The multi-channel challenge

By Martin Conboy

The ability to offer customers the ability to communicate with a brand via a variety of channels has been the Holy Grail for the contact centre and BPO industries for quite some time. Now days customers are multi channel shoppers and business as a whole are struggling to meet the multi-channel expectations of their customers.

But how do you do this while maintaining consistency in the level and quality of service being provided. Adding new channels without a coherent and integrated channel strategy can lead to a chaotic and uncontrolled experience for customers. The exact opposite of what you want.

The goal of multi-channel customer service is to give customers a seamless experience irrespective of the channel they use to contact the organisation. Most companies recognise the importance of it, but acknowledge that they don’t have the systems or processes in place to do it effectively . Thus technology investment is critical to enabling exceptional customer experience. The ability to offer a multi channel experience is now a brand differentiator.

The challenge within

Most organisations cite internal structure as the main challenge. Silos within an enterprise means that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. One may well find that serious departmental brick walls, or silos, exist in the organisation that can hinder its progress in terms of process effectiveness and efficiency – or worse, profitability.

The help desk handling support questions via live chat is not integrated with customer complaints or billing enquiry phone lines. Each departmental silo has its own view of the customer, that’s very different to how the rest of the organisation views them. Attitudes can differ significantly between different sets of departments and industries around a wide range of categories – including timeliness, information quality, trustworthiness, professionalism and impact of service.

As such the customer may feel they are dealing with a different organisation depending on the channel and the type of interaction they require. Adding another channel can more than likely fragment that view even further and frustrate the customer rather than improving their experience.

The complexity of trying to integrate these various channels is enormous, where organisations lose site of the forest because of all the trees. Just maybe it is better to have 2 or 3 channels that are highly effective than a dozen or so that aren’t working so well.

The data challenge

Customers themselves are fickle creatures. They don’t all want the same thing and what they want changes over time. Organisations have access to vast stores of customer data stored in transactional databases, surveys and feedback forms, on emails, social media platforms etc., that can be used to better understand customer behaviour and expectations. But unifying these data sources to provide actionable insight can be tantamount to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Continuous Partial Attention (CPA), is the process of paying simultaneous attention to a number of sources of incoming information, i.e. customer feedback, warehouse withdrawals, and website hits, but at a superficial level.

Linda Stone coined the term in 1998. Author, Steven Berlin Johnson, describes this as a kind of multitasking: “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data; picking out the relevant details and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. CPA lets you cast a wider net but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish”.

Operating under such a value network might lead a company to “listen too much” to its main customers. As a result, it will not recognise potentially disruptive innovations that serve only marginal customers. Secondly, large companies will not be interested in small markets; they hardly offer significant growth opportunities. Again this will lead companies to completely ignore the disruptive innovation or to wait until the market is “large enough to be attractive”. That is exactly when new entrants attack incumbent’s turf, and by that time it is usually too late.

Don’t try to be all things to all people all at once

Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is multi-channel customer service. Take the time to evaluate the performance of each channel and how it can be improved and integrated with your other channels based on customer feedback and preferences.

Improve gradually over time rather than attempting too much all at once. Customers are more likely to be impressed by constant gradual improvement than a massive project to re-engineer everything, which might fall by the wayside for being too difficult.

https://econsultancy.com/reports/multichannel-customer-experience-report

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Managers must Manage their Bosses well

A key role of a managing director is managing his or her board. A well-managed board can be a great source of support, expertise and different perspective. A badly managed board can consume large amounts of management time, delay the making of strategic decisions and even lead to the removal of management altogether.

It is in the best interests of the whole leadership team to ensure that the board feels it is being heard, and that management is operating in a way compatible with the principles, intentions and strategic direction of the board. The relationship between a board and its leadership team is unique. When the board of company structure changes, so too should the approach the leadership team takes to its board management.

This is easier said than done. If a management team has invested heavily in devising its strategy, structuring the organisation and implementing new systems, it can get very attached to what it has created. Suppose the company is then merged or bought out, or the board changes for some other reason and the new board wants things done differently. How easy is it for the leadership team to back itself into a corner? Why change something that was working just for the sake of politics? Doesn’t it make more sense to invest time and energy in running the company than in answering a whole raft of questions from the board?

I remember working with two divisions of the same global company. The manager of one division thought the changed reporting requirements of head office were pointless and so ignored them (against, I might say, my advice). Not unexpectedly he was replaced. The head of the other division realised that unless he had the support of his leaders they would make his life and job untenable. He gave them what they wanted which allowed him the freedom to keep his independence.

Skills in upward management are essential for any leader. The job of a leader is to provide his or her superiors with information in the way they desire it so they can feel confident enough to grant a licence to operate. A licence to operate allows people to get on and do what they need to do to be successful.

By learning the political ropes and reporting in a way that builds trust, leaders create an environment in which their people can concentrate on the job at hand. This just doesn’t happen. The relationship between leaders up and down every organisation can be a winning tool for success or a constant block and annoyance. The difference is the willingness of each leader to manage his/her bosses’ need to know.

Margot is the creator of 12 Steps For Business; a strategic leadership and corporate transformation toolkit which enables leaders and organisations to envisage and achieve unprecedented levels of growth and success.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Strong Employee Engagement = Exceptional Customer Experience

Creating exceptional experiences for customers requires having engaged employees who are enthusiastic about their workplace and their role within the organisation. According to a recent Gallup study however, employees are disengaged at work – worldwide only a tiny 13% of workers are engaged.

Considering how much time we all have to spend at work, it must be soul destroying to go to a place everyday that eats away at the very fabric of your being. Of course if you are paying off a ridiculous mortgage like people do in Sydney then you may not have a lot of choice. The rat race is a very stressful endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It invokes the image of the fruitless efforts of a lab rat spending its existence running around and around on a spinning wheel or maze. And remember at the end of the rat race you are still a rat.

In a parallel to the modern urban environment, many rats in a single maze expend a lot of energy running around, but ultimately achieve nothing either collectively or individually. The rat race is often used in reference to modern work places, particularly repetitive, monotonous and dull work. This terminology contains inferences that many people see work as a seemingly sad endless pursuit with little reward or purpose other than a place to go everyday so that they can pay their bills.

The increased image of work as a “rat race” in modern times has led many people to question their own attitudes to work and seek a better alternative; a more pleasant-sounding ‘work –life balance’. Many people believe that long work hours, unpaid overtime, stressful jobs, commuting, less time for family life and/or friends life, has led to a general malaise in our communities, an unhappier workforce who do not have time to enjoy the benefits of increased economic prosperity and a supposed higher standard of living. The output of this way of living is manifested in divorce rates in first world countries of over 50%.

The Gallup report also says that the vast majority of people, some 63%, are “not engaged,” meaning they are unhappy but not drastically so. In short, they’re checked out. They sleepwalk through their days, putting little energy into their work.

A full 24% are what Gallup calls “actively disengaged,” meaning that one quarter pretty much really hate their jobs. Ouch! That cannot be a good thing for employee or employer. They act out and undermine what their coworkers accomplish.

Add the last two categories and you get 87% of workers worldwide who, as Gallup puts it, “are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.” In other words, work is more often a source of frustration than one of fulfillment for nearly 90% of the world’s workers. That means that most workplaces are less productive and less safe than they could be and employers are less likely to create new jobs.

The major challenges with employee engagement starts with defining the term. Employee engagement is a workplace methodology designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, inspired to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well being.

Author of Employee Engagement 2.0 and Employee Engagement for Everyone, Kevin Kruse, states, “Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company.”

The definition of employee engagement and how one measures it depends on which part of the organisation and how the organisation is structured. Charlene Li, from Altimeter highlights how HR will have a program to increase employee feedback, communications wants everyone to read the latest company newsletter and the Social Media team wants everyone to participate on the enterprise social network.

Research recently published by Altimeter revealed the following challenges when it comes to employee engagement[i]:

• Most organisations don’t have a well thought out employee engagement strategy
• Authentic employee engagement only happens when there is trust in the relationship — only 43% of survey respondents believe they have an organisational culture of trust and empowerment that supports employee engagement.
• Part of the problem is that there is no owner of employee engagement. In 41% of organisations, HR leads employee engagement efforts, while 17% and 11% have Employee/Corporate Communications and Marketing leading efforts, respectively.
• There remains significant untapped opportunity to use digital tools to enhance employee engagement. Only 36% and 25% of respondents have organizations where many employees use their internal collaboration platform and enterprise social network, respectively.

Mapping the Employee Journey

Creating exceptional customer experiences and engagement requires understanding and mapping the customer’s journey. Likewise employee engagement is dependent on creating exceptional experiences based on understanding and mapping the employee’s journey. The nature of the experiences an employee has will impact the level of engagement they have with your organisation’s goals.

It’s about understanding their role and the experiences they have of the organisation from their perspective. It’s going beyond the typical hire, train, and retain approach to HR and exploring how relationships can be deepened to drive business results and organisational change.

Employee engagement is not about establishing a specific state, but building relationships that can be developed.

There are differences between attitude, behavior and outcomes in terms of engagement. An employee might feel pride and loyalty (attitude); be a great advocate of their company to clients, or go the extra mile to finish a piece of work (behavior). Outcomes may include lower accident rates, higher productivity, fewer conflicts, more innovation, lower numbers leaving and reduced sickness rates and in the BPO world better NPS scores.  In reality all three – attitudes, behaviors and outcomes – are part of the engagement story. There is a virtuous circle when the pre-conditions of engagement are met when these three aspects of engagement trigger and reinforce one another.

Engaged organisations have strong and genuine values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two-way promises and commitments – between employers and staff – are understood, and are fulfilled.

Just like the customer journey. Company silos, overly strict and inflexible rules and poorly integrated systems and processes can impact the employee journey. The frustrations an employee can feel in trying to do their job can easily be passed on to the customer. In an outsourcing environment it’s the kiss of death.

Steve Rogers of Rusher Rogers HR Solutions, a leading HR practice in Melbourne Australia, offers this bit of sage advice, “If you have got your employee engagement model in place you still want new hires who are most likely to embrace your model, fit in with your culture and achieve the outcomes you need. You need to identify the behaviors that your star performers, who are most engaged, exhibit and the look for evidence of the same behaviors in the candidates that are applying for your roles. But remember look for “evidence” of behaviors. Not their opinion.”

In the BPO and outsourcing world where customer engagement has been outsourced to a third party , having disengaged employees / agents is bound to bring down measurements like NPS scores. Happy engaged employees really do equal happy customers.

Discuss.

[i] http://www.altimetergroup.com/2014/12/strengthening-employee-relationships-in-the-digital-era/

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Dawn of the cloud Robots

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and the cloud are on a collision course. This collision will have a significant impact on the BPO and outsourcing industries. Originally aimed at automating the actions and processes associated with managing existing software applications and manipulating data, RPA offers significant benefits and opportunities as existing applications are transferred to the cloud.

In a recent article, Jeff Augustin, Managing Director of outsourcing consultancy Alsbridge, was quoted as saying, “Smart robots will increasingly operate in the cloud, and we’ll see a ‘labor-as-a-service’ approach emerge as clients and providers find that intelligent tools and virtual agents can be easily and flexibly hosted on cloud platforms,” Augustin says[i]. “This will build even more momentum and interest in autonomics.”

RPA software can automatically process transactions, manipulate data, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems as necessary. It eliminates the need for people to perform high-volume IT support, workflow, remote infrastructure, and back-office processes, such as those found in finance, accounting, supply chain management, customer service, and human resources.It has the ability to eliminate many of the data entry and back office tasks and activities currently being managed by BPO and outsourcing contracts.When you bring the cloud and BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) into the picture, the level of automation matched with the level of flexibility in managing capacity offers enterprises significant cost savings through improved efficiency.

The original value proposition BPO offered in terms of labour arbitrage, according to Russell Ives Accenture Australia’s Operations Lead,  is fast eroding as the aggressive application of automation reduces headcount across BPO programs.Ives states, “There are two significant implications here, firstly clients are expecting to see more than just labour arbitrage from their BPO provider, as they are looking for a partner who can work with them to apply automation improvements to both retained and outsourced functions – this is no longer optional”.

“Secondly it will change the economics of BPO programs.  Providers will need to recognise and manage for a much smaller tail in the latter years of programs when the impacts of automation have significantly reduced outsourced headcount. Additionally providers will need to identify news sources of value and work with their to clients to establish commercial structures that have the right economic balance between lower value automated processes and knowledge related processes performed by higher skilled agents”.

Be prepared. The robots are coming to the cloud.

[i] http://www.cio.com/article/2864429/outsourcing/10-outsourcing-trends-to-watch-in-2015.html

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Take Me To Your Leader!

“Take me to your leader” is a science fiction cartoon catch phase, said by an extra-terrestrial alien who has just landed on earth in a flying saucer to the first human it happens to meet. It suggests that every organisation has to have someone in charge.

Leadership has been described as “a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”  (Chemers M. (1997)

Many organisations struggle with leadership development at all levels. Recently, Deloitte unveiled its Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, highlighting leadership as a top ten concern for most companies. The success of any outsourcing relationship is dependent on the quality of leadership from both the vendor as well as the client. Unfortunately, too many organisations adopt a one-size fits all approach to leadership development.

What is leadership?

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leaders help themselves and others to do the right things. They set direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership is about mapping out where you need to go to “win” as a team or an organization; and it is dynamic, exciting, and inspiring.

Yet, while leaders set the direction, they must also use management skills to guide their people to the right destination, in a smooth and efficient way.

Anyone in any position of authority likes to think they are a good leader. We can all think of examples of good and bad leaders, no matter what the incumbents thought themselves. Each executive, manager, team leader, and supervisor in your organisation most probably has his or her own definition of what leadership is.

Everybody has his or her own ideas about what it takes to be a good leader. For some it’s about having a strong vision and the capability to share it and have others support it[i]. For others it’s about empowering people to achieve their best. While some view leadership as the ability to encourage others to be leaders.

Leadership is all these things.

Fundamentally leaders are people who know how to achieve goals and obtain the necessary support from others to make things happen. Good leaders are necessary for organisations to grow and succeed. Good leaders are inclusive and bring people along with them.

Companies and BPO providers invest small fortunes in leadership development programs. Around $US 170 billion is spent globally on corporate training each year with 35% of this being spent on leadership development[ii].

Why many leadership programs fail

Many leadership programs assume that one size fits all and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of strategy, commercial situation and organisational culture[iii]. A BPO service provider may need to develop different styles of leaders depending on the contracts and nature of the clients they need to work with. It may need different leadership styles depending on the industries they target and general economic conditions.

Is the organisation in a fast growing and dynamic space requiring leaders brimming with ideas and technical know-how, who are prepared to take risks. Or is the organisation facing sluggish market demand and needs people who can control costs and streamline processes.

A good starting point for developing leadership within your organisation may be to come up with your own definition or range of definitions for the term. Define what characteristics are necessary for someone to be a good leader in your environment and at what level within your organisation.

Characteristics may include things like honesty, active listening, the ability to delegate, confidence, good communication, be organised and so on. What characteristics you choose and the importance you give to each will depend on the culture and objectives of your organisation.

Are good leaders made or born?

There are various debates about whether leaders are born or made or some combination of both. One thing that is fairly certain is that a brilliant leader in one situation does not necessarily perform well in another[iv].

As an employer you must decide which characteristics or skills you can help people develop to become good leaders, specifically within your organisation and what characteristics do they need to bring with them when they are employed.

As the BPO industry continues to evolve, diversify and adapting to an ever-changing world and business environment, leadership is becoming increasingly complex and demanding. Meeting that gap is a significant challenge requiring more than a one-size fits all approach.

And lastly: “My Religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”    The Dalai Lama

Kindness is a leadership characteristic that will deliver financial and humanitarian returns beyond imagination. It helps us create work environments that are based on trust and that allow people to express and experience meaning and purpose at work.

Kindness is the willingness to open one’s heart to another and to do so as instinct, not as calculation. Kindness is a show of respect for someone, whether you agree with his or her point of view or not. Kindness leads to listening, to curiosity and to the creation of environments at work, home and in the community, where there is an unspoken covenant of honour and of worthiness. It helps us internalize and cultivate an understanding that none of us can survive or achieve personal or organizational success alone.

Focus on happiness

What about your company makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? By asking two such simple questions, a manager can discover how best to motivate his employees, persuade his customers, and support its shareholders. According to the Dalai Lama, happiness is the highest universal form of motivation. A happy company is a successful company. You are more invested in success when you care about where it comes from.

[i] http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647-leadership-definition.html

[ii] http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/04/the-recovery-arrives-corporate-training-spend-skyrockets/

[iii] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/why_leadership-development_programs_fail

[iv] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/why_leadership-development_programs_fail

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

Are you talking to me?

Despite being the channel customers love to hate IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is still growing and is predicted to be worth $2.78 billion by 2017, according to a 2012 report from Global Industry Analysts (GIA)[i]. The growth is being driven by outbound IVR to deliver important notifications and proactive customer service functions.

IVR has had a mixed history, on one hand reducing call wait times and improving overall efficiencies and service levels, on the other, driving customers to switch to competitors.

We’re all familiar with the experience of having to navigate through a complex and confusing IVR menu to finally be put through to the wrong department or service or for the call to drop out. The experience leaves you frustrated. Badly designed IVR systems may have contributed to bad customer experiences more than any other channel.

Key areas in IVR development in recent years, that are altering the previous negative perceptions of this self-service technology, have been in Outbound IVR and Visual IVR.

Outbound IVR

Outbound IVR allows organisations to proactively and automatically engage customers through a variety of channels such as automated voice calls, SMS messages, email or social media posts with personalised communications. Providing immediate, faster and real-time information and services to customers Calls can range from personalised, event-triggered notifications and two-way interactions to broadcast messages to hundreds or even thousands of customers.

It can be used in a variety of situations including:

• Sending emergency notifications,
• Personalised offers and promotions
• Travel-related notifications
• Problem reporting
• Change notifications (account status, billing, rates)
• Shipping notifications

Visual IVR

Steve Morrell, founder and principal analyst of ContactBabel, an analyst firm for the contact centre industry, highlights how smartphones and tablets can give companies the option of offering visual representations of their IVR menus[ii]. This can enhance the customer experience as most people find it easier to read and select options in text and visual format than to listen to it being spoken.

Visual IVR presents customers with a menu driven interface to the IVR system which is available from a website or mobile app.  Visual IVR can be used to send video or push other content. This content can be educational or for marketing purposes or to assist the customer’s self-service requirement in some way.

Visual IVR allows companies to connect their traditional contact centre channels to new mobile platforms, enhancing their ability to serve customers. Visual IVR can be implemented with existing DMTF technology and IVR systems, requiring few modifications.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Innovate or Die!

By Martin Conboy (theOutsourcing-guide.com)

“If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, then the end is in sight” Jack Welch, CEO, G. E. In fact, the world is changing so rapidly that organisations are struggling to keep up.

I always remember my first boss telling me that if you are not going forwards then you are going backwards! For businesses and economies to thrive and adapt to change they must innovate. These days, clients expect their BPO and outsourcing providers to be innovative in adding strategic value to the outsourcing contract. But how does one become innovative? Primarily, it requires a willingness to take risks. There is no guarantee that trying something different is a pathway to success, sometimes it means it just might not work.

In its early years, 3M aka Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was on the verge of failure. After years of mining losses management came to a crossroads. Close down or do something different. As Albert Einstein said, “If you want different results, do not do the same things.” 3M executives did what most successful executives do when faced with failure. They used it as an opportunity to find a new way forward. Today, the company generates billions in revenue and employs over 80,000 people.

What is the ingredient that brought 3M back from the brink of failure? While there are several candidates, the one that stands out is innovation.

Many organisations place innovation on their list of corporate values. However, much fewer actually have a culture in place that actively encourages it. Some organisations and industries are particularly risk adverse, preferring to rely on practices and traditions that have produced results in the past than invest in new ideas that might not succeed.

According to a recent McKinsey survey, innovation has become one of the top business objectives in organisations that want to grow, out perform their competitors and, indeed, even survive by creating a higher value proposition. More than 70 precent of senior executives said ‘innovation will be at least one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies in the next three to five years.”

Furthermore, leading strategic thinkers are moving beyond product innovations to innovations in business processes, distribution, value chains, business models and even the functions of management.

Another major barrier to innovation are managers and executives who are resistant to new ideas and suggestions from others, particularly from staff and employees. Internal jealousies stemming from turf wars, departmental or staff rivalries can make change very difficult to achieve.

McKinsey again, 65 precent of the study group expressed concern about the ability to stimulate innovation. Saying ‘mountain; and climbing it can be very different things.

Innovation is not about technology

There’s a tendency to think of innovation in terms of technical innovation. Though technology is important, it is only a part of the picture. According to best-selling business author, Scott Berkun, “Innovation is significant positive change”[i]. That change can apply to technology or to products and processes, or it can apply to people.

In terms of an individual business or enterprise, this could mean implementing new ideas, creating dynamic products or improving existing services. Innovation can be a catalyst for growth and success, helping companies and industries to adapt and grow.

Being innovative does not mean inventing. It means creating a culture of innovation and promoting innovative thinking and creative problem solving.

The drive for innovation

Businesses that are innovative create more efficient work processes and have better productivity and performance. Research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity in the US highlights how high-performing organisations are up to three times more likely to implement people practices that drive innovation[ii].

It’s not just individual businesses or industries that need to innovate to survive – it’s entire economies. The 2015 Intergeneration Report produced by the Australian government has highlighted the need for the Australian economy to create new industries and for existing industries to adapt to a changing Asia-centric world.

As a nation Australia needs to be a lot more innovative.

Being innovative

When outsourcing their business processes clients now expect innovation and for providers to add real strategic value. In fact the term innovation is bandied about so often that saying you are innovative is hardly a point of difference. The world has moved on from BPO 1.0 –lift and shift and clients want a value add that goes way beyond price.

Even very risk-adverse organisations will claim to be innovative. But being risk-adverse can be the main stumbling block to innovation. Relying too extensively on tradition and what has worked in the past will inhibit the ability to enact positive change for the future. “That’s the way we have always done it’ or ‘It’s policy” are attitudes that could be the kiss of death.

Developing BPO and outsourcing relationships that are focused mainly on avoiding risk with for the vendor or the client or both, will inhibit innovation and creative problem solving.

Be prepared to take risks

You’ll never be ahead of the pack if you don’t do something different from everybody else. This is not to say you should become reckless and invest in every idea that’s developed. You do need to develop a process for evaluating the risk and benefits of any particular initiative and decide if the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.

A good example is Apple the most valuable company in the world. Apple has a program called ‘Blue Sky’ that lets a few select team members take a few weeks at a time to work on a favourite project. This frees up brainpower for innovation.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing

Innovation is not delivered by a single visionary within the company. Regardless of how innovative or visionary a CEO or director of the business maybe as an individual, that does not mean the organisation as a whole will be innovative.

Vital to driving innovation is greater collaboration and knowledge sharing, within the organisation and with external stakeholders such as partners and customers. Collaboration encourages discussion, new ideas being put forward, appraisal and revision of those ideas and greater awareness of the problems being faced by the organisation.

Each employee and stakeholder will have a unique perspective on a problem and are capable of developing a possible solution or suggestion to resolve it.

Driven and inspired from the top

It’s the responsibility of senior management and executives to ensure a culture of innovation is promoted, encouraged and supported throughout the entire organisation.

[i] http://scottberkun.com/2013/the-best-definition-of-innovation/

[ii] http://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2013/04/02/i4cp-research-human-capital-practices-drive-organizational-innovation

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Navigating the multi-speed economy in 2015

By Matthew Franceschini, CEO of Entity Solutions

Throughout the mining boom, there was much talk about Australia’s two-speed economy. The idea that one portion of the economy was thriving while another declined was hard to deny, especially when, in 2012, the Australian Bureau of Statistics pointed out that sales growth across our mining states was five times that of the rest of Australia.

Mining slowdown contrasted by growth in other sectors

Mining has now slowed and the question of performance is more complex. Instead of two speeds, we’re seeing a multi-speed economy, with the construction industry growing strongly while, at the same time, the performance of the services sector has [pullquote]In our multi-speed economy, the freedom to bring in new skills, to ‘staff up’ or down as demand requires, is extraordinarily attractive and very powerful.[/pullquote]deteriorated. Deloitte’s report Positioning for prosperity? Catching the next wave predicts that the five sectors to experience steady incremental growth over the next 10-20 years will include agribusiness, gas, tourism, international education and wealth management. Collectively, these five sectors have the potential to plug the gap as the mining boom recedes.

As a result of the multi-speed economy, in 2014 businesses showed a marked apathy towards large investment decision-making. While Australia has staved off recession for over two decades, there is no denying we are in an economic slowdown, with recent figures indicating GDP growth slowed to just 0.5% in the last quarter of 2014. With these conditions expected to continue well into 2015, many organisations adopt a “wait and see” approach to anything requiring additional financial risk.

Contingent workers: The key to navigating lulls

Contingent workers (those work is characterised by non-permanent contract arrangements) have long been engaged by organisations looking for scalable technical expertise on demand. However just as the global workforce landscape has rapidly evolved from what it once was, contingent workers have developed and grown to be more than simply a gun for hire.

According to research by Oxford Economics, 3 of the top 5 labour market shifts affecting workforce strategy are increasing number of contingent employees (37%), increasing number of intermittent employees (37%) and changing work models (35%).

85% of Australian organisations were also seen to be increasingly using contingent, intermittent, seasonal, or consultant employees to help rebound amidst economic uncertainty, indicating this is no passing trend. Contingent work will continue to grow as a crucial mode of engagement to support businesses and individuals craving flexibility alike.

In our multi-speed economy, the freedom to bring in new skills, to ‘staff up’ or down as demand requires, is extraordinarily attractive and very powerful.

To read full article please visit http://blog.entitysolutions.com.au/navigating-the-multispeed-economy-in-2015/

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

Why Recruitment Agencies Need to Outsource Their Back Office

By Martin Conboy

Every time I speak to a recruitment company, they always seem to want to turn back the clock to a time when the market was nicely structured and ordered and clients and candidates behaved themselves. They fail to appreciate how things have changed.

Romantically, they cling to a time circa 1985, when clients paid for expensive display adverts in the Saturday papers that promoted the recruitment company’s brand and candidates dutifully applied for the advertised positions. Recruitment projects took six weeks; the earning potential was excellent and lots of recruiters were flashing around in very expensive motorcars. It really was the best gig in town!

Fast forward to today and the recruitment market in Australia has changed, according to the Manpower Australian Employment Outlook Q1 2015 – ‘Australian employers report encouraging signs for job seekers in the upcoming quarter. With 19% of employers expecting to increase staffing levels, 12% are forecasting a decrease and 68% anticipating no change. This remains relatively stable year over year.’ It is worth noting that the market has been in decline since 2010.

https://www.manpowergroup.com.au/documents/MEOS/2015/MEO

What changed? Today, recruiters are finding it difficult to articulate their value proposition to their clients. In many ways, a recruiter seems to be nothing more than an expensive resume screener to their clients and these employers are sceptical about the position of recruiters in the market. They are unable to see or understand the cost benefits of using an external recruiter.

When one considers that even though recruitment companies have large databases of candidates, because they are badly structured, they cannot access them to exploit the gold that lies within. In this day and age with all of the tools and specialist recruitment software available, it’s beggar’s belief to learn that companies are still trying to manage their candidates by using Microsoft Outlook and Excel (very last century).

Recruitment company databases, although having large numbers of candidates, are almost useless as they are not ‘clean’ and badly formatted. Moreover, no one inside the recruitment firms spends enough time working with the databases to really extract value from them – it’s just too hard!

As a result of recruiters struggling to deliver the touted value of their databases, they turn to throwing up adverts on an online job board with a wing and a prayer hoping that a candidate will put their hand up. Consequently, the notion of delivery of “Expertise – as – a – Service’ (EaaS) falls flat.

The recruitment market is saturated; is hyper competitive and costs are not going down. Retained assignments are rare and employers will only pay on a ‘first past the post’ basis. Whoever fills the position gets the prize. Many recruiters are working in a hidden factory underneath their business that no one is paying for and over ninety per cent of their assignments will not generate a fee.

Some leading recruitment industry commentators report that over one third of staffing companies are operating at a loss and another third are barely breaking even. The leading, savvier firms are automating their processes and augmenting their systems by utilising less expensive recruiters based in places like the Philippines to gain a competitive advantage. I have written about video recruitment firms like Canadian based VidCruiter (www.VidCruiter.com.au) who are leading the charge in the North American markets.

The market is driven by metrics like “speed to hire” and candidates are now sourced on social media sites like LinkedIn. Job boards and traditional job boards are passé and are no longer as effective as they once were.

A surge of new technologies and media innovations have really altered the landscape. The point is that those who know how to engage with the new ‘internet of everything’ world will thrive and those that don’t or cannot be bothered will be left behind.

Lastly, apart from all of the economic process considerations mentioned above that will impact on recruitment companies, the biggest shop stopper is poor candidate management. It’s like a slow burn or the death of a thousand cuts for a recruitment company’s reputation.

Everybody knows about it; candidates apply for a job, take time and consideration over their application; throw their hats in the ring – and then nothing! Guess who they tell about their bad experience – everybody, absolutely everybody and now their voice is amplified by access to social media. In fact, people work overtime to trash recruitment companies’ reputation.

The reader might like to read http://gregsavage.com.au/2011/03/02/“god-i-hate-recruiters”/, which provides an excellent insight to the issue. Better still put ‘I hate recruiters’ into a search engine browser and take your pick. I got 488,000 pages. Ouch!

Why not employ a less expensive assistant in the Philippines to do rejection emails and you may even win praise for being a leader in candidate care.
It is, therefore, little surprise that the outsourcing model is evolving quickly. Forward looking companies are adopting an outsourcing model into their core business process to generate high ROI, reduce cost, and fill job orders faster.

Recruitment Industry commentator Rod Hore recently published the following in his blog:

“Here are 5 big reasons why recruiting businesses are outsourcing their work to an offshore partner:

Reduce Cost: By outsourcing ancillary functions to an offshore recruitment partner, you can save a big-time cost. It has also been seen that staffing firms save up to 60% costs by outsourcing their work to an offshore partner. Additionally, recruitment firms even reduce their infrastructure expenses such as extra cost for hiring personnel, as once they tie up with an offshore partner, they need not establish an additional workplace in any new location.

Global Advantage: Success of recruitment businesses depends on how fast they can deliver qualified, available and retainable candidates from across the globe. Your client will always think of growing globally and would want to hire resources that can support their business plan in diversified geographies. Even recruitment agencies need to spread their network and speed up hiring faster from different geographies without adding cost to the business. This is possible only by outsourcing their sourcing process to an offshore partner that has expertise in hiring candidates at a global level.

Speed & Flexibility: Many offshore recruitment service providers work as per the time zone requirements of their client’s geography. Staffing firms can get the benefit of running their business in full control even in uncertain business environments, if they outsource their independent tasks to an offshore firm that offers flexible environment and works to meet on-demand needs.

Productivity: Recruiter’s efficiency is severely affected by overburdened non-core functions. By outsourcing ancillary functions to an outsource partner, staffing firms can optimally utilize the efficiency of their precious human resource in generating real time returns. With a strong support of offshore recruitment model the team can produce faster results and increase turnaround time to the costumer. It increases the in-house productivity and also overall business productivity.

Save Time: Efficient utilization of time is the biggest reason for which businesses are switching to ORS model. Staffing firms from different geographies enjoy the benefits of difference in time zones as they can run their business 24×7 in spite of limited team size by outsourcing their services. They can speed up their processes and reduce service delivery time remarkably.”

Recruitment Virtual Support Agents (RVSA) are here now and their use is growing quickly. Businesses like www.VirtualAssistantMums.com that support Australian recruitment companies with everything from screening, assessment and candidate profiling to resume harvesting from social media sites like LinkedIn and database maintenance.

Leading recruitment industry advisor and high performance recruitment coach Ross Clennett, said,
“Agencies lose productivity to sub-par support staff; however, offshoring these services is a time- and cost-efficient solution,” said Clennett.

“Business support specialist Rusher Rogers Recruiting turned to an offshore admin and support solution after escalating staff costs and turnover issues negatively affected the company’s profitability,” Clennett said.

“The company has had mixed success with admin and support consultants, typically being okay [at] admin but generally weren’t very good at sourcing candidates and only skilled at processing incoming applicants,” he said.

“The agency began using a ‘Recruitment Virtual Support Agent’ (RVSA) to address the issue,” said Clennett.

“For a monthly cost of $3,000 plus GST, the admin and support role is undertaken by an RVSA saving [the company] around $2,000 a month in salary ‘on costs’, before the savings of associated office costs.”

The old model of recruitment is broken. To survive, the modern recruitment firm has to lower its operating costs and outsourcing its back office processes is the most obvious and logical thing to do.

“After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years (a sunk cost if ever there was one), people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them.”

Marshall Goldsmith
Mojo

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

How Good are your People?

By Martin Conboy of theOutsourcing-guide.com

Whether it’s for managing front office or back offices processes, outsource service providers need to recruit the best available talent and then keep them. As clients look to service providers to provide the necessary skills, strategic advice and innovation to assist their organisations, service providers need personnel who are operating at the top of their game. A host of new technologies and approaches have emerged that allow outsourcing providers to better manage their recruitment needs now and into the future.

As the outsourcing industry attempts to redefine itself and its value proposition, BPO providers face a number of significant challenges in terms of recruiting, managing and retaining staff. Needless to say to meet their SLAs they need to maintain sufficient staffing levels and access to skills to ensure clients receive the quality of service they require.

Clients can have particularly high expectations in terms of quality, security, timeliness and consistency. Their expectations of their outsourcing partner can be much more sophisticated than what they expect from their own internal departments. After all why would they outsource it if they could do it better themselves? And of course they want their expectations met at reduced rates relative to their own internal cost structures.

1. Employing and managing large and dynamic work forces

BPO service providers often need to recruit and train a large number of people in a short period of time. As well as consuming a large number of resources to manage this, ensuring the quality of the people they are hiring can be a significant challenge.

The employment of large numbers of employees requires an extremely efficient and consistent recruitment process based on competency and behavioral based assessments. Inconsistencies and no uniformity of process increase the likelihood of mis-hiring or rejecting the most suitable candidates for your organisation.

Everyone involved in the recruitment and selection process needs to be on the same page. Regardless of who’s doing the hiring, internal hiring managers or third party providers, consistency and efficiency need to be the focus of the entire process.

To improve the efficiency of the recruitment process, a range of automation and online tools have emerged over the last decade or so. If nothing else these tools will encourage one to define and map out ones recruitment process and identify key competencies and behavioral characteristics required for the roles being recruited.

Most of these tools will process job postings and handle applications, eliminating a range of repetitive and time consuming tasks associated with recruitment. But any automation added to processes and activities not well planned or designed will cause inconsistencies and problems to occur.

Business Process Modeling (BPM) is the mapping out of a company’s processes with the goal of improving their efficiency. BPM is commonplace in operations management, however it’s value transcends into all areas of business operations.

Sophisticated outsourcing organisations are starting to understand their cost per hire (CPH) as a metric to manage costs in the recruitment process. Not counting the actual sometimes not insignificant amounts of money spent on marketing and promotions to attract people to actually apply for a position, the actual costs associated with screening and processing applicants can be a daunting number.

A successful job applicant will move through a number of steps from the time they apply through to their on boarding and training. Any inefficiency in the recruitment process can have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line, while also wasting every body’s valuable time. Most organisations have a ‘hidden factory’ that sits underneath the real company and does all of the rework and duplication of effort that no body is paying for.
Analysing past hiring data can be used to map and identify the characteristics and criteria that have contributed to successful hires. What characteristics do people have – who stay with the company and succeed in their roles they were recruited for?

2. Competition for staff in tight labour markets

Competition for quality employees in popular BPO Locations can be extremely high. As talent markets dry up companies may decide to move beyond the traditional BPO strongholds in places like Asia and into one of the emerging markets in Africa, Eastern Europe or South America and the Caribbean

Companies move into these markets to take advantage of the blossoming talent base and as they do so they need to work with the society and education systems to ensure that the people entering the employment market from university in four to five years time will have the type of skills that they will be looking for.

3. Remuneration and costs.

In tight labour markets remuneration costs can quickly escalate reducing margins or increasing prices for clients. Retaining key personnel and mid-level management becomes paramount. There are a number of strategies to help with retention and attracting staff beyond offering higher salaries and benefits.

An effective strategy can be to become an employer of choice by building brand loyalty and equity with employees. Companies like Transcom in the Philippines have set the benchmark here with their culture changing music videos strategy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8zDX0Uop7s

Help employees with their professional and personal development while providing them with a positive and encouraging work environment. Even if they leave your company they will remain ambassadors to your brand and promote the benefits of working for your organisation.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com