This subject really posed an interesting story for me; this was after I chatted with a friend who lost his job due to a CIO trying to save his job. I have talked to many different people who have not had too many good things to say about these so called “ambulance chasers of the outsourcing revolution”. With this person it started with this company coming in, talking about how great their company was, how many customers they have and these really long names they use for a help desk. The material they were using was so old I remember seeing something from a top five company years ago.
Well needless to say this company said they could run all the help desk calls for this company and it would save them allot of money by being able to eliminate jobs. How this CIO and a few VP’s saw this and said why sure, let’s show our CEO we can save money and out jobs. Then the firings came to all of these people, it just was not good.
But now we really get to the good part, this outsourcing company did no police checks. Even though you would think they would. Many people who could not get jobs with this company are now working for this outsourcing company in their network. They even have a few people who were fired from a competitor working in the network.
So with these problems already in the network, these people working for up to allot less than the regular staff, was it a good move? Maybe to the bottom line, but no it was not a good move. This company took the easy way out and got caught up into a good presentation.
This leads us to our headline; executives are only looking into the bottom line. Many of them are not thinking everything out. I am sure some outsourcing is safe and some companies are good. But right now, we have too many con men, matchstick men and just plain liars selling outsourcing to executives and it is unsafe in some cases.
Below is our list of things that you should ask and do before buying into any outsourcing.
- 1. Ask to see criminal background checks and credit checks of people who will access to your network.
- 2. Ask to see resume and references on everyone who will have access to your network.
- 3. Do a tech interview with each person, if they are going to touch computers or network gear be sure they know what they are doing.
- 4. Interview each person who will be in your network, never trust the outsourcing company, they are just in it for the money.
- 5. Take an official visit to the outsourcing company and then make unscheduled visit. If they are doing a help desk call center then this is a must. You will be surprised as to what you see on this visit. Maybe 5 people working and not the 30 that were there on your official visit.
- 6. Ask to see their data center, voice network and call center set up. If they are using 10 year old gear and phones, look elsewhere.
- 7. Don’t call their list of references, find out who used to be a customer and call them.
- 8. Never sign anything other than a 1 year contract, have an option at anytime to opt out if you find something wrong from what they have told you. You can always move to a multiyear down the road if everything goes ok.
- 9. If the company does not have a local call center, find out where it is. It could be in Asia somewhere and that is not good. Never go with a company who has a call center there. It sends the wrong message to your customers and employees that you sent USA jobs to Asia.
- 10. Never let them use their own computers in your network; make them use yours with security features on them. Also encrypt in case they lose one.
But the best thing to do is just tell the staff they are getting pay cuts or losing jobs. They will take the pay cuts and you can keep the same staff. It will save you lots of time and problems.
