Introduction to The Outsource Accelerator
The Outsource Accelerator Podcast explores the booming industry of Outsourcing and why the Philippines is the perfect destination for Outsourcing.
We aim to educate business owners about the various benefits of outsourcing, why outsourcing is the way of the future, and how it presents as a huge opportunity for both business owners and the workforce market. We also discuss what Outsource Accelerator is, what we provide and specialise in; and more importantly, how we help (you), the business owners, into making the right strategic decision to gain competitive advantage over your competitors.
Transcript
Derek: Hi, and welcome to the very first episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, my name is Derek Gallimore and we talk about everything outsourcing.
So, first; what is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a business function and it has effectively taken part of a process of your business, part of an operational process and outsourcing it. So, in its simplest form, you can do that almost daily with some of the functions of your business. A very common example is you get your book keeping done externally by a book keeper contractor. That in its purest form is outsourcing.
What we are actually talking about though, is more business process outsourcing, which is abbreviated to BPO and it’s commonly referred to by getting overseas cheaper staffing to fulfill business functions. Variations on this is virtual and remote workers, and then of course that bridges into the other worlds of Upwork and Freelancer, virtual assistants and things like that. So, this is a sort of ecosystem that we are dealing with.
We are really focusing on our listenership, which is really the SME business owner. So, the small to medium enterprise business owner. We are focusing on the business owners, the entrepreneurs that have maybe one to one hundred employees. These people, you might be already outsourcing, you might be considering outsourcing or maybe you’ve never even heard of it and this podcast can get you interested.
It is my belief that outsourcing is the way of the future, as we, as a world, as a global economy become more borderless and information is flying across the world with no time delay, then, inevitably, I think, the labor pools will join and it’s gonna be a united world in terms of labor resources.
Now, this concern, economically therefore the developed worlds in terms of what is gonna happen to salaries. There are controversial aspects like that. I think this is inevitable, there is an inevitability about that and it’s about harnessing that. But also look, this is giving huge opportunity to people in developing worlds, to lift themselves out of either poverty or lower classes into middle classes, into education, into building a better economy and a better world for these people. So, I see it actually as a win-win.
For the business owner, there is huge opportunity. Most people think of outsourcing as a low ball cost saving effort. You get a few cheap VAs, they do a bit of work and they compromise the end product that is not what I’m talking about. I think there is huge opportunity in outsourcing for two main approaches really. One of them is cost saving, on a roll for roll, dollar for dollar, you can save about seventy percent in terms of salaries. That is really significant obviously. But more than that, it’s not just about a cost saving exercise, it’s about what you can do if you had unlimited or a lot less limited resources than your competitor.
So, outsourcing gets really exciting if you consider what you could do as a business owner, if you could bring on another twenty staff without too much concern and; what could they do? You know, the sky is the limit if you have less limited resource allocation.
I am talking about new product development, I am talking about new market development, business development. I am talking about creating new business models within your business, extending them, giving better customer service to your existing customers, up-selling more to your customers, once you actually look beyond just taking your existing processes and reducing cost.
Sure, that’s interesting, but the really exciting bit comes when you look to optimize the opportunities and resources that are at your fingertips. I see that as a huge competitive advantage and we really focus on that at outsource accelerator. If you don’t do it, there is a high chance that your competitors will be. So, get out there.
Who are Outsource Accelerator?
We are an independent adviser for outsourcing. We advise business owners, as I have mentioned. We offer unbiased advice in that regard. We are not affiliated with any BPOs, with any outsource service providers, we remain independent. However, we are biased, we say that you should outsource. So, we’re quite biased in that regard. We’re also biased, in that, we recommend the Philippines as a fantastic destination for your outsourcing.
Why the Philippines?
In very short, the Philippines is the granddaddy of outsourcing. It started thirty-forty years ago, when massive American conglomerates brought some of their services over to the Philippines. Where obviously, there was a huge cost differential and they use the old telephone lines and they started providing customer service from afar.
Fast forward thirty-forty years, you have got massive advancement in technological capacity. You now not only have telephone line but you have data cables. And so, it increases the breadth, the capability of working with pushed remotely and what sort of information can be conveyed.
So, with that, development has come the Philippine outsourcing sector, it now employs a million people in the Philippines and this one of the biggest contributors to their GDP. And it’s not to be taken lightly, the thirty or forty years of experience means that there is a huge depth of knowledge there and expertise in outsourcing, and that’s really not to be taken lightly.
Added to that, there is huge cultural alignment, the Philippines, there is a hundred and ten million people in the Philippines. Many of them earn very little money, twenty million are living on under two dollars a day.
But, there is incredible cultural alignment here, there is a huge adoption of English, English penetration right into the provinces, blue collar workers, taxi-drivers, the average workers all have incredible grasp of English, which is a massive boon for them in terms of opportunity and economy.
It makes doing business in the Philippines really easy. They are also very culturally aligned, possibly, this is because of the integration into Christianity. I think, they are only predominantly Christian country in Asia. And, that was integrated to their society about five hundred years ago. So, they are quiet culturally aligned, which again is a massive boon in terms of outsourcing. So, that’s why we like, the Philippines, there is a huge resource here and I really think, that it should be harnessed as much as possible.
So, what do we offer in this podcast?
We offer short, punchy, information based podcast. We wanna give you as much information as possible in a shorter time as possible, we don’t wanna waste your time.
I am joined by Arnold San Miguel in some of the podcast as my co-host. He is a Filipino guy, great guy and has worked in BPO for years. So, he is really a wealth of information.
We are also joined by a huge number of experts, guests. Both Filipino and expat that are involved in some regard with the Philippines obviously. So, there is a huge wealth of information.
If you want any of the show notes, go to our website which is outsourceaccelerator.com, and there you will also get a huge amount of information to help with your BPO journey.
We provide a ton of free information. So, we have blogs obviously, editorials, we have podcast, we have this podcast, obviously. And we have an e-book and we also have a BPO directory which lists nearly seven hundred of the BPOs in the Philippines, provides reviews and information on those.
And then we also have a news hub with hundreds of articles, which are aggregated, curated and summarised, which will give you a huge insight into the BPO industry worldwide and also the situation in the Philippines. So, do join us and please subscribe, please leave your feedback, please get in touch with us.
And all of the show notes are available for each of our episodes at outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast
Enjoy!
Listen to more podcast episodes here:
- Eileen Ramos – Learning Basic Tagalog with Eileen Ramos
- Derek Gallimore – Centennial Episode’s Big Announcements
- Vince Filamor – Time, Process and People Management empowering Outsourcing
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