Let’s say you already have an existing, stable BPO network that’s performing well, and you’ve decided to invest in impact sourcing in the African market to meet your company’s CSR goals. Given the success you’ve enjoyed with your current sites, you can just apply the same approach and principles to your new impact sourcing sites… right?  To put it bluntly – no, you can’t.

If you truly want your impact sourcing efforts in Africa to actually make an impact, you need to think differently about your relationship with the new site.

Africa is still new to the BPO space

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that Africa's entry into the BPO industry is a more recent development. While the continent has shown significant growth potential, its BPO sector only began to gain traction in locations like South Africa, Egypt and Morocco in the last decade.  Other countries like Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda are even more recent additions, with promising new countries like Ethiopia, Botswana and Nigeria following fast in their footsteps. So while it’s definitely on the verge of substantial growth, the African BPO industry is still in early stages compared to India and the Philippines. In other words, they’re not going to have the same depth of understanding of operations, how to manage through problem-solving, or how to ensure consistent performance. They don’t have the benefit of learning the techniques (whether they’re the right techniques or not) that have been handed down through time to new managers from seasoned professionals.  

Start with a strong foundation

By investing extra time and resources upfront, you can lay a strong foundation for a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with your African BPO when you consider these key strategies:

• Get to know the production team as people. Take the time to dig a little deeper into the background of the team that will support you from the production floor. Get to know them as individuals - find out what motivates them and what aspects of the role they might struggle with so you can identify training opportunities.
• Support your site leaders DIFFERENTIALLY.  This is not a suggestion to make all types of allowances for an impact sourcing site. Rather, it’s about understanding the capabilities of your leaders in communication, problem-solving, goal-setting, understanding of your business goals and metrics. Support your leaders with an up-front investment of your time to help get them on the right track, and over time, you will see that the investment is paying off with a decrease in your time. Your time investment and expertise will pay forward by instilling a more developed performance culture.
• Be generous with training resources. If you have internal training on leadership, process-mapping, how to create reporting, etc., share that content with your impact sourcing team. The more context and information you can provide to help them improve their performance, the better the output will be. 
• Invite BPO leaders to your internal problem-solving sessions or invite yourself to theirs. Seeing you in action, along with the methodologies and feedback you share, will all be truly appreciated, absorbed and incorporated into the team’s own work. There’s tremendous satisfaction in knowing you have made your OWN impact on your partners.

Recognize the management gaps

Having a strong team in place at the BPO that can effectively manage customer interactions and the people who deliver them is essential to a smooth-running front line. If you oversee a global network, the base expectations are that your management team has advanced problem-solving skills; that they can read, interpret and action data from performance metrics; and that they have strong communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate progress, challenges and recommendations as well as being open to feedback.

For an impact sourcing site, the level of experience in management techniques may not nearly be as evolved compared to what you’re used to with your other global sites.  Generally speaking, management capability and effectiveness is still under-developed in Africa.  

“Africa lacks effective and competent managers – across the private, public and NGO sectors – with the skills and competence required to translate the opportunities of the next decade into greater prosperity and a better life for all.”  - Rebecca Harrison, CEO of AMI (African Management Institute)

Most BPOs see their front line agents progress to team leads, then to managers and eventually, directors of client programs and they’ll typically receive some internal training to help them be successful within their organization.

In the case of African BPOs, many of the agents who progress, have been previously disadvantaged and without employment or experience. They’re not always provided with sufficient training to be an effective problem-solver or to be able to interpret performance to help agents improve. Even the most senior leaders within the site may have gaps in expertise. 

The investment in your management team matters! In fact, the 10-year forward story to help grow management capabilities in Africa has already shown a massive impact. According to their 2023 Impact Report, AMI added “$130M to African economies and impacted 1.5M livelihoods in the first decade through support for 37,000 African businesses.” 

Rethinking the course-correction process

Day-to-day delivery of support should be consistently great no matter where your sites are located. However, at some point, you may notice that one site is underperforming, and you know you’re going to have to take action. More experienced BPOs are expected to have the know-how, history and resources to self-identify root causes and fix without too much involvement from the company who pays the bills. However,  you may need to take a very different approach to the course correction process when it comes to a site where you’ve made an investment in impact sourcing.

“Once, as a client, I walked into a production area with about 20 agents and over their heads read, “ICU”. I asked what that meant and was told that their bottom-performing agents were required to participate in the Intensive Care Unit. They were at the front of the floor so it was clear to everyone that they needed to improve. I pulled down all of the signs and demanded it be stopped instantly. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, and it was definitely not requested by our company.” - David Wilson, CEO of Impactify

The end result is worth it

Adjusting your approach to the way you manage an impact sourcing site in Africa will go a long way in helping to level the playing field and enable your African team to compete with the other sites in your global network on a fair basis. 

Not sure where to start with your impact sourcing program? Impactify can help.