Outsourcing of Essential Customer Services to Off Shore Based - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Outsourcing of Essential Customer Services to “Off Shore” Based Suppliers

The CPA Australia Experience Tony Gleeson Executive General Manager

CIPSA / SCLAA Event Thursday 14th April 2011

CPA Australia

+ 125 year old membership body for Finance and Accounting Professionals + 132,000 members in 111 countries

• 30% live and work outside of Australia
• 6th largest accounting body in the work

+ Demographics

• Under 30

: 20%

• 30-39

: 35%

• 40-49

: 22%

• 50-59

: 17%

• 65+

: 6%

Countries where CPAs live or work Major cities where CPAs live or work

CPAs Working Around The World

CPA Australia’s Corporate Plan

The Opportunity

• CPA Professional Level Program

– 70,000 exam sits per year

• Corporate Plan

– Review & Revitalisation of the CPA Program – Address entry pathways

– Very competitive market

• 20 + Year “Local” Single Supply Relationship
• Education is a Global Industry – Northern Hemisphere Dominated

CPA Australia’s Knowledge Blueprint

Drivers for Change

+ Entry to the Program Constrained – needed to broaden “Pathways” + CPA Australia has moved from being an Australian centric

• rganisation to being International

+ New Product – Foundation Units + Single Supply Relationship > 20 years – Australia based + Professionals looking for “e” enabled learning – move from ‘pencil and paper’

Potential Suppliers : Environmental Scan

+ Global Industry – heavily driven by Northern Hemisphere + Funding dominated by Governments USA & European leadership

• Private alongside State – e.g. Pearson US$8b

+ Hugh Budgetary “Influencer” – Commercial perspective v basis right + Governments drive Research and analysis – how we learn, tools “e”

• States drive Universities to work together
• Professionals looking for “e” enabled learning – move from ‘pencil and

paper

+ Move to “outsource” more

• Content development, online tools support traditional class room delivery,

examination events, marking & student feedback.

• No longer all done by single source.

+ ’

Our Journey

+ Supply Market Research & Analysis (RFT)

• Single supplier did not have the ‘new’ required capability

+ Invited 13 to tender : local and global + Received 3 responses

• many did not believe we were serious after such a long single supply

relationship (invited way to many?)

+ Had to split the business

• no one “stop shop” created complexity

+ Took us much longer than had planned

• Standard 3 month process took more than twice this

Our Journey

+ Left much with incumbent for Professional level

• To ensure our calendar, published 12 months in advance,
• Changed the relationship dynamic’s
• Requires ongoing concentrated management effort.

+ We selected 2 off shore suppliers for Foundation levels + # 1 a mid size UK based organisation with global reach for ‘content development’

• Great to contract with
• Good processes
• Spoke a similar language
• Delivery time became a constraint due to the length of our process impacting time they needed

to develop work

• Needed a full time Project Manager (plus some)
• Time difference needed managing but can work for you e.g. We ask for that evening and have

when we arrive the next morning

• Split delivery so we could manage a staged introduction of our new academic calendar

Our Journey

+ # 2 Large Global Organisation headquartered in UK ($10b pa business) + Initially started working with their Australia arm

• They withdrew when we split the work as they could not perform what we required

+ Services then come out of India but we were contracting with USA entity

• Time, Culture, Language, Law’s, Distance, organisational scale all became material issues for

use – Understand your ‘levers’

• Their internal supply chain was an issue – they outsourced key parts of their business e.g.

Customer help desk for booking exam time slots

• Speak a similar language – English is a first language of all three countries, it is not the same as

we speak in Australia

• Contracting – Don’t let this become Lawyer to Lawyer – Lawyers should just record what the

commercial people agree -lost weeks & nearly the deal

Lessons Learned

+ Don’t take on face value what they say

• understand their business models and operations

+ Have very clearly and documented Project Plans with Milestone deliverables

• don’t wait for milestones to arise

+ “Eye Ball” checks need to be made

• Invest in travel and face to face with them early – we didn’t this early

enough and things improved markedly when we did.

+ Don’t rely on the written word alone,

• talk to them every day and then document what you talked about and

insist they confirm understanding

The Outcome

+ We have two excellent new suppliers + We have diversified our supply base + Each see’s an opportunity so strives to meet and exceed our service needs + Compliancy of a > 20 year relationship has gone – both on our side and with the supplier + We have a clearer picture of what is possible in the future

• how this may impact our Learning and Development Strategies for customers / members

+ Success of Foundation Examinations

• 3,000 in 15 countries were successfully delivered
• All results and candidate feedback was delivered to time and standard

Moving Forward …

“However beautiful the strategy,

you should occasionally look at the results” Sir Winston Churchill

Questions ?

Thank You

Tony Gleeson Executive General Manager anthony.gleeson@cpaaustralia.com.au +61 3 9606 9867