Strategic Outsourcing Professionals

My February has been very busy with travel and work, which is why I haven’t posted anything this entire month. My travels and workload are calming down so I figured I would take this opportunity on a lazy Sunday to get something out on the site. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I am a slacker.

I started off February in Asia, and my last post discussed the benefits of Cebu as a BPO Destination in the Philippines. I went to Central America the following week to visit facilities in Guatemala; we were impressed with the infrastructure and have started discussions to acquire some Spanish services for our business. After my travels, I have spent the last two weeks getting our team’s 2008 goals aligned, presenting project plans and financial goals to executive management and obtaining buy-in that we are going to accomplish great things throughout the year! The workload is heavy; we have approximately twenty projects to deliver by year-end. As always, I am confident we will come in on time and within budget.

One of the biggest things that we are going to accomplish this year is improvement upon our call abatement strategy, customer self-service and customer retention while also building upon our existing service experience for our customers. When looking at all these projects, it occurred to me that there is an extremely heavy focus on the discipline of Business Process Management. That being said, we instituted a paradigm to manage this discipline by leveraging the core principles of process design and improvement.

Business process management is a common term that means different things to different people. For me, I find this to be a simple core component of an organization and sum it up as the constant improvement of the foundational and ancillary processes that govern the business functions. The goals are to measure the success of processes to keep the ‘trend your friend’ (trend moves Up and to the Right) and demonstrate constant and continuous improvement. In turn, constant improvement drives down operational costs, which will land you in the ‘circle of trust’ (can’t resist, sorry…I liked Robert Dinero’s character in Meet the Parents…a lot).

There are many ‘best-practices’ for managing business process. Within my team, we have implemented a lot of six-sigma methodology to measure our success and improve how we operate. The idea with six-sigma is that you quantify improvement through statistical analysis. It has helped us a great deal on many levels; especially with our quality program. We have also adapted some of Microsoft’s approach to business process management and use this methodology to model our process design today.

• Model & Design
• Develop & Deploy
• Manage & Interact
• Analyze & Optimize

By adopting six-sigma principles and Microsoft principles, our business has and will continue to improve immensely. In my opinion, our business process efforts will improve the following for 2008:

• Increase Customer Retention
• Reduce Operational Costs
• Improve Regulatory/Compliance Objectives
• Improve Efficiencies Across Organizational Boundaries
• Enable Reuse
• Greater Employee and Personal Satisfaction
• Reduce Risk
• Agile Work Environment

I hope this post satiates all of you for now. My apologies again for taking so long to get something out on the site, but my real job and family take priority. Maybe I will develop a process to improve my available time for the website. I think this would be the hardest goal to conquer all year.

Cebu is a great destination to provide business continuity in your global sourcing plan; this is true even with Manila as an existing destination. The island is far south of Luzon (island where Manila resides) and is surrounded by neighboring islands. Because of the location, it is shielded from most tropical storms and typhoons. If Manila gets pounded with weather, Cebu usually doesn’t feel more than strong rain. Additionally, the island has the fastest growing economy in the island chain and is the second largest metropolis in the Philippines.

Here are some other factoids about Cebu:

• The island boasts a population of about 3.5MM; most speak English well
• Cebu graduates 20K students annually from its universities and offers a strong, educated labor pool
• Power sources are a mix of fuels and geothermal energy, ensuring long term reliability and protection of the environment; all power and water supplies are mutually exclusive of Luzon and the northern islands.
• BPO growth remains strong in the region and is expected to continue as the US economy heads into recession.
• Cebu is the most accessible place in the Philippines, with more domestic air and sea linkages than Manila
• It has one of the best records for peace and order within the country
• It is not in an earthquake zone or typhoon belt, nor are there volcanoes on the island
• Its labor force is oriented towards non-agricultural lines and is one of the most productive in the country
• The development of its infrastructure is balanced; it has all the ingredients necessary to be competitive and sustain investments

And, finally, my favorite tidbit about Cebu…

• Its warm hospitality, white sandy beaches and surrounding rich coral reefs, make it a favorite international tourism destination.

I am ready for some hard work ahead.