22 Year Outsourcing Veteran, 15 Countries, 10k Seats, AI Evangelist with Arnold Cobbaert of Conectys

Arnold Cobbaert, founder and CEO of Conectys, joins the Outsource Accelerator Podcast to trace an unusual 22-year journey, from a one-man startup in Romania to a global operation spanning 15 countries and roughly 10,000 seats. He is also a committed AI evangelist, though a notably measured one.

The conversation runs from Conectys’s origins and its four-part talent model to a pragmatic, blended view of how outsourcing should adopt AI. For a fast-moving industry, it is a grounded take.

Conectys

Arnold no longer describes Conectys as a traditional BPO. The firm has repositioned around transformation and multilingual work, delivered from more than a dozen locations worldwide.

“We stopped calling ourselves a BPO. We started calling ourselves a business transformation outsourcing firm.

We focus on multilingual CX outsourcing, multilingual content moderation, labeling and annotation, and then AI advisory services.”

From a one-man website in Romania

The company began with a gap Arnold spotted while working in the industry. English-language outsourcing had India and the Philippines, but multilingual demand had no obvious home.

“India and the Philippines, wonderful destinations for English language outsourcing. But what’s the solution for clients who are confronted with multilingual needs?”

He chose Romania for its language range, then simply started. The humility of the origin is the memorable part.

“I drafted a website that said, ‘We are the leaders in multilingual outsourcing.’ And [it was just] my phone, my computer, and myself.”

Large enough to be safe, small enough to matter

Arnold sums up Conectys’s positioning against the giant providers in a single line, and it is the pitch clients respond to. The firm targets deals from roughly 50 to 500-plus seats, where a smaller partner can still give real attention.

“We’re large and experienced enough to be a safe bet, but we’re still fast and nimble and small enough… large enough to be safe, small enough to matter and to be flexible and nimble and entrepreneurial.”

Four ways to deliver talent

Conectys frames its offer as four “talent pillars”: traditional managed outsourcing, an employer-of-record model, a gig-worker platform called KBOO, and AI. Notably, Arnold treats AI as a form of talent, not just a tool.

“We have defined four talent pillars in our mix… the fourth talent is what we call AI. We really consider this as another way to deliver work, so we also call it a talent.”

AI is now a must-have, handled with care

For Arnold, AI capability has crossed from optional to mandatory in client selection. He puts it in the same bracket as compliance credentials.

“Clients are considering literacy and demonstrated ability to deploy AI as an absolutely critical selection criterion… If you’re not able to demonstrate real world deployments of AI, you’re basically gonna be dismissed by most clients.”

Even so, he is blunt that the technology is only as good as the groundwork beneath it, which is why he starts with knowledge management, not models.

“You can have the best large language model. If you don’t have the correct knowledge that you can feed into it and guardrail around that, you’re looking for trouble.”

Evolve or get your lunch eaten

Arnold is candid that outsourcing’s old model has to change, and he has little patience for firms that only rebrand. He calls the superficial version out directly.

“We see a lot of, excuse the expression, lipstick on a bulldog… BPO players completely doing a 180 towards, ‘We are an AI deployment firm.'”

His answer is to genuinely evolve, using the Microsoft comparison of Steve Ballmer clinging to CD licences versus Satya Nadella pivoting to the cloud. The stakes, he argues, are that stark.

“You’re just gonna have to enthusiastically jump on this bandwagon, or your lunch is gonna be eaten. It’s that simple.”

He sees the winners becoming data and solutions-integration companies over the next five to ten years, with pricing shifting toward outcomes rather than seats. And he is optimistic about getting there.

“I’ve often been called a fanatic optimist… I absolutely adore change, and I adore the challenge of change.”

For Arnold, the lesson of 22 years is that the firms that last are the ones that stay small enough to move, honest about what AI can and cannot do yet, and willing to reinvent themselves before they are forced to.

To learn more about Conectys, visit conectys.com or connect with Arnold Cobbaert on LinkedIn. He can also be reached via email at arnold.cobbaert@conectys.com.

If you’d like to learn more about what we do in the outsourcing space, send us an email at ask@outsourceaccelerator.com.