back office
7
3.7
- noun
- /bæk ˈɔfɪs/
- Jargon
:
oficina administrativa
- Well, why don't you let me help with the back office?
- back office operations
- back office functions
- back office jobs
My business partner would do a lot more of the accounts and kind of back office stuff.
- My business partner would do a lot more of the accounts and kind of back office stuff.
- He's just moved over over here into one of our back offices simply because we're just rejiggering things a little bit.
- Centralized back office functions are more of a hindrance and market confusion due to the shared Sequoia brand.
- We have a phenomenal back office in Baltimore, MD where it's, you know, you don't lose people and no one even knows they're there and they just do an awesome job.
Examples
-
Implementing this customer-centric vision requires the growth of knowledge jobs, while task-oriented back office functions are declining.
Blog text (17) -
We have a phenomenal back office in Baltimore, MD where it's, you know, you don't lose people and no one even knows they're there and they just do an awesome job.
-
You can put them in your back office.
-
I was just in the back office.
-
We were told not to open the store and to remain in the back office until someone arrived.
Blog text (12) -
At the same time, the back office has seen very little investment.
Blog text (13) -
Why did you leave the back office, Mr Lloyd?
-
Jack Mitchell sat heavily in a too-small chair at the desk in the back office.
Fiction book (1997) -
Vesta also offers a suite of back office services, including payment processing and customer service.
-
Lendia now supplies software and back office support to other mortgage lenders as well.
Synonyms
3
1.9
A place where people do paperwork and other work for a company
1
2.7
A part of a company that handles one area of work, like sales or marketing
How Customer-Facing
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'administrative/support department not dealing with customers' is directly inferable from combining 'back' (rear/behind) with 'office' (place of business); the compound denotes the office at the back that handles non-customer-facing work. This spatial/compositional logic is common cross-linguistically (contrast with 'front office'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would very likely understand the MWE.
Etymology
The term back office comes from the simple picture of an office at the back of a shop or building, where people worked 'behind the scenes' and out of view of customers. That's why back office now means the part of a company that does administrative and support tasks rather than work directly with customers.