On Tuesday, I had the great pleasure of presenting at an event focused on South Africa co-organised by the dti South Africa and Teleperformance. The event probed trends around South Africa as a location for offshored services and more broadly looked at global sourcing trends. Certainly in the context of the current economic climate, the cost-based rationale is still relevant, but it is also true that a wide range of capabilities and advantages can be offered by different locations both globally and also within the UK.

Customer enquiries are suggested to be increasing in complexity, in part, due to a bifurcation process which has pushed more routine enquiries towards self-serve and automation. At the same time there are increasing requirements by customers for more nuanced and sophisticated service. Can offshored services provide the emotional intelligence to interact with customers in this way? Increasingly there is realisation from the industry, that a multiplicity or blended range of sources of delivery is necessary.

Within the UK, there has been a recent consolidation within the outsourcing market with, amongst others, Capita acquiring Ventura and parts of Vertex and Serco, acquiring the Listening Company. This, in part, has been driven by the recognition that outsourcing organisations have to be of a certain scale to leverage investment, particularly in new technology. This potentially offers huge opportunities for the UK outsourcing market. At a time when organisations, which have previously held all their activities in-house, are struggling to invest in new technology and keep pace with the rate of change, for example in their multichannel offer and social media usage, outsourcing can offer an ideal solution. This consolidation also has the potential to foster a change in the approach to procurement. At present, only a limited number of organisations have contracts based around a risk reward strategy and an alarming number are still measured narrowly around inputs. By increasing company scale there is greater potential to change this paradigm and shift from transactional to increasingly transformational approaches.

Here at CCA we are committed helping develop good practice within outsourced relationships and are particularly interested in fostering trust and transparency by championing improved procurement practices. We are very much looking forward to working with our BPO Council and are pleased to say that 20% of our members are global outsourcers. On the 27th March we will deliver the final copy of our research project focused on sourcing strategies to our Industry Council. To find out more about our current research programme or our BPO Council please contact us.