Strategic Outsourcing Professionals

As large companies experience growth, especially by acquisition, there will always be opportunities to consolidate and streamline business operations for optimal efficiency and cost reduction. When individual business units are managing the same function, such as Customer Care Operations, there is an opportunity to consolidate the function so each unit and their unique requirements are met while placing a core group accountable for all the operational infrastructure, vendor procurement and relationship management that is necessary to ensure excellent service delivery. For this reason, I am a firm believer and proponent of a Global Operations governance model when managing customer care across multiple business units within large organizations.

The benefits for consolidating the global sourcing function are as follows:

• Responsibility and accountability falls within one group to manage the service and sourcing function for the business to meet the needs of both internal and external customers.
• Promote collaboration between business units and drive toward unified customer experience goals.
• Optimize costs by performing Work Force Management (WFM) to forecast and staff a balanced vendor portfolio.
• Enable an infrastructure to seamlessly transition vendors when better performance, terms or service levels are desired.
• Expand, grow and align the business with strategic partners that can deliver results.
• Build a diversified vendor portfolio for business continuity.
• Build and foster sound relationships to ensure the business is satisfied with performance, costs and customer experience.
• Balance the need for immediate cost savings with customer satisfaction
• Coordinating activities/projects across multiple providers and geographies

I developed this star diagram for a recent presentation on Global Operations. I feel it sums up the function well.

Here are my top ten predictions for the BPO industry in 2008:

1. Outsourcing will once again become a hot topic in Presidential debates as both Republicans and Democrats try and win votes from the masses; expect lots of ‘Keep the jobs in the USA’ propaganda – it should be noted that neither political party really knows what they are talking about.
2. Guatemala of 2008 is the Philippines of 2003. Lock in those highly competitive rates and snatch up the English speaking talent while you can.
3. Locations will be more difficult to identify as market saturation in existing BPO destinations drives increasing costs and emerging BPO destinations offer threatening political profiles.
4. Offshoring market trends for quality English speakers will drive the Philippines to the number one destination for English-based support. This is only true if government officials can agree to disagree and get past their issues. No more bombings and coups are necessary.
5. BPO 2.0 will emerge and become a competitive advantage for vendors as work-at-home platforms have the potential to offer higher quality talent at cheaper prices. The financial services industry has work to do for this model, but it will eventually work itself out. By 2025, owning real estate to house a call center will not even be an afterthought.
6. Opportunities for business development are prevalent in Brasil as the economy will continue to flourish driving demand for Portuguese based services. Latin America provides the best opportunity to provide these services with vendors already providing free language classes.
7. Companies will continue the trend of reintroducing domestic-based services for critical vertical functions that include inbound/outbound sales, customer retention and escalation services.
8. Launching offshore, captive centers within big companies will continue in developed BPO markets. Captive centers will continue to be a key strategy in driving down operational costs while acquiring and retaining experienced resources.
9. Companies will learn to use outsourcing tools to manage SLAs more effectively to drive new and better contract terms with their providers.
10. Eastern Europe was buzzing in 2006/7. The region will not flourish for American business, but will emerge as primarily a European outsourcing destination.

Cheers to a prosperous and healthy 2008!