White Paper BPO Innovation

Transcription

1 BPO Innovation This white paper is available for download on Teleperformance s website. For more information about articles, cases, white papers go to:

2 Analytics and Automation: Innovative BPO Solutions Driving Success In its infancy, business process outsourcing, or BPO, was considered to be a purely cost-saving strategy. As companies sought avenues to reduce expenditures and potentially extend productivity, they began to rely on outsourcing as the preferred vehicle to provide them with the services required. While companies seemingly got the best of both worlds, emerging business evolutions and new best practices weren t always easy to implement into an outsourced business process. Both the companies and their outsourcing partners were restricted by the confines of their contractual agreements when what they really wanted was an agile, responsive process that naturally allowed for results-oriented improvements. In this highly competitive environment, companies are constantly evaluating best practices and implementing new techniques. As a result, they will increasingly seek solutions that ensure BPO s cost-saving qualities, are adaptive in the face of changing business climates and help build top-line growth. Indeed, these innovations will cement the future of BPO not only as a costreduction measure, but as a calculated growth strategy. BPO Operations and Innovation In years past, companies prioritized stability and operational consistency in the BPO environment. 1 After all, BPO was thought to be a strictly cost-saving measure and there was little emphasis on the possibility that it could also be an effective business solution whose benefits were felt throughout the company. Companies were concerned that the process of retooling and exploring improved outsourced operations through innovation - would come at the expense of a stable service level. Today, industry leaders and key decision makers who shape the BPO environment take a different track. In fact, according to a recent study of buyers who demonstrate significant influence over BPOs, some 94 percent felt that achieving innovation was important to operational leadership. Clearly, the tides have turned. What s more, innovation is becoming a principal factor in BPO provider selection. Provider services offer little in the way of price differentiation in the market, so buyers look for those companies that stand out, not as costsavers, but as innovators. Companies are looking for track records of innovation achievement, as well as the potential for more. They may look to their BPOs for innovation that will help them increase margins, shorten time to market, reduce risk, improve outcomes and / or increase customer satisfaction. This could include solutions like aligning BPOs with current in-house business processes (such as those in IT or regarding Cloud strategies) to ensure their relevance and integration with whole-company systems. BPO innovation could also contribute to addressing offshore, nearshore and onshore issues and improving global positioning and operations. Or, it could also help streamline processes and agility through improved front and back-office integration. 2 It s a time of growth and development for innovation in BPO. Some of the most successful growth has been achieved in analytics, which shape ideal business practices. That said, innovation in customer care has yet not kept pace or met client expectation. High performance through innovation in these areas will be critical in defining an ideal BPO provider-company relationship. 1. Innovation? The BPO industry needs to escape from purgatory. Part I. Horses for Sources The Outsourcing Institute. 2

3 Analytics Business processing systems whether designed for bill payment, transaction processing, or other procedures seek, create and have access to vast amounts of data. As handlers of these vast quantities of data, BPOs are able to mine the information and discover meaningful patterns through careful examination. Data analysis is performed through application of statistics, computer programming and operations research. Companies can then use the insights provided by these analytics to better understand their customers, their business practices and forecast trends. In an ideal BPO provider/company relationship, providers apply their deep industry and processing knowledge to the data analysis to determine the right key process indicators, or KPIs. Providers then implement systems that measure and record KPIs over time, and apply algorithms or models to help them identify shortcomings and flaws in the processes. These analytics can also shine a light on areas that are falling below their benchmark. They can then leverage the analytics to make tangible and quantifiable improvements to business processes. Predictive analytics is also an important feature of business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or other organizational element. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model which has been trained using your data and learning from past experiences. Predictive analytics optimizes decision-making for each individual in order to improve processes and results, such as sales and customer satisfaction. For example, if a BPO provider handles back-office credit card fraud prevention operations and monitors credit card purchases, data can be mined throughout the entire transaction and resolution process to establish an accurate customer behavior pattern. When customers make a purchase using their credit card, information such as time of purchase, amount of purchase, type of purchase and purchase location is collected. That data is analyzed and compared to their purchasing profile. Purchases that fall outside the typical buying pattern have a higher likelihood of being fraudulent. Discovering behavior patterns through analytics and using them to flag potential fraudulent credit card purchases early in the process can prevent serious asset loss by the credit card company. In this instance, the BPO provider used their deep insight into operation, fraud prevention and customer experience to provide true analytics-based innovation. 3

4 Business Process Automation Efficiency and productivity have always been central benefits and unique strengths of BPO. There is no channel that offers both to such as high degree as business process automation. This involves the mechanization of complex business functions through robotic process automation, also known as RPA. A RPA mimics the computer-based tasks that a human worker must complete, and then replicates them at a much faster rate, and for longer periods of time 3. This type of automation can significantly increase productivity. What s more, it can integrate fully and automatically into front-office processes, streamlining the connections and work synchronization between front and back-office systems. RPA also use eliminates the possibility of human error and promotes data integrity, which is critical for accurate data analysis, and consequently, for producing actionable analytics. that in order to remain competitive globally, it had to review and re-organize its business processes. This would be the key to both improving customer service and unlocking future growth. Teleperformance embarked on a business process redesign that required two phases. The first was process mapping in which the entire operation is reviewed and each process phase recorded. This provided Teleperformance with insight into the company s current systems and highlighted opportunities for streamlining through automation. The second phase, process automation, put the new operational procedures into place. In the case of the computer company, the process automation was able to significantly cut down on the time that employees wasted on uploading data manually, generating information and performing cross-system referencing. By implementing tools that automated those processes, productivity increased and operational costs decreased by around 15 percent. Not only that, but there was an astounding 95 percent reduction in chance of errors on sales proposals. Again, BPO innovation executed by Teleperformance was the catalyst for the company s success. But, perhaps most significantly, RPAs allow companies to reprioritize efforts for maximum efficiency across departments and functions. By automating elements of their operations, companies can refocus their workforce s efforts on work that adds value while simultaneously decreasing operational costs. The cost saving potential could reach as high as 25 to 50 percent. 4 Business process automation was recently implemented to assist a global computer company with growing its market share and earnings, while concurrently streamlining its sales processes in a waning business climate. The computer giant realized 3. Automation Anywhere. 4. Institute of Robotic Process Automation. 4

5 The Teleperformance Solution As a global leader in outsourced multichannel customer experience management, Teleperformance has deep insights into all of the elements that comprise elite customer care. Specifically, this includes business analytics used to determine critical KPIs, and the resulting end-to-end business operations that occur throughout the customer journey. With a portfolio that includes multichannel operations supported by multiple back-office products such as Back-Office Case Management, Back-Office Order Management, Back-Office Fraud Prevention and Back-Office Chargeback, to name a few, Teleperformance has expertise in the diverse business operations across several industries and has worked to improve and establish best practices in each one. This diverse portfolio also includes analytics products that have been utilized around the world and enabled companies to gain insights into their current business models, understand which processes could benefit from improvement, and how it would impact the company as a whole. As a result of this varied expertise and lengthy track record of success, Teleperformance has emerged as a true agent of BPO innovation. Analytics and BPA can only be successfully implemented by a company with deep, industryspecific knowledge and process improvement expertise. That expertise, coupled with customer care specialization, can help ensure that every analyticsdriven process improvement is working to strengthen companies relationships with their customers. Putting technology into place that both improves upon and integrates into existing tech infrastructure is essential to the success of the BPA. Industry-specific solutions help streamline the workflow and enable companies to rethink and restructure their current workforce to help them reach their targeted goals. Teleperformance provides a fully integrated approach to BPO innovation by putting those pieces into place, and truly empowering companies to adopt best practices based on the best information and using the best technology. For many industries, the current business climate is more competitive than ever. More knowledgeable customers with more purchasing options, increasing threats of fraud, more emerging payment methods and constantly expanding demands on customer service means companies have no room for error or lost opportunity. Though revealing analytics that measure data for KPIs, and report findings, companies can identify those vulnerabilities that need to be addressed and opportunities to do so. In order to stay competitive in this environment, companies must also ensure that their business processes are informed by innovation, streamlined and at peak productivity and accuracy, and are working to get them to their goals. 5

6 About Teleperformance Worldwide leader in Multichannel Customer Experience We are a People company with a people-centric strategy, interacting with people all over the world. It s all about People. They are part of who we are and what we do. We analyze their behaviors. We understand their wants and needs. That s why we deliver outstanding customer experiences through integrated multichannel solutions to enhance customer experience results for our clients. About BPO non-interaction Back-office is a crucial part of customer experience lifecycle. Timewasting processes can impact negatively the overall perception of your brand. We understand that an efficient customer care strategy is based on the integration of back-office and front office processes. And that is how Teleperformance can bring value to your business; as the global leader in outsourced multichannel customer experience management we can provide integrated end-to-end solutions focused on customer satisfaction. Transforming Transforming Passion Passion into Excellence into Excellence 6

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