In late May and early June, Kelly Services and BDO Unicon Outsourcing have held a series of business breakfasts titled Outsourcing: Gap Analysis.
Over the theoretical section, Yuri Yefrosinin, Kelly Services' CEO, and Lyudmila Shusterova, BDO Unicon Oustourcing’s Director for Strategic Development, have discussed the most burning issues of switching to outsourcing with the audience. They talked about risk management, risk identification and ranging, risk mitigation, as well as actions one has to undertake in case an undesired event still occurred. The practical section consisted of analysis and discussion of real-life corporate cases.
Attending the seminar were more than 60 HR directors and managers of most prominent domestic and international companies. They received certificates on risk management training in outsourcing after the event.
“We launched business breakfasts on outsourcings last year. Each time we try to choose the most interesting topics: deciding to outsource a process, relationships with a provider, project management. This time we discussed risk management, and, as judged by audience participation, it is quite important. Our events usually consist of two parts. First we provide with theoretical knowledge based on IAOP textbooks (International Association of Outsourcing Providers). Then we hold a practical section and solve cases. Still, while last year’s cases were prepared by ourselves, this time we opted to use cases from the attendants. Sitting around each of eight tables, they spoke about their fortunate and unfortunate cases of outsourcing a function, and discussed methods of risk management, and then presented their solution to the rest of the audience,” Yuri Yefrosinin said.
“It’s quite important that the customer and the provider have the same conceptual apparatus when it comes to outsourcing things. It’s just as important to have a joint program for risk management, and to work with it on a regular basis. That’s the tasks our business breakfasts help to solve. I’d also like to note that Russia currently lacks any systematic training courses for business process outsourcing that focus on the customer, so we’re filling in the niche. I’m confident: the more prepared customers there are, the more successful projects in BPO there will be,” Lyudmila Shusterova said.
This year, the business breakfasts have been attended by 100 people, 44 of which have expressed their interest in outsourcing. When filling in summarizing questionaires, 67% of the attendants stated the event was “great,” while 32% thought it was “good.” It means that 99% of the attendants were happy with the business breakfast, which is an astonishing result.
