BPO Sourcing Insights
An Industry Veteran shares some keys to outsourcing from a client perspective
I thought I would launch my initial input by sharing some of the insights I have gained from working in the contact center and BPO space for the majority of my career. Most of these insights will be from the client perspective and are intended for you to get the most out of your existing or potential BPO engagement.
Rule Number One – Outsource for the right reasons. Are your objectives purely cost related or is outsourcing part of a larger enterprise strategy to leverage specialized firms for business processes that are ancillary to your core competency?
Rule Number Two –Outsource only what you can effectively manage. I have had the experience as a client of outsourcing multiple components of an enterprise support solution and the key was to develop an internal assessment for the suitability of various processes to actually be outsourced. Criteria to be considered include the following:
• Process maturity
• Process complexity
• Process stability
In other words, if your processes are not mature from a documentation, monitoring and baseline performance perspective, you will burn more energy and resources hand holding your outsourcing partner instead of monitoring performance results and working on process improvement initiatives. If you haven’t yet figured out what works best in your own backyard don’t expect a partner across the country or across the world to figure it out on their own.
Rule Number Three –Create an enterprise benefits realization methodology “before” you cut a deal. Some corporate managers make the assumption that an outsourcing agreement with attractive rates will automatically produce the desired financial benefits assumed. This may be true for the manager’s direct budget but how about the rest of the organization? If companies are not careful, they can get caught in a ”switch and bait” exercise of shifting costs from the outsourcing manager’s budget to the enterprise at large where the cost is obscured from association. What end’s happening is simply the transfer of the Outsourcing manager’s costs to other departments via lost employee productivity due to additional time needed to engage the outsourcer in everyday business processes.
Rule Number Four – Know your business better than your outsourced partner. If you think your outsourced partner will execute your processes better than you can without consistent investment of time and managerial oversight you better think twice. The responsibility for execution and performance results rests on both the client and the outsourced partner. Too many times client firms will throw processes “over the wall” and expect the outsourcer to manage everything to expectation without any client commitment to shared responsibility.
Rule Number Five – Treat your BPO provider with the level of respect and integrity that you expect to be treated as a client. There is nothing worse than to see client representatives operate from a domineering or bullying perspective. It is unprofessional and displays a lack of integrity and maturity. The impact of that can result in your BPO partner becoming less motivated to go out of their way or bring creative solutions or innovations to your business because they know you don’t respect them as true partners. Fix your attitude and watch how much your BPO partner will advocate for you internally. Not only that, they will also be more engaged and committed on your daily, weekly and monthly Operational and Business review sessions.
© 2007 Tracey Powell