8 steps to achieving high performance in BPO

In today’s business process outsourcing (BPO) relationships, companies expect more than greater efficiency, streamlined operations and lower costs. They are looking for business insight, innovation, industry expertise, individualized solutions, a commitment to continuous improvement and more. This makes BPO a much more complex endeavor.

Only 20% of the 263 respondents to Accenture’s High performance in BPO research study have succeeded in extracting greater business value from their BPO relationships. These are practitioners of high-performance BPO. But one of the more promising findings of our research is that high-performance BPO is attainable for all organizations, regardless of size, industry, geography, tenure or business function involved if they take a more strategic and thoughtful approach to the establishment and management of their BPO engagement.

By adopting best-in-class behaviors and practices in eight areas associated with high-performance BPO, organizations can capture significantly greater business value and build new competitive strengths together with their differentiated BPO provider:

End-to-end approach: Client and provider work together on process consolidation, rationalization and standardization across business units and geographies and this often includes centralization of services.
Collaborative BPO governance: Client and provider have the same attitude and mindset to resolve issues and conflicts fairly.
Making change management a priority: Managing the effects of change during transition and beyond.
Value beyond cost: Focusing on benefits beyond cost reduction e.g. 58% of high-performance businesses will consider service options with greater value, even at higher costs, compared with 31% of typical performers.
A focus on business outcomes: Targeting strategic outcomes, not just more efficient transactions.
Domain expertise and analytics: 48% of high-performance businesses believe contextualizing data is essential to create business value.
Transformation of the retained organization: High-performance businesses place as much importance on internal transformation as they place on transforming the outsourced processes. Companies also need to align the retained organization around the outsourced delivery model in terms of roles, responsibilities and requisite skills.
Technology as a business enabler: Effective technologies and architectures contribute to cost reductions and more efficient operations by streamlining the systems environment and reducing the number of systems involved. On top of that, high-performance businesses are also using technology in their BPO relationships to provide effective monitoring of performance, greater transparency, and innovations to fuel new generations of products and services.