Impact Sourcing – Could it Be for You?

There is a young man in Leeds called Adam Smith, who's found a very valuable niche service, "intercepting" food that others have thrown away and diverting it to worthy recipients. You can watch his story on the BBC's website here. It's a great concept: taking that which is not needed and diverting it to where it is needed. At its core it is about doing away with "waste" and making food distribution highly efficient. BPO providers could argue that the capability they have built up by servicing many customers for the same process is doing that too, though without the philanthropic element. In other words: deploying their excess capacity to fill the gap in their customers’ capabilities. But if you wanted to introduce a philanthropic element, and let's all take a moment to consider it, then we should talk about "impact sourcing". Those of you who attended Shared Services and Outsourcing Week 2013 will remember the charismatic Founder and CEO of Samasource, Leila Janah. Her company specializes in distributing digital work to third world, impoverished countries where professionally trained teams provide the kind of support that would be expensive at the home base, and which is relatively easy to outsource. The significant element here is "impact". While we can assume that rigid adherence to KPIs and SLA metrics mean a service delivered from this kind of an organization would be equal to that delivered from a more conventional BPO firm, the difference is that here we are channeling the power of "impact" to create – I’ll just say it – a better world and a brighter future for all. [eventpdf] Impact sourcing is currently still only on "nice-to-have" lists (actually, not even on many of those) though companies like Google, Ebay and Microsoft have partnered with Samasource to leverage its proprietary technology platform to break down complex data projects into small tasks. But I will hazard a guess that we might be seeing more of this – one day, if only because the provider side is growing. What distinguishes these operations are social impact guidelines, which often include reinvesting a certain percentage of revenue in training, salaries, and community programs, and hiring workers who were previously earning less than the local poverty line. Remember, if you can, the days when the term "sustainable business" or "green operations" was enough to make your eyes roll? When we thought that environmentalist ideas would never pierce the modern day workplace? Well, they have, with much of this development driven by shareholders and consumers. Who’s to say we won’t see the same with sourcing? At our North American conference earlier this year, Eric Simonson from Everest Group, Deborah Kops from SourcingChange, and Karl Brown from the Rockefeller Foundation were mobbed at the close of their session, which provided an overview of "who, what, and how" for this sector of the BPO market (yes, it is BPO). The case study they referenced was Digital Data Divide (Deborah is on the board). You can see a summary of how the provider market is developing here. As more companies recognize their ability to get the services they need, with the security they require, from dedicated people all over the developing world (note: low attrition rates) impact sourcing may one day mark a common feature in shareholder reports. Note: Are you interested in finding out more? The Rockefeller Foundation has funded Everest Group to conduct an in-depth assessment of how to accelerate the growth of impact sourcing. This includes sizing the market, profiling the landscape, detailing the business case, and creating case studies to raise awareness. If you would like to be involved or find out more, please e-mail Shyan Mukerjee at Shyan.mukerjee@everestgrp.com. Read more: Impact Sourcing: Assessing the Opportunity for Building a Thriving Industry

Impact Sourcing – Could it Be for You?

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