Global companies today are increasingly challenged to align their operations with corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals. While traditional sourcing, such as offshore contact centres, has been the go-to strategy for optimizing efficiency and reducing costs, impact sourcing offers a compelling opportunity to make a real impact. 

Understanding the difference

Traditional sourcing means researching and contracting a portion of your operations in a company that provides Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services to deliver your customer-facing processes.  The value is that the company can entrust and pay for their operations to be done with minimal day-to-day oversight, and focus on other priorities while their repetitive customer service processes are handled for them.  Over the decades, there has been a shift in sourcing for North American companies from in-house, to in-country with a BPO and then for the past 20+ years, new countries have emerged as leaders in the traditional sourcing world, such as the Philippines and India.  These countries have emerged as significant cost reductions for companies as their rates are much more attractive.  

Impact sourcing has roots in an early version of a definition provided by the Rockefeller Foundation: “Impact sourcing is an inclusive employment practice through which companies in global supply chains intentionally hire and provide career development opportunities to people who otherwise would have limited prospects for formal employment.” (Source: Rockefeller Foundation on Global Impact Sourcing Coalition)

Impact sourcing may not be new, however it’s still relatively unknown by companies as they rely on traditional BPOs to help them find the right location to deliver their services and are more focused on the right billable rate vs the agent conditions of employment.  As the agents are not their employees, companies think less about the sourcing from a global perspective of where their investment dollars for customer support might be best placed to make a difference in the lives of people in more needy countries. Companies focus on their customer relationships, where they can change processes, policies and ensure their agent tools are the most efficient to resolve customer enquiries.  Rightly so!  BPOs have spent decades building out processes in local countries and continue to grow existing options and focus less on where they can make an impact in the world.  This is changing as more BPOs are looking at Africa as a viable option to do business, and more importantly as they navigate the complexity of doing business there.

Defining impact

Impact can be defined in many ways, from generic to specific goal-oriented. There is a school of thought that any job in Africa is impactful to the local unemployment rate and there is merit to that argument.  Empathetically, agents in BPOs need more than a job at minimum wage, they need a career, to help their families and communities and see change in their local communities that can be tied to employment and investment.  In Africa, there is also an opportunity to make a difference in the role that women play in leadership and the impacts they will make as a part of your management team.

Determining whether your goal is traditional or impact focused depends on what you are looking to achieve from the investment of dollars into your support function.  It also can depend on the amount of expertise you need locally, your business continuity planning or maybe it’s driven by proximity to your home country.  You can achieve your customer goals with either choice, however you may find a more emotional connection to choosing impact as your strategy.

An at-a-glance comparison

As you’ll see from the chart below, impact sourcing not only meets business objectives but also fosters positive social change by empowering underserved communities and can be a powerful strategy for achieving both business success and meaningful social impact.