Given the changes of the business landscape brought about by 2020 and the widespread transition to remote work, it’s safe to say fewer businesses will see the physical distance between the HQ and the vendor as a hurdle.

Why Are Businesses Going Offshore?

At first glance, it may seem that running a domestic team is a winning approach as it seems faster and more efficient. However, there are more than a handful of reasons that have team leaders turning to global talent markets.

According to the “2020 Outsourcing Survey” issued by Deloitte, these are the key reasons business owners hire offshoring vendors:

• Cost-cutting is a key objective for 70% of business owners. Hiring an offshoring vendor dramatically reduces salary expenses – an Eastern European developer makes X per year while an average yearly salary of US-based engineers is Y. 
• Speed to market was a vote in favor of outsourcing for 20% of company managers. Having access to wider talent pools allows teams to gather teams faster and complete projects more efficiently. Also, hiring a vendor means not having to put in effort into building tech infrastructure from scratch or training talent.
• Agility is a reason why 15% of surveyed team leaders started collaborating with vendors. Offshore outsourcing gives business owners on-demand access to talent, allowing them to assemble teams that precisely meet the project’s needs. What’s more, offshore outsourcing is change-friendly, giving managers a way to freely scale the project up or down.
• Business transformation is another goal that a growing number of business owners have on their minds. Rather than looking for vendors who complete one-time projects, team leaders yearn for reliable long-term collaborations, with vendors willing to support products years down the line.

To leverage the full power of offshore outsourcing and its potential for business transformation, managers are on the lookout for efficient collaboration models. One of the most intuitive and impactful strategies business owners use to outsource is build-operate-transfer.

What is Build-Operate-Transfer?

BOT (short for Build-Operate-Transfer) is a collaboration model in which a business owner hires a vendor for not only designing and building a solution but operating and maintaining the project for a set period of time.

After the vendor created and implemented a stable project maintenance strategy, the main team assumes the responsibilities over the product.

BOT is a primary strategy used for setting up R&D centers abroad or opening global customer contact branches.

How BOT Works?

As the name suggests, BOT has three distinct phases – “build”, “operate”, and “transfer”. Each of these is complex – for convenience, it’s better to break each component of the framework into smaller operations.

Here’s the breakdown of the processes involved in BOT:

Phase #1. Build

At this stage of the BOT framework, team leaders gather resources for building a project, discuss the scope and main features of the solution, and oversee the pace with which a vendor works on the project.

The “Build” phase has two steps:

Step #1: Design. At this stage, the vendor and the main office work together on conceptualizing an end-to-end service delivery model.

Step #2: Build – The vendor implements the strategy created during the previous stage. The implementation process includes hiring talent and setting up the working environment so that an R&D or a customer contact center is fully functional.

Phase #2. Operate

During the “Operate” phase, the main team manager collaborates with the vendor to transition services. On the other hand, a BOT service provider creates and implements a strategy for improving operations.

This stage consists of three distinct processes:

Process #1. Transition. At this stage, a business owner prepares all the data necessary for transferring services to the vendor and oversees the implementation process.

Process #2. Stabilization. The provider finds ways to improve the efficiency of business processes and makes sure that the new service levels match the expectations of the in-house team leader as well as the end customer.

Process #3. Operation. A vendor assumes full responsibility for a center’s day-to-day operations. The provider should oversee the performance of the team, turn in all the necessary paperwork, and alleviate bottlenecks.

Phase #3. Transfer

Now that the project is up and running, it’s time for the main team to take custody of the newly-built infrastructure. Business owners need to prepare the paperwork for vendor exit and ensure a smooth transfer of assets – talent, software, hardware, and documentation.

Typically, the steps of vendor exit are discussed early in the negotiation – this way, both the vendor and the client avoid miscommunication and confusion in the final stage of BOT implementation.

5 Benefits of BOT For Business Owners

The BOT model was extremely popular in the mid-2000s. Since then it lost its traction for a while and now is back on the radars of many business owners. Why are team leaders relying on this outsourcing model? 

Here are five undeniable benefits of Build-Operate-Transfer: 

• Room for cost-saving. BOT allows business owners to reduce both salary expenses and operating costs. In leading offshore markets like Eastern Europe, the costs of renting a space, transportation, and utilities are considerably lower than those in the EU or US tech hubs. Other than that, team leaders can choose a vendor located in a region with lower tax rates to leverage the full power of cost reduction.
• 24/7 availability and minimize downtime. Having an R&D abroad allows business owners to run operations continuously. The difference in time zones between the vendor and the main office gives companies the benefit of constant availability, allowing team leaders to improve team efficiency and the quality of services.
• Ready-to-deploy infrastructure. Setting a branch office on their own requires a lot of commitment on business managers’ behalf. BOT, on the other hand, reduces the amount of effort needed to assemble a team and build a viable infrastructure. Choosing a build-operate-transfer vendor gives team leaders access to trained talent and fleshed-out infrastructure helping the main office focus only on the activities that are vital to the company’s growth.
• On-demand scalability. In times of uncertainty, hiring a team to run operations is a risky choice. A change in the economical landscape could lead business owners to consider lay-offs or closing the HQ altogether. It’s a frustrating process that might drag along a chain of lawsuits and allegations. To that end, BOT is a much more flexible and change-friendly model. It allows business owners to increase and reduce the scale of the center depending on the company’s immediate needs.
• New ideas and technologies. Reaching out to experienced vendors gives business owners a new valuable perspective on the project. Other than that, the main team will have access to the tools and practices service providers use. For team leaders, it’s an excellent opportunity to train the main team by arranging business trips and internships at the offshore center. Thus, an experienced vendor will give the main team a handful of valuable business transformation suggestions and help introduce innovation to internal processes.

The Bottom Line

The build-operate-transfer model is an intelligent way for IT business owners to fight talent shortage, reduce operating costs, and scale their services. Other than that, this collaboration practice helps improve the company’s reputation among end customers thanks to 24/7 availability.

As long as managers take their time to research reliable vendors, the benefits of the BOT framework will be immediate – heightened focus on the company’s core activities, introduction to new practices and technology, and affordable scaling.

Suggested:

Why do the bots crawl your website if you blog often?

How AI Chatbots helping in Industry to serve customers?

The post Inside Bot Business Model: Why Businesses Are Transferring Their Operations Offsite appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Secondly, this system that systematically travels the net to collect information on websites is often known as a web crawler or spiders as well as bots.

So, what is a bot? Basically, bots are automated software used by search engines to decide where a website will be displayed on their search results. Therefore, bots are pretty important, right? Absolutely! And as such optimizing your site for search engine bots and crawlers must be a part of any digital marketing and SEO strategy.

It’s very important to complete a digital marketing course so you are fully equipped with all the necessary information on bots and how they crawl websites and what factors should be top of mind when deciding on a good digital marketing strategy.

How do bots work?

As we know modern SEO is about much more than selecting and using the right keywords, whether for your website or blog.  Nowadays there are hundreds of SEO optimizing factors which include everything from meta descriptions and title tags etc.

Search engine bots seem simple enough as they monitor your blog or website for content relevance, quality, and authority.  However, it must be kept in mind that contains the search engine bots deem to be relevant or of good quality and authority is not static.  This automated software is constantly at work crawling websites and blogs, and it’s safe to say their work is never done.

As the largest search engine, Google has invested a lot of time and money into developing their Googlebot and it’s fair to say that all search engines are following the same example set by Google, so its important to optimize your blog for when the search engine crawls your content.

Bots and blogs

Free information online is given these days and it’s expected to be of high-quality relative content too. This is why blogging has become so popular as a part of a digital marketing strategy. Consistent, good quality and relative blogs are a great tool to drive potential customers to your website and increase your conversion rate. Digital promotion via ads or online videos is an important part of SEO, but blogging brings a more personal touch to your brand awareness campaigns.

Often times search engines display larger portions of content for particular search engine results, this is also seen by digital marketers as somewhat unfair as it seems the search engines doing this are favoring paying ads related to content.

What is search engine indexing?

Every single website and blog online needs to be indexed by the search engines in order to appear on the search result pages. How long does Google take to index a blog? Well, it’s quite a process, but Google’s bots work around the clock to crawl content, including websites and blogs.

Suggested:

Steps to accelerate the indexing of your website.

Backlinks: Everything You Need To Know About Them.

Benefits of blogging

For as long as SEO strategies have been part of digital marketing and blogging has been a great tool to build brand awareness and create a solid online presence. Consistent blogging helps the search engine bots crawl your website and signals where to send online users where to go for relevant information searched.

Here are a few more blogging benefits besides helping the bots crawl your website.

• Encourage links – If your blogs or website has high-quality content then users are more likely to recommend or include a link to your site or blog. It’s also a good idea to add links to your own site in your blog to direct readers to more information.
• Keeping visitors longer – It’s extremely important for SEO improvement to have visitors stay on your site or blog longer as it tells the search engines that your content is relative and of high quality.
• Improves SEO – Great blog content and good keyword usage undoubtedly improve your SEO rating as it tells the search engines that your site is a good resource.

Fresh content – We all know that search engines, including bots, love fresh content. So keeping this in mind it’s essential that you update your website often and add as many good quality blogs you are able.

The post Why do the bots crawl your website if you blog often? appeared first on Tricky Enough.