Premier BPO, Inc. combines deep process efficiencies and hands-on, proven management team possessing 125 years combined experience in providing offshore BPO and call center shared services to Fortune 500 Companies and other industry leaders with a synergistic relationship that will assure quality and economy. Premier’s global footprint, with multiple facilities in China, The Philippines and Pakistan provides outsourced solutions that ensure that Premier consistently delivers on the promise of superior services in diverse geographies and the particular destinations specifically tailored to your company’s BPO programs and needs.

FAQ

• 1. What are the current trends in outsourcing from your perspective? Please provide any statistics that you think would be helpful for our attendees
• Premier BPO Answer: Outsourcing in general, and off shoring, in specific are growing tremendously. The type of functions outsourced, are increasing. No longer is it merely low end commodity work like Data Entry or Transcription. Now, Business Processes like financial services, medical billing and other higher value functions are being outsourced. In fact, the complexity of the services being outsourced is growing so much that BPO is evolving in some cases to KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing). Engineering, Design and other high "thought functions" are now also candidates for outsourcing.


• In addition to the quantity and complexity of functions being outsourced, the geographies being outsourced to, is rapidly expanding. Traditional outsource destinations such as India and The Philippines are being challenged by new emerging markets such as Pakistan and China. These new locations are providing new, high quality labor at lower rates with lower attrition rates then some of the early adopting countries.


• Last year, more than 50 percent of companies had a corporate offshoring strategy in place, up from 22 percent in 2005. Sixty percent of companies currently offshoring say they have aggressive plans to expand existing activities, according to the recently released survey conducted by the Duke University and The Conference Board.


• Many large organizations operate outsourcing departments, shows the report by IAOP's Advocacy & Outreach Committee.


• Outsourcing Statistics: Useful Outsourcing Facts and Figures:
  • Current figures values this robust industry to a staggering USD $20 Billion USD.
  
  
  • The information technology sector has been dominating the outsourcing market grabbing 28% market share.  This means that more and more IT companies are outsourcing their software and technology solutions development to offshore outsourcing providers.  This development is changing the face of the software development market.  The shift in software development to offshore companies resulted to significant workforce cutback in industrialized countries.  On the other hand, this development also paved the way for a renewed revenue growth and improvement of corporate financials of most software and IT companies.  This shows that outsourcing has a concrete impact on the profitability of the software industry.
  
  
  • This increased financial performance due to outsourcing has led other companies to follow suit.  In fact, 40% to 50% of the top 500 companies in the world is leveraging on outsourcing for most of their business processes.  These include top corporations not related to the IT sector.
  
  
  • Aside from IT and software development, other business processes that are increasingly being outsourced include marketing and sales, human resources, corporate financials and accounting, customer care and support, and office administration.  It has been shown by recent studies that outsourcing these services and business segments could bring a remarkable 50% to 70% savings on the variable expenditures of companies.
  
  

2.What criteria would you use when evaluating whether a financially distressed company could really get value from outsourcing? What would you look for, specifically, to determine whether a company should attempt outsourcing?

Premier BPO Answer: The criteria for evaluating whether or not a financially distressed company can get value from outsourcing is really no different then any financially healthy company, just more of an imperative. Does the company have pockets of labor with 10 or more FTEs, performing non-core, repetitive, replicable, trainable processes? If so, it is highly likely the company is a candidate for outsourcing those functions. In addition, if the company has those processes centralized, documented and measured, in a shared services environment, the company is even more ripe for an outsourcing solution.

• Identify Trends and Gaps
• Project Team & Roadmap
• Outline of Engagement Process
• Planning & Assessment
• Designing the Solution (DOU)
• Transition Management
• People, Systems, Process (SOW)
• Performance Management (SLA)
• Change Management
• Ongoing Relationship Management

3. What are the typical high-level steps that you go through and how long do they typically take? Could you accelerate these steps to help reduce costs quickly in a turnaround situation? How fast could you complete the outsourcing such that the company could reduce staffing levels locally?

Premier BPO Answer: Typically the high level steps that an outsourcer and company go through during an implementation are as follows:

• Process Understanding
• Planning
• Process Documentation
• System Requirements
• Staffing cConfiguration
• Training/Testing
• Parallel Processes
• Roll Out
• Analyze/Adjust

Depending on the actual processes being outsourced, this can be anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks. However, in a Turnaround situation many times this can be accelerated to reduce costs as quickly as possible. In cases where the functions are “standard’ such as AR/AP, data entry, or customer service, training could be as short as two weeks and staffing levels could be cut very quickly.

4 .What is the value proposition for the company? How much could they save over what they are doing now or the alternative?

Premier BPO Answer: The value proposition for the company who outsources is three fold:

• Meet or exceed the existing quality and productivity of operations
• Reduce the cost of those operations
• Variabilize the cost of those operations

Savings will vary based on the profile, skill and volume of work being outsourced but typically the savings can be as much as between 30% and 50 %

5. What are the risks of outsourcing? What are the red-flags? What does a company need to watch out for? When would outsourcing not be feasible as part of a turnaround strategy?

Premier BPO Answer: The perceived risk is a loss of control. However, the real risks are extremely minimal when done properly. Part of a successful outsource implementation is the understanding and acceptance of the middle management team that will act a point person and business conduit. A potential red-flag to be aware of is if the middle management point person has not accepted and bought into the role, they can intentionally or unintentionally sabotage the program. Companies need to watch out for employees who are trying to “protect” their internal fiefdom to the detriment of the overall good of the company goals. One, or a few individuals, should not be able to hinder the success of a properly scoped out outsource engagement. The only time outsourcing would not be feasible as a part of a turnaround strategy is if the functions considered are highly complex and specialized with no documentation and thus, no time or resources to effectively train an off shore team.