsourcing as offshore and some literatures highlighted the necessity of offshore as well as near shore outsourcing. Success of Coca-Cola business in outsourcing has been explained in literature.  However, discussion o this matter is required to evaluate impact challenges faced by organisation during outsourcing. Australian companies need to evaluate risks as well along with the advantages before going for business outsourcing.

1. What are advantage of BPO in the context of Australia?
2. What are disadvantages and risks of business process outsourcing?
3. What are the contributions of BPO sector in Australian business?
4. What are the recommendation for the growth of BPO by managing risks?

Research Questions

Research questions have been prepared based on literature review. Research questions are developed to proceed with further researcher. As the topic of the research is the advantages and disadvantages of business process outsourcing, the research questions want to find out the answers. The first two questions would find the advantages and challenges of business process outsourcing in the Australian economy. The researcher would further proceed to find out the contribution of BPO in Australia business context. Contribution may be positive or negative. Research survey will try to find out the answers in order to reach a valid conclusion for the research (Tr?pczy?ski, Pu?lecki and Jarosinski 2016).

There are different types of business outsourcing that can be adapted by a business firm. Research will focus on that part also. As this process is associated with several risks, cost benefit analysis needs to be done by a company before outsourcing business. The last question wants to recommend some process that a business can adopt in order to manage the risks of outsourcing (Marshall et al. 2015). These research questions will be developed from the gap of the previous literatures. Business process has been complex during the era of globalisation. Hence, increasing competition, cost reduction, competitive pricing are issues is current business environment. Outsourcing of business helps business to address those issues.

Data for the current research requires to be collected from both primary and secondary sources. Research can be done through survey on employees of different business organisation of Australia, which wants to expand business abroad. Primary data will be collected using structured questionnaire (Mackey and Gass 2015). The questionnaire includes questions regarding advantages provided to the clients and challenges faced by the employees. Their experiences regarding customer demand, customer response can be known from the employee survey. The business research mainly due to evaluate business to business service. Business organisations of Australia are the clients of the BPO companies.BPO companies provides outsourcing services to facilitate the business firms. Employees of BPO and managers of big business house of Australia are the main sample of the present research.

200 employees from different BPO companies of Australia will be considered in this survey. 10 managers from different Australian companies will be selected. Two types of sampling method will be used in the study. Simple random sampling will be used for the survey on BPO employees. 200 samples will be chosen randomly with equal probability. Samples are unbiasedly irrespective of gender, age and race. A close ended questionnaire is prepared for the BPO employees. The questionnaire is set at a Likert Scale with equal options for each question. Online survey method will be used for the study. It is not possible for this research to conduct face to face service due to time and physical constraints.

Methodology

Purposive sampling will be used to collect response of the managers of the business firms, which employ outsourcing service. Their response will be collected to evaluate requirements for outsourcing service and their profitability (Flick 2015). Managers will be chosen purposively as one or two managers are required to choose from each organisation. In a purposive sampling, samples are chosen with certainty. Secondary research is necessary part of data collection and analysis. Secondary research is to be done to collect additional information regarding business organisation. Scholarly literature, online sources are used for secondary survey (Silverman 2016).

(Questionnaire referred to the Appendix)

Business operating profit is the dependent variables. Financial service, customer relationship management, technological development, human resource management are independent variables. Quantitative analysis will be conducted for this purpose. The purpose of the study is to investigate the business profitability with the application of different types of outsourcing. Separates questions are set for each different independent variable. Questions would evaluate the outsourcing needs of finance, which will indicate towards the result of cost saving. Questionnaire for Accounts payable business process outsourcing to evaluate financial benefit, payroll business process outsourcing to evaluate effective human resource management will be designed.

Quantitative data analysis will be conducted through Excel spreadsheet. Collected data will be analysed using the statistical tools such as descriptive statistics and annova table. These results would tell the significance of the research and relationship between dependent and independent variables (Mackey and Gass 2015).

Interview response of the managers will be used for the qualitative study. Effectiveness of business process outsourcing will be evaluated using different theories and in the light of literature review. Quantitative analysis using statistical measurement may have sampling error due to sampling fluctuation (Marshall et al. 2015). Therefore, in order to make the analysis robust, both qualitative and quantitative studies can be conducted.

Positivism philosophy will be appropriate for the research as mixed approach is considered (Flick 2015). The research will start with the quantitative analysis and will be supported with the qualitative analysis later. Logical structure will be framed to construct the research paper. Qualitative research is not contradictory to the quantitative approach for this research paper. Experimental research is hence undertaken. Interview questions for the managers are open ended as managers can express their opinion regarding business resource outsourcing and application in their business.   

The study starts with study of literature review and hence, variables have been chosen as per requirement of the study. In order to assess the profitability of the companies after the application of business process outsourcing, annual financial reports are required to examined. This secondary research is complimentary to the primary research. Ethical issues have been considered in the study. Identity of the respondents will be kept confidential and no data will be revealed that can hamper the dignity of the personality associated with the research.

References

Avram, M.G., 2014. Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise perspective. Procedia Technology, 12, pp.529-534.

bpoconnect.com.au 2015. Outsourcing in Australia: How Huge Has the BPO Industry Grown?. Available at: https://bpoconnect.com.au/outsourcing-australia-huge-bpo-industry-grown/ [accessed on 05.31.2017]

Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Mani, D., Barua, A. and Whinston, A.B., 2012. An empirical analysis of the contractual and information structures of business process outsourcing relationships. Information Systems Research, 23(3-part-1), pp.618-634.

Marshall, D., Ambrose, E., McIvor, R. and Lamming, R., 2015. Self-interest or the greater good: How political and rational dynamics influence the outsourcing process. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 35(4), pp.547-576.

Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Silverman, D. ed., 2016. Qualitative research. Sage.

Tr?pczy?ski, P., Pu?lecki, ?. and Jarosinski, M. eds., 2016. Competitiveness of CEE Economies and Businesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Challenges and Opportunities. Springer.