Outsourcing Talent

These days, every time you get stuck with a robot with a mechanical voice asking you questions about the personal and intimate details of your life, you have the concept of outsourcing to thank.

That electronic telephone answering machine that has you trapped for several minutes of your precious life is a robot. The automatic teller machine, ATM, in the lobby of your local bank kiosk is a robot.

This is not about bias or discrimination against our brother and sister mechanical beings. Rather it is about the last twenty years and the transition, sometimes smooth and sometimes rough of the computer and electronic revolution and its transformation of the American workplace.

There are gaps in the transition from one era to another. I remember working in a world class mortgage company a little over a decade ago. Regional management walked in and were appalled that customers or potential customers were being submitted to a telephone answering machine when the receptionist went to lunch. “No way!” said the regional managers. These guys had in the past been mortgage brokers and knew how precious a live prospect on the phones meant to a possible sale. This scenario is of course before cell phone proliferation or wide scale use of e-mail and the Internet.

No doubt, getting productivity numbers to increase and reducing overhead is classical American Business 101. It is as American as Apple Pie.

I have stated this elsewhere. Improved quantity in production does not necessarily translate into quality improvement or even customer satisfaction. Yet somehow the burden of business to make and maintain profits many times seems to end up in the boardroom and the decision to cut costs and outsource job functions.

You take talent in an organization and build up a customer base. Two examples come to mind. One is of a large HMO in healthcare. The other is of high end investment products and an average seven figure portfolio customer base at a financial service organization.

In both instances, management got the bright idea to outsource the back office and most of the front office elsewhere.

The HMO I know of was in Arizona of almost a decade ago. It got bought out and the buyer reduced its customer base in Arizona to magnetic computer tape and the customers got an 800 number to call in Minnesota. Of course, the people of Arizona did not like being put on hold for several minutes with robot answering machines.

The customer wanted to change a PCP or ask about a prescription sitting at Walgreens and wanting immediate HMO pricing approval. Where is your office? I have got to talk to someone in person about this etc. The bottom line is that several national HMOs bought up that local HMO customer base, outsourced it elsewhere and the local customer base in Arizona took their business elsewhere. Several of these brilliant outsourced projects got outsourced back to Arizona.

Of course, the financial services’ outsourcing of a high end customer base is a work in progress. The advertising package has the high end customer eating caviar and drinking champagne while the financial services talent guy makes profits, profits, profits. Ah, it is good to dream.

You may be sending your checks to a lockbox at a prestigious Madison Avenue address. If you get pissed off about fees on your statement, you will have to call your toll free customer service number and wait for the robot answering machine to put you through to somebody live to talk to. That person these days on the other end may not have a New York accent but one from one of the Carolinas or elsewhere.

That is a work in progress which I am eager to hear gossip about it from friends still part of a limited staff left in the organization. I am curious about how outsourcing has worked in this one particular case. Every case is different. Some you win. Some you lose.

The bottom line on all this is that whether you’re from Arizona and like to kick the tires or you live in a penthouse in the upper east side of Manhattan, the original organization you originally contracted with is probably no longer there. It is not real like a store front. If such were the case you could go in and taste the wares if they are edible. You could touch and judge the quality of the cloth and have a suit tailored to fit.

Outsourcing talent is an oxymoron. You can outsource job functions. You can never get that magical mystical thing back that once went into the creation of a great business or great project. You cannot outsource talent. The ingredients may be the same on the spreadsheet but the original chefs are long gone.

Consider your options.

http://360.yahoo.com/mcsheam

Tags: HMO, ingredients, oxymoron, robots, talent, Outsourcing

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