Outsourcing is a practice long used by businesses across the world. But recently, more companies are exploring outsourcing processes or functions to multiple providers – particularly for contact centre and back-office roles.
There are many reasons for this. Certainly, cost is a big one. As cost of living and costs of owning a business rise, organisations are looking to do more with less. Outsourcing is an obvious answer. Being unable to find the expertise or the language offering with a single provider are also common reasons to engage multiple providers.
However, simply making the choice to outsource to multiple providers – even if they’re the best in the business – doesn’t guarantee optimal outcomes. Splitting the load might seem to make light work, but having separate providers undertaking different functions of the same process can make it easy for things to fall through the cracks.
Luckily, there’s some simple ways you can minimise the risks and the workload of managing siloed providers to ensure you (and your end customers) are able to reap the full benefits.
Gaps can easily form between multiple siloed providers
Picture this: A US-based business brings in an outsourced provider to assist with some accounting work and help reduce their ageing. They already had an offshore provider that managed the regular accounts databases, and an onshore team that managed manual transactions.
They’re all great at what they do, but they have hard boundaries about where their services start and finish. Financial transactions fall through the cracks, payments through different channels aren’t being communicated, and there are hundreds of thousands of dollars they were counting on coming in that had already been collected – but they didn’t know.
This is a real example of a business we worked with last year. It’s easy to see how the good intentions of bringing in skilled, outsourced help can cause certain complications when each resource is working in a silo.
Without communication and cooperation, the business employing these providers can end up doing more work trying to close the gaps and connect the dots. Suddenly, the time and cost benefits of outsourcing drop significantly.
Those who experience this – or hear of it happening to other business – may feel like they need to regress back to one provider to avoid the issues. But that doesn’t have to be the only option.
What is the benefit of multiple providers?
We’d like to imagine there’s the one perfect provider out there. But realistically, can you expect one to do it all? Your chosen provider might have the expertise in one area but be too expensive to bring on in another. Maybe they don’t have the full range of skills you need. Maybe they can’t offer all the language options you need for customer service.
It could just be you don’t like taking the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket.
If you decide to stick to one provider, you might remove the problem of process or communication gaps. But you potentially introduce new inefficiencies that limit your ability to meet business and customer needs.
Having multiple providers allows companies to diversify and find the right range of skills at the right cost to lift efficiency, service, and capabilities.
So, how can we stop the gaps forming and adding problems and work for your business or the person managing providers?
The trick is getting these providers to work together – you need to create a team.
Bringing all your providers onto one team
If you’ve chosen to work with multiple providers, you must have had a good reason. If it’s beneficial for your business, why surrender that because providers don’t naturally work together?
Closing the gaps between multiple providers should be as simple as bringing together each and asking them to work more collaboratively.
Admittedly, that can be easier said than done. While you would hope for enthusiastic cooperation, some providers may initially push back on the idea. In these situations, it’s important to:
- Own your decision – don’t second guess yourself. Remind of the research gone in and the benefits that drove the decision as the best one for your business,
- Explain your reasons – be honest with your decision to bring others in, and why you didn’t think each could deliver the full range of services on their own.
- Set expectations – a common response from providers is that if they’re working with others, they can’t guarantee service quality or outcomes. Setting clear expectations with them (and how you will judge performance) is important for settling these concerns.
If, after this process, providers are still unwilling to collaborate, that will tell you a lot. Providers should be prioritising you, the customer, and your needs. If they are unprepared to, they may not be the right provider for you.
Collaboration does not just provide your business with benefits – it can be beneficial for providers, too. Firstly, they get to see more of the process and better understand their customer. Secondly, it’s an opportunity to see the solution other providers are offering and how they’re doing it well – with potential to learn and upskill their own business.
Both of these generate a better outcome for you, and your customers.
Working together to improve overall outcomes
Outsourcing has long been utilised as a smart and efficient way to deliver a wider range of services or deliver a certain quality of service. Adding multiple specialist providers to your outsourced family can maximise these benefits even further, enabling your business to:
- Make use and have access to a range of skills and capabilities
- Lower costs without removing services or reducing quality
- Ensure diversity of providers and not rely on just one business
- Find the best approach and outcomes by trying different providers and methods
Businesses also need to be well aware of the gaps this set up can create and be proactive in bringing multiple teams together to address these, secure the process, and ensure the best outcome.
Omada One has worked with multiple providers in the past, both as a customer employing multiple outsourced providers, and as a provider working with others. The outcomes for the customer and the outcomes for the end customer are always better when the team work together.
At Omada One, teamwork is deeply entrenched in what we do – it’s even in our name (Omada = ‘team’ in Greek). With decades of combined nearshore/offshore remote staffing experience, we know how to participate in and build cohesive team environments that deliver outcomes. If you want to learn more about building multi-faceted teams across multiple BPOs, or about our range of back office and contact centre support solutions, get in touch.
