3. Running high-impact initiatives for client benefit

A BPO provider with a true culture of process excellence can generate positive change for clients from any part of its organization. When operatives and managers at all levels are trained in the use of quality management tools and methodologies, projects designed to improve processes can emerge from the grassroots level upwards rather than being pushed down from senior management. In this way, employees with the best understanding of a particular client’s processes – those people involved in operational delivery on a day-to-day basis – are also trained to identify and resolve shortcomings in the processes.

A best-of-breed BPO provider should also have a policy of reviewing internal projects and encouraging the sharing of best practices between different client verticals. This ensures that lessons learned with one client can be used to drive tangible added value for other clients.

Benefits

Beyond the desire to cut operational costs, a typical driver for outsourcing processes is to enable a tighter focus on core business. Choosing a BPO provider that has an end-to-end focus on process improvement helps achieve lower costs and also enhances the quality of the outsourced processes – taking full advantage of the provider’s core excellence.

In Firstsource’s experience, partnering with a BPO vendor that takes the above approaches to process excellence should deliver a productivity improvement of 10 to 15 percent over the first three years of the engagement. The following benefits should also emerge:

• Lower operational costs
• Enhanced levels of service
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Improved adaptability and scalability

Further reading

The next paper in this three-part series examines how select BPO providers build on process excellence, adding performance management as a structured discipline that delivers additional benefits to their clients.

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