Look before you leap

Some 75 per cent of UK companies currently outsource one or more of their business processes. This astounding statistic emerged from a recent survey of senior UK executives, carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of KPMG. It is indicative of just how far corporate UK has come in entrusting the management of often extremely important functions to outsiders in a bid to cut costs and refocus around core activities.

The flavour of outsourcing currently enjoying the highest media profile is so-called off-shoring. With so much customer contact now flowing through call centres, sending the job overseas where there is a bottomless well of inexpensive call centre resource has become a seeming no-brainer.

If this is a step you are considering, then there are some key questions you need to be asking yourself before anything is irrevocably agreed.

For starters, if data about your customers is being collected and used by offshore call centres, then you’ll need to make sure, before you pass that responsibility on, that standards of accuracy will be maintained. Is your prospective foreign call centre as committed to integrity and consistency of customer data as one under your own management would be?

There’s also the issue of ensuring that that data is as well protected as if you still held it on your own systems. A group of MEPs has recently called for action from the European Parliament to protect data transferred overseas under offshore deals. Their move follows a report from consultancy Ernst & Young predicting that the growth of offshoring will lead to a ‘major regulatory failing within five years’.

Companies outsourcing call centre functions need therefore to act now to reduce the risk of liability for breaches of data protection laws. They may soon in any case face tougher laws to ensure that personal details processed outside the EU remain subject to the same standards of protection as data held within the territory.

And lastly, remember that off-shoring, like many forms of outsourcing, can be harder to take back in house than you might imagine should you change your mind down the line. Think of a move in that direction as long term rather than speculative.

Harry Meikle, UK Managing Director, QAS Ltd