ABPOA Event: Why and how to implement social media in your company

You will kick yourself if you miss this seminar.

Taurus Marketing, in conjunction with media partner The Sauce and the Australian Business Outsourcing Association (ABPOA) is holding the second ‘Not just another’ series of breakfast seminars on 25th March 2011 at the Observatory hotel, Kent Street Sydney. The first seminar held just before Christmas was a complete sell out.

This seminar is on ‘Why and how to implement social media in your company’ – with particular focus on business-to-business corporates. The seminar features Taurus CEO and business media personality Sharon Williams and Uber Connector and author Iggy Pintado, Director of Marketing, Sustainability and Innovation at UXC Connect.

If you thought social media was solely the realm of teenagers, think again! The largest growth area is the mid 35-50 age group, so your decision makers are on line.

Whether you like it or not, your competitors are almost certainly acquiring the knowledge and understanding the benefits of social media engagement and making a name in the digital world right now! 96% of Gen Y has already joined a social network. Brands like IBM, HP, Kodak, Sony, McDonalds, and Dell are leading the way in social media engagement and driving energetic and motivating marketing programs at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Social media has shifted the paradigm on marketing ROI.

You can’t afford not to know how social media impacts your customers, prospects, staff, suppliers and industry influencers. And social media is not just the responsibility of the marketing, public affairs or IT department. As Board Directors, senior management or CEO’s you are accountable and you must be across the commentary that is certainly running out there in the digital universe about your products, services and staff.

Do you have an employee social media policy for example? Do you know what your staff or your customers or your competitors are saying about you on line?

You can use social media to launch new products, build your customer database, connect to intellectual property and advertise events.

This seminar is a must attend and will provide you with fast, practical ideas of what to do next.

Register for the breakfast at www.taurusmarketing.com.au – tickets are $85 ex GST and include breakfast at the exclusive Observatory Hotel, Kent Street, Sydney.

By Martin Conboy
President – Australian BPO Association

I am prompted to write this after seeing the incredible damage done by the flooding that is currently happening in Australia. We keep hearing about once in a century weather events, however they seem to be happening more frequently than every hundred years. There is definitely something wrong with the planet and only those with their heads in the sand can deny it.

Going green is a lot more involved than simply turning off the lights; changing to energy efficient light globes; using double-sided photo copy paper; not throwing waste into the sewage system; recycling; or designing buildings that work with nature to heat up or cool down as the case maybe, although that at least is a start.

We are seeing positive initiatives in some quarters as a ground swell of concern is racing ahead of political debate. There are many green initiatives around efficient utilisation and conservation of energy, water and natural resources. Key features include climate responsive architecture (using natural daylight); recycling of sewage; drip water irrigation; solar water heating systems in place; air quality monitoring with CO2 sensors; use of materials with low volatile organic compound emissions for interiors and maximum use of eco-friendly recyclable materials.

David Suzuki, the much admired environmental scientist and broadcaster in his final “legacy lecture” says that as humans, we must realize that “all other species are our kin”. We are not the only species on this planet; we do not just have a relationship with the environment, ‘we are the environment’. He stresses, “We have to come to grips with how powerful we’ve become. As a species, we are not any more dominant than the other creatures we started out with in Africa. The only thing that sets humans apart is our memory, our curiosity, our inventiveness and self-awareness. We have foresight to imagine the future, whereas other animals do not. Over the years we have expanded and multiplied at a staggering rate, so that we now occupy every continent on the planet”.

According to Joel Cohen, Professor and head of the Laboratory of Populations at The Rockefeller University and Columbia University, It took hundreds of thousands of years for the human population to reach 1 billion, around the year 1800 and another 200 years to reach 6 billion and by 2050 it is estimated to be 9 billion.

Suzuki reminds us that it is because of the size of the human herd that we need to realize our impact on the planet. “We don’t know our own strength. So many of us have become disconnected to the earth. Our future depends on choices, on the choices we have made in the past and those we will make today and in the future. We cannot continue the exceptional growth of this last half of the 20th century without experiencing consequences. Think about this, every time that the global population doubles there are more people currently alive than the sum of all the people who ever lived.“

Also consider this for a moment; the combined wealth of the 200 richest people on earth is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 2 billion.

“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it”, stresses Suzuki. He provides examples of Native Peruvian school children that revere a nearby mountain as a god, and therefore respect and honour it and that determines how he or she will interact with the environment. The juxtaposition is the modern suburban child who sees the nearby mountain as unimportant or unessential in his or her life. They will just see the mountain as a place that contains materials that can be exploited? We are consuming too much and using our environment as a toxic dump and it’s simply not sustainable.

Suzuki reminds us that in previous centuries, farming was a main source of income and was the livelihood of most people. Therefore, most people lived in rural areas. Nowadays, most of the people in the world live in urban cities. According to Suzuki, this has shifted our focus from environment to economy. What we have forgotten though, is that “an economy is made possible by the biosphere.”

Being ‘green’ is not just an option any more; it has become a necessity, especially as more and more organisations prefer to do business with companies who have initiatives in place to reduce the carbon footprint of an operation. Many business deals in the coming years will depend on the carbon neutrality credentials of an enterprise. Be that as it may, if we have the ability to change the way we treat our environment, surely then we have a responsibility to do something about it. It’s all very well being rich, but all the gold in the world will be useless if you cannot breathe!

Thinking green has become an important part of an organization’s corporate social responsibility. Slowly but steadily we find companies taking positive steps towards setting up operations that comply with environment sustainability points.

“We define a green company as doing three things such as integrating corporate responsibility — including green — directly to the business strategy; making it easy for customers to buy, operate and dispose of your products in an environmentally responsible way; and being as transparent as possible about your green initiatives and operations, and very public about your environmental goals,” says Mahesh Bhalla, executive director, and GM, consumer division, Dell India.

“To be environment friendly, the company has to have efficient power consumption; recyclable/reusable packaging; recycling offers for older equipment; use of non-toxic materials; and making investments in future green concepts such as alternative materials,” says Bhalla.

Proper use of outsourcing and cloud based IT lowers carbon emissions by allowing people to work from anywhere without having to commute, these days they ‘Telecommute’. By shifting business processes away from environments that require workers to use private transport to get to work, to environments that have fully utilized mass public transport systems must have an over all impact on carbon footprints. If a company is outsourcing some of its business processes, it will require less real estate as it will have a reduced work force and thus will have lower heating/ cooling bills.

Fellow citizens of the planet and members of our global BPO community, I challenge you to find ways to minimize your carbon footprint and via this forum to share these ideas with us all. Let us take the lead on this important matter.

mconboy@abpoa.com.au

By Martin Conboy President Australian BPO Association

The hard lessons learned by Australian call centres in the last century have not carried across to call centre and BPO environments in the Philippines.

Staff turnover is a major challenge and no matter which way you dress it up, working in a call centre environment is not for everyone. There are two types of people that work in a call centre: one is stress hardy and the other is not.

People who are stress hardy are resilient and are less inclined to leave, whereas people who respond poorly to stress tend to leave as soon as they can. What some owners/managers of BPO call centres fail to realise is that their most is important assets are ‘soft’ assets, i.e. people. A new project comes in and they think that they just need to get people on the phones, and by and large anybody will do so long as they can speak English and navigate their way around a computer program. It never occurs to them that they have some of the brightest minds in their society and they are forcing them to do some of the dullest, soul-destroying stressful work imaginable. I am not suggesting that all BPO work is like that – it’s just to point out that a young mind that has been trained to think and challenge the status quo in a university environment needs to be stretched and challenged each and every day.

Those with robust and outgoing personalities will take to it like a duck takes to water and others will simply hate it and leave.
The Philippines BPO industry reports an annual loss of an estimated 85,000 workers from the sector; that’s a massive cost to the industry when one considers the real cost in terms of replacement, recruitment, training, management time and lost productivity until new agents get up to speed.

Some business leaders that I have met look out at the vast pool of willing knowledge workers in their respective countries and think that the well will never dry up. Boy, are they in for a rude awaking!

Let’s remember the types of people who work in these facilities: students, recent graduates, people looking for a second income, moms returning to the workforce after they have started their families and older workers.

For many, working in a BPO environment is a means to an end. Contrary to popular belief, working in a call centre is not all that it is cracked up to be. I have witnessed first-hand blatant abuse of staff with managers shouting and yelling at operators and reducing some to tears. It’s no wonder that so many resign from the industry.

Another area that can be fixed inexpensively that can have a major impact is the built environment. It’s amazing how a coat of paint and a few pot plants can brighten up a workplace. After all, who feels inspired to do one’s best when the work area is drab and one is stuck in a battery hen environment?

Business process outsourcing (BPO) companies must deal with the unsustainable outflow of workers or face a massive shortage of available workers in the near future.

Some of the resignations will simply be people moving to a different BPO business for a host of reasons and others will be leaving the industry forever.

A lot of this staff turnover could be addressed by selecting people who are suitable for the industry in the first place rather than the catch as catch can approach by many businesses.

You can have brilliant technology and terrible people and you will not have a good call centre, where as you can have good people and poor technology and your business will survive. It’s a people business; it’s all about people talking with people. Sounds simple; however, it’s amazing how this message gets lost on some.

There are psychological tests available that test an individual’s capacity and where with all to work in the sector, but many fail to use the tools, and wonder why their people are leaving.

Some of the better BPO companies go to a lot of effort to create a sense of Esprit de Corp that young impressionable minds buy into and you can bet that their staff turnover is less than industry averages.

Martin Conboy
President Australian BPO Association. www.abpoa.com.au

Welcome back to work for 2011 and good luck for the year ahead.

It’s been busy for the last few weeks as we drew a line under 2010.

We are currently experiencing unprecedented flooding in parts of Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania so we are bracing ourselves for higher food prices as a lot of the items sold in supermarkets are grown in those areas and a lot of the crops have been completely wiped out. There is definitely something wrong with the weather and it will have to be addressed sooner rather than later.

A knock on effect will be an even more chronic skills shortage across the nation as many parts of Queensland have to be completely rebuilt and all available tradesmen will be required to assist. It will be massive. Once again we will see a focus on the costs of doing business that will drive consideration for outsourcing non-core business processes.

This year we will also witness the financial restructuring of European debt as some European countries will have to introduce austerity measures and cut back on economic programs that are completely unsustainable in today’s world. Again we will see a focus on changing company balance sheets from being capital intensive to being more tax efficient and BPO will play its part to help with operating expenses.

The Economist magazine recently commented that in the blame game that followed the financial crisis, globalisation was an easy target. The interconnectedness of markets was seen as having helped the turmoil to spread. But as our ViewsWire service explains, the fallout from the crisis is unlikely to derail globalisation. Indeed, the world now looks set to enter a phase of even fuller economic integration, driven by the rise of emerging markets.

In December the Australian BPO Association played host to a high level Chinese BPO trade delegation, lead by Mr Lu Hua, Deputy Director of the China Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA), which is the investment promotion agency of the Peoples Republic of China. CIPA is in charge of “Inviting in” and “Going global” (outbound investment) two-way investment promotion work in line with China’s economic strategies. It is a part of the Central Government’s, Ministry of Commerce. CIPA is now affiliated with the ABPOA and anybody interested in doing business in China can connect with CIPA via the ABPOA website.

China’s BPO industry is growing significantly, currently valued at US$36 Billion, and is now only second in size to the longer established Indian service sector. China’s growth rate is accelerating and it is expected to overtake India in size and value within the next couple of years. This was an important visit and hopefully there will be many more interactions as we strengthen our ties with China. It was great to get up close and personal with them, as their tales of growth and change are astounding.

One of the issues that came out of the various meeting was the fact that Australia is once again experiencing a persistent skills shortage especially in our resources sector. Needless to say this was of interest to the Chinese delegates as they pointed out that they have 6 million university graduates a year and 40 per cent are in engineering disciplines.

Analysts say that excessive restrictions on Australian 457-visa sponsorship and poor retention of older workers will contribute to big skills shortages for various sectors especially IT, over the next five years. Further more rapid growth in the mining, resources and infrastructure sectors was pushing up labour demand, and wages.

At one of the working sessions with the Chinese delegation Andrew Banks, the CEO of Talent 2 – a leading listed HR and recruitment firm who are HQ in Australia with offices in Asia, was expressing his frustration with the Australian government saying that unless the government moved to ease restrictions on sponsoring 457-visa workers, outsourcing work to countries where skills were available would become increasingly common. He has a strong view that a type of special visa could be implemented that allows companies to bring skilled workers for specific projects and be repatriated once the project is finished.

It’s not always easy to move human resources around global markets to match demand, however we are witnessing a hybrid model. Another business strategy along the lines of if the mountain will not come to Mohamed then Mohamed must go to the mountain, or maybe not, we are now seeing knowledge workers in other countries completing tasks via web-based browsers and cloud-based applications. It’s not applicable for every business process, however it is proving a godsend for companies who can outsource some of their non core business processes in order to get their work done.

The IT Cloud is giving a new meaning to the term knowledge worker. These workers can work from anywhere, anytime and anyhow from any device. In the future, knowledge workers will bring their own Internet access device in much the same way that a tradesman brings his own tools to do his work. They simply plug into the Internet and away they go.

Cloud computing has come a long way in the last few years. Formerly dismissed as a fad or marketing term, it is now rapidly emerging as an inexpensive option for developing IT infrastructure. Cloud computing is likely to have a very significant effect in outsourcing markets

The Australian BPO Association was invited to attend a Microsoft CIO breakfast in December as Microsoft was rolling out its plans for the Cloud. The Cloud is not an easy thing to get your head around as it means different things to different people and depending upon where you sit will determine your ability to make it work for you. The IT cloud is not a person, place or thing yet we treat it like it’s a noun.

According to Brian Prentice Gartner’s VP of research speaking at the Microsoft CLOUD Summit in Sydney, the Cloud is “a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT related capabilities are provided as a service to customers using internet technologies”.

Interestingly, he said that Gartner Australian research showed that in 2009 ‘The Cloud’ was number 16 on the CIO priority list, however it had catapulted into the number two position in 2010. Mr. Prentice indicated that it was the marketing departments that were leading the push for organisations to adopt the cloud not the IT departments.
Prentice argues that there will be a shift from end user licenses to service level agreements. In other words from a ‘Capex’ to ‘Opex environment with all of the tax benefits that that brings.

The cloud will spur on growth in BPO as remote Knowledge Workers can access company databases without having to be in the same location. We will see new business support models being developed without the need for expensive real estate and facilities to support and house them.

There is no doubt that as the New Year unfolds that Cloud IT will have an impact on BPO. So looking ahead it appears that we are in for another interesting year.

From the Desk of the President
Martin Conboy
ABPOA

According to market analysts, outsourcing in Australia is expected to grow dramatically leading into 2011. We can see the evidence not only in offshoring, but also in the local market as companies strive for competitive advantage by outsourcing non-core business processes.

One of the main attractions of BPO is the chance to treat some business processes as an end-to-end service, making it more efficient to take advantage of the economies of scale offered by outsourcers.

So what’s driving all this activity?

Most economists are tipping that interest rates in Australia will rise shortly. The reserve Bank of Australia has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) target growth range between 2% and 3% and if inflation looks like it’s going to rise above the upper bands, then interest rates will go up.

If interest rates are too low, consumer demand can cause prices to rise. In this case raising interest rates is justified and should quell domestic demand and inflationary pressure. In addition, especially when rates are so much higher than those of our trading partners, our dollar will rise and our exporters will suffer. On the other hand, our imports will be cheaper.

Therein lies the friction in the market. Outsourcing services supplied by less expensive, in Australian dollar terms, Asian-based BPO providers become considerably more attractive to Australian buyers. We are after all ‘importing’ those services. Anecdotally, every week we are hearing about Asian companies coming into the market in Australia looking to set up shop and take advantage of this upswing in activity driven by the relative purchasing power of the Australian dollar. We are also hearing about Asian BPO vendors not only setting up shop in Australia but also provisioning some of their contracts in Australia as well. There are a number of players looking around the market for suitable space.

Recent economic statistics have been softer than expected, with the exception of employment, which remains very strong. Although there has been no concerted push for higher wages, the fact that staff are hard to get, feeds into upward wage pressure. The old supply and demand equation: if one commodity is hard to get ‘demand’ and the availability of labor is in short supply, then the price of labour will go up, as firms will pay more to attract staff. Hiring BPO workers in Australia is a lot more expensive than it was a year ago.

The economy remains healthy. June quarter GDP figures showed that it grew by 1.2% for the quarter, and 3.3% for the year. The strength was broadly based – both private and public spending rose. Business investment is the only area of weakness. Household disposable income was flat in the quarter, as increased mortgage rate repayments offset rising earnings. So in short we are seeing a stronger economy but less disposable income available to Consumers.

To try and keep the cash tills turning over retailers are having ‘Sales’ that are as good if not better than the January sales.

So back to the Australian dollar. In June 2001, the Australian dollar was worth US$ 0.48. This weakness saved the country from the recession that was experienced by so many other industrialized countries. Because the dollar was so low, our exported products were attractive in other markets. Over the ensuing years the dollar started to trend upwards and in July 2008 the striving dollar reached US $0.98. Then along came the GFC, which saw the Australian dollar plummet back towards US $.60 as world trade ground to a halt and the demand for our commodities was unknown. This 40% fall was the most dramatic fall in our currency’s history. Since then the rebound has been almost as astounding. In fact in the last week, our dollar has reached parity with the US dollar. We are likely to see more rate increases that will keep our dollar higher in relative terms to all other currencies, so expect to see a lot more activity around outsourcing and offshoring driven by the strong Australian dollar.

On another front, the Association is about to cooperate with the Columbian Chamber of BPO & IT with a view to closer collaboration between our associations. This is on top of links with ASPIRE, the leading association of IT and Business Process Services companies in Poland, the Business Processing Association of the Philippines, the European Outsourcing Association, the International Institute for Outsource Management, NASSCOM the trade body of the IT-BPO industries in India, NZICT New Zealand Group of technology companies and Outsourcing Malaysia.

For our members wishing to do businesses internationally these organisations offer a gateway into local markets and will help to facilitate introductions and support.

We are planning a marketplace event to discuss major issues around how to develop a multi-channel contact centre with social media as part of the universal queue.

Companies and organisations wishing to join the Australian Business Process Outsource Association should write to info@abpoa.com.au or visit us at www.abpoa.com.au

The Australian Business Process Outsourcing Association (ABPOA – www.abpoa.com.au) has been established to promote, nurture and support the BPO sector in Australia and to strengthen the brand equity of the BPO sector in Australia as a professional and integral part of the business landscape.

Representatives from forty major BPO players assembled to lend support to the association. Amazingly, the BPO industry in Australia has never had its own industry association despite being valued at over A$4 Billion.

The meeting started with opening remarks from Martin Conboy the inaugural President. Mr. Conboy outlined the need for the association to protect the industry from potentially harmful legislation and the need to educate the business market about the positive benefits of outsourcing. He also spoke about the journey that companies must take as they move through the various stages of outsourcing development. He described a point that he referred to as BPO 4.0. At this point companies should be using cloud-based applications and have absorbed Social Media as a channel into the universal queue. He pointed out that no one is there just yet.

Mr. Conboy concluded his remarks by saying that the association would foster understanding and growth-driven collaborative relationships for all members, partner organisations and industry associations and that ABPOA services will include advocacy on public policy, international trade development, research and market intelligence services and access to an international network of Outsourcing associations across the globe.

Sharon Williams from Taurus Marketing laid out the association’s marketing and key messaging plan. Bill Lyons of FooBooOnline presented research about how the Australian government’s proposed regulation on ISP Browser History Recording would impact on BPO companies especially in the area of cost.

Frank Mastronardo of Datacom spoke about the members’ benefits that include connectivity both locally and internationally via the affiliate network. He also spoke about Members ability to educate themselves via the associations’ resources and members them selves. Mr. Mastronardo also outlined some of the discounts available to the membership via a relationship with a procurement group. Membership enquiries are welcomed from Australian-based organisations.

Richard Switzky of Publicis Solutions said that for the association to achieve its vision, it will need to establish BPO performance standards and outcomes by establishing a Code of Conduct detailing acceptable behaviors and practices, and by developing an accredited training and development program for industry practitioners.

It was decided to hold a breakfast seminar about the impact of social media on the universal queue in six to eight weeks’ time. ABPOA is interested in hearing from any parties that have expertise in this area. Interested parties should contact the ABPOA via info@abpoa.com.au for further details.

The Australian BPO Association is holding its General Meeting on Thursday, 30 September at 3:30 pm.

The venue is North Sydney Bowling Club in Ridge Street, North Sydney.

The ABPOA invites members and people who are interested in Outsourcing.

The Association was formed to strengthen the brand equity of the Outsourcing sector in Australia as a professional and integral part of the business landscape.

Never before has there been a need to have an industry association to represent all of the interests as the business landscape changes. As you may have read in the media there has been some worrying developments about new legislation that the Government is considering introducing including what can only be described as a clumsy over-reaction to require mandatory recording of browser histories by Australian internet service providers. Developments like these could very well have a negative impact on businesses (additional cost and resulting lower level of international competitiveness) if left unopposed and we will need to present a united front if we are to see off these and other ill-conceived and unwanted distractions.

www.abpoa.com.au

Email info@abpoa.com.au

Dear friends and colleagues,
I am writing to you to let you know about an exciting new development in the Australian BPO industry.

We have formed The Australian BPO Association and we are ‘officially’ launching on September 30th at a meeting in North Sydney, NSW.

The BPO sector in Australia is very broad based and to date there has never been a specific BPO association to represent the interests of all of the stakeholders in the BPO landscape. It was founded to provide a unified voice to address issues facing the industry as a whole.

Be that as it may, there has been one constant on the business landscape: companies are moving away from a capital expense environment to an operating expense model, and many are choosing outsourcing as a mechanism to unlock value in their service delivery.

The BPO sector is worth A$4 Billion plus in Australia and is growing dramatically. Our Association will cover Australian-based companies who offer front office services like outsourced Customer Service to back office business processes from data entry to IT outsourcing. We also invite members from Australian-based companies who use BPO organisations, government and academics.

The association is backed by industry giants like Avnet, Datacom, Fuji Xerox, Unisys, and Publicis Solutions and we are internationally affiliated with Outsourcing Associations in the US, UK, Europe, Eastern Europe, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and New Zealand.

The association is a not for profit and has been formed to promote growth in the Australian BPO market.

Our objectives are to:

Strengthen the brand equity of the BPO sector in Australia as a professional and integral part of the business landscape.

Partner with the Federal Government of Australia and State Governments in formulating policies and legislation that impact upon the BPO sector

Encourage and facilitate members to uphold world-class quality and service delivery standards

Never before has there been a need to have an industry association to represent all of our interests as the business landscape changes. As you may have read in the media, there has been some worrying developments about new legislation that the Australian Government is considering introducing including what can only be described as a clumsy overreaction to require mandatory recording of browser histories by Australian internet service providers.

Developments like these could very well have a negative impact on businesses (additional cost and resulting lower level of international competitiveness) if left unopposed, and we will need to present a cohesive and unified front if we are to see off these and other ill-conceived and unwanted distractions that impede business growth.

We are pleased to advise that apart from a Sydney chapter we have also established a Melbourne chapter.

We have called a General Meeting of the ABPOA on the 30th September, next at the North Sydney Bowling Club at 3 pm and I would personally invite you to attend and support our initiative.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Martin Conboy
President
Australian BPO Association

For more information please contact us at info@ABPOA.com.au