what is back office

In most corporations, the back office is where work that supports front office work is done. The front office is the "face" of the company and is all the resources of the company that are used to make sales and interact with customers and clients. The back office is all the resources of the company that are devoted to actually producing a product or service such as data entry, payroll, accounting, and all the other labor that is not seen by customers, such as administration or logistics. Back-office functions include settlements, clearances, record maintenance, regulatory compliance, accounting, and IT services. The back office is composed of administrative and support teams that are responsible for operations but don’t directly interact with customers or generate revenue. The term "back office" originated when early companies designed their offices so that the front portion contained the associates who interact with customers, and the back portion of the office contained associates who did not. The back office is the operational areas of a company that support the front-office or customer-facing part of a company.