GSA UK Open Talent Articles

Merging innovation with tradition – How Open Talent can co-exist inside your existing business model

Abbie Lunn — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 14:15:44 GMT

The tide has turned for CX in the Twenties and digital transformation for many has fast-tracked to a new level of adoption and execution as organisations navigate how to re-establish a level of certainty in what appears to be a period of constant change. Alongside the technical side of transformation, how we plan workforce utilisation and is now top of the boardroom agenda, which is moving the needle on the urgency and readiness to look strategically at the role of open talent as a sourcing strategy as well as creating a new mindset that looks to understand more closely the relationship between workforce optimisation and greater customer and organisational outcomes.

Traditional models have not and do not need to disappear overnight. Instead, a new ecosystem has evolved that allows for innovative and traditional workforces to thrive symbiotically, complementing each other to deliver the best results for both customer experience and business success.

Concentrix has lead this charge for a number of years, innovating with a unique interconnected customer management ecosystem, a dynamic workforce trifecta that operates from Site to Home to Crowd, one that is perfecting the role that open talent can have in delivering highly responsive, quality customer support that nurtures top talent and raises the bar on CX with Solv Crowdsourcing.

The Value of Open Talent in the Customer Experience Ecosystem

Solv Crowd taps into deep domain expertise from a highly flexible freelance talent pool and offers the ultimate elasticity for organisations to optimise their accessibility for customers at any time of the day, to be truly present at a time that is convenient to them and provide the highest level of support in the language they choose to engage in.

This level of personalised responsiveness can contribute to 40% more likelihood for customer loyalty and satisfaction and attraction for the workforce is equally compelling - a woke population that, contrary to perception, spans different age groups, countries and diverse backgrounds that want to better align life-work balance, create incremental income streams with convenience and who can contribute an incredible skill and knowledge that the industry might otherwise get access to in its traditional and somewhat dating form.

As the business world pushes through the challenges of the 2020 pandemic outbreak with a more versatile outlook on business continuity and reality check on customer expectations of the 20’s, the focus is moving towards a talent pool that can deliver great experiences through subject matter expertise that pre-exists in customers, users and fans of brand services and products and the predictions from the analyst community are gaining increased momentum that points to 30%+ organisational adoption of open talent for customer support related activity by 2023.

The ROI does not disappoint either. Solv continues to yield more than 50% reduced cost by nature of its virtual construct, which is unshackled from the overheads of the traditional premise-based or fixed shift based traditional operating models and opens the doors for a wide array of consumer and business driven processes and ‘micro-tasks’ to be crowdsourced at higher dexterity and lower cost than before.

Fusing Crowd Innovation with your Existing Business Model

Concentrix has proven that disruption with innovation doesn’t equate to extinction of tradition. The inclusion of a crowd solution is the next natural evolution for business strategists to optimise CX, with low barrier of entry for adoption. There are nuances on how to implement and deliver a gig-based model in your business compared to the traditional employee-based model, yes, but they can be complementary to one another, very successfully.

Implementing a gig program with Solv is something that can be mobilised quickly in weeks, not months. A combination of agile tooling integration and sophisticated customer-driven workflows creates a protective layer between customer data exchange and the Solver and an intuitive user interface enables an anytime-anywhere access that fosters an engagement model that is empowered to be responsive and always-on for customers.

Sourcing the crowd talent pool is equally agile. Solv’s existing and growing 4.5k registered userbase can build new candidature in as little as 48 hours, even for niche skill sets, and can ‘surge’ crowd availability in minutes and hours where traditional sourcing can take weeks.

Stemming from global expertise in CX design, Solv’s Crowd playbook has adapted best in class operating processes and policies for a customised operating model that guides newly adopting organisation into this innovative space, navigating all aspects of set up and delivery with leadership and community expertise that enables it to be exclusive to yet co-exist alongside traditional support models elsewhere in the business.

This value-driven approach has not been lost on enterprise contact centre executives and, to validate it, Concentrix partnered with Ryan Strategic Advisory to assess GigCX/Open Talent strategic intent. In Ryan’s Front Office Omnibus Survey of 540 captive operators across Western Europe, North America and Australia, cost management was seen as one of the most compelling reasons for incorporating gig as part of a well-balanced CX strategy.

For those forward-thinking organisations that are already well advanced on their journey with Open Talent and Solv Crowd, the rewards are already very visible:

- A global tech partner implemented Solv in less than 6 weeks and continues to benefit from Customer Satisfaction in excess of 85% and first contact resolution over 80% with 10% reduced cost and volume from repeat contacts, now for multiple global customer markets

- E-commerce flexibility with global lead benefits from a fixed Solv team all year round that can flex 10x during single day promotions. Solvers supporting this brand are spending 25% more with them since becoming Solvers

- A global leader in consumer electronics has improved customer response time by 80% on emails since Solv assumed ownership of this support in 2019

The Power of the Crowd

Open Talent models have the power to supercharge customer experiences for organisations of all sizes. Large enterprises can innovate 20-30% of customer volume at a much lower cost, which may enable repatriation planning or simple cost-out, whereas smaller starts ups and growing organisations might embrace the prospect of a crowd-only solution, help them appear larger and benefit from a mature and sophisticated support experience that they might not yet have on their commercial roadmap.

Business isn’t just digital these days—it’s competitively experience-driven. With the vast majority of customers noting that their experience with a brand is equally important to the products and services it offers, there’s no ignoring quality of service. New ways of doing business like Solv are creating exciting opportunities for companies to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. As the standards of customer experience remain high alongside the need to keep costs low, companies will need to keep pace with the technologies that will allow them to compete at scale. Person-to-person customer care hasn’t gone anywhere—it’s just a human-led digital engagement now.

Regardless of the business type, open talent and Solv provides the gateway needed across the entire industry spectrum for a lean, agile solution that provides end-users with great CX, delivered by entrepreneurial and innovative front-line brand advocates.

Learn more and see how Solv could be right for your business:

Contact paula.kennedy@concentrix.com or find us us at www.solvnow.com and www.concentrix.com

5 Questions you Must Answer When Looking to Adopt Enterprise Crowdsourcing

Abbie Lunn — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 14:23:58 GMT

ONCE AGAIN, THINGS HAVE CHANGED. ACCORDING TO GARTNER, 32% OF ENTERPRISES ARE ACTIVELY INCREASING CONTINGENT LABOR DURING THE PANDEMIC.

People want resilience and flexibility in the workforce. It’s good for organizations and it’s good for talent. Topcoder helps enterprise customers such as Adobe, BT, Harvard Medical School, NASA, T-Mobile, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Zurich Insurance access virtual on-demand technology talent, so when disruption happens, they don’t miss a beat.

Evolving your workforce strategy to include freelance, virtual talent is just smart. And, who you choose to dance with at this moment is going to make all the difference. There’s a growing market for talent platforms, which is more evidence that this is what the market wants. You have a choice, and you should be working with partners that have a proven track record. As 2020 draws to a close, Topcoder will be entering our 20th year. That’s nearly two decades of delivering technology outcomes for enterprise customers through our crowdsourcing platform. We’ve done it in a way that is secure, protects IP, and has allowed us to grow a substantial client list in the public and private sector.

When the following 5 critical crowd adoption questions come up, you will be armed with answers. Trust us, somebody at your organization is going to ask them. We’ve learned a lot in 20 years, and one thing we continually try to do is prepare our partners, like you, who are ready to use on-demand talent.

View the full article here.

The Human Cloud – The Ecosystem For The New Reality - Przemek Berendt, CEO, Talent Alpha

Abbie Lunn — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 14:18:44 GMT

The world is facing unthinkable challenges at the moment. The new paradigm for companies is to build not only strong, but sustainable businesses - in the broad sense. From a business perspective this means not only building resilience, but also becoming anti-fragile i.e. adjusting quickly to new circumstances, and being well-balanced and agile in responding to current needs and constraints. This process can be successfully supported by the Human Cloud.

Addressing the Tech Talent Gap

In times of COVID-19 and digital acceleration, The Tech Talent Gap is growing and best skills are getting even more scarce. 63% of Fortune 500 CEOs claim the Covid-19 crisis accelerated digital transformation by a decade. This will translate into a growing demand for digital talent, with 149M new jobs estimated by 2025. According to Everest 75% of enterprises expect a talent shortage for key roles in IT, analytics and specialised skills areas. The war for digital talent is going to get exponentially more intense, turning into Talent Armageddon with, as many as, 160M digital jobs remaining vacant.

The Human Cloud is the ecosystem where Talent around the globe is seamlessly connected with opportunity at scale. As cloud computing, revolutionised IT infrastructure, the Human Cloud is transforming the most important asset of every business – the Talent. It connects you with thousands of instantly available IT Specialists and contracts the Talent for your project, exactly when you need it. This could be freelancers, but in Talent Alpha we connect you with ca 20,000 vetted tech specialists from trusted IT Services Companies.

The Human Cloud is a way to think about accessing and engaging the right talent at the right time. It also allows you to share resources and find new projects for people on your own internal bench. The Human Cloud will help you to: access, manage, measure & share Talent. It will give you the visibility of what skills are at your disposal. It will enhance your HR, recruitment and up/re-skilling efficiency. It can also reduce costs and increase effectiveness significantly, e.g. for IT specialists, it can reduce time-to-productivity by 20% and talent acquisition costs by up to 35%, according to

Talent Alpha’s experience.

How Can the Human Cloud Help You Now?

As described in Matthew Mottola’s book about the Human Cloud, organisations are facing several massive challenges:

• There is a shortage of tech talent if you’re not in a main international hub.

• Start-ups can do in months what takes larger organisations years, a major reason being that the

traditional channels for accessing talent are too slow.

• The only thing higher than the divorce rate is the percentage of employees engaged at work.

• And a new challenge in the era of COVID-19: re-scaling while maintaining cost efficiency.

To both survive and move forward, you probably have three pressing hair-on-fire questions:

1. What needs to get done?

2. How do we re-scale?

3. How do we do this on a shoestring budget?

This is where the Human Cloud shines. Across Fortune 100 companies we’ve seen an average of 50-90% cost savings and time savings from around 30 days to around two days to find and hire the right person. These are just the averages. Once your ‘bench’ is built – meaning you’ve identified relevant experts – hiring can take just minutes and projects that once took months can be completed in days.

Starting Your Human Cloud Journey

I believe it is most efficient to look for the right talent capability to do the work exactly when it’s needed by using the best

skills inside and outside of the organisation. And on the other side of the equation - most specialists prefer to be rewarded for the real advantages they bring to companies and projects. We could live in a world where our talents were well-recognised, were best used, and were important and appreciated. The Human Cloud is a great tool to make a significant step in this direction.

https://fortune.com/2020/05/06/pandemic-innovation-impetus-ceo-daily/

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/30/microsoft-launches-initiative-to-help-25-million-people-worldwide-acquire-the-digital-skills-needed-in-a-covid-19-economy/

The Future of Work Report by Kelly OCG

Abbie Lunn — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 14:02:14 GMT

In a market rapidly changing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations and workforce experts alike are trying to determine what the future of work will look like. However, most professionals involved in the process operate from the perspective of their individual scope of responsibility, which often leads to siloed perspectives that may solve one aspect of the challenge—yet create another problem. Based on conversations across the market and our in-depth research, Kelly® has determined that there are four dimensions organizations need to consider when contemplating the future of work: the workforce, the workplace, technology, and social norms. By taking these four dimensions into account, organizations can better gain a comprehensive overview of the range of models they may want to utilize to engage and execute within their workforce plan. Further, they can assess which combination of engagement models will drive the business outcomes they want to achieve.

Read the full Future of Work Report by Kelly OCG here.

Take a look at the Kelly OCG website here.

The Future of Work Report by Talent Alpha

Abbie Lunn — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 14:09:36 GMT

2020 will be remembered in the business annals as the year the world of work shifted, accelerated, and reinvented itself. After years of discussion about the need for Digital Transformation, the 4^th Industrial Revolution, and the Future of Work, the Covid-19 global pandemic brought most businesses across the globe to a rapid halt. What happened immediately after revealed which companies had been living and breathing digitalization, automation, and total workforce management all along; those that had recognized that the core to their success was digital talent have continued to thrive in the ever evolving new reality. I am proud to share with you this comprehensive report which is the collective work of Talent Alpha’s own experts, and our dedicated partners and friends, with whom we analysed many of the forces that are shaping what we used to call ‘the future of work’. The ‘new reality’ we now find ourselves in is an environment where the skill half-life is now no more than 5 years, and where the physical proximity to the job to be done is no longer a

requirement. At the same time, the growing talent gap is forcing companies to forget about lifetime employment and is pushing them to find more creative ways to access the skills that are required to get a specific job done. This report touches on many concepts that we believe will become the buzzwords in executive video calls (indeed, the executive floor and rooms are no longer required) in the months to come. I invite you to join me on this exciting journey and I encourage you to join the related discussions focused on managing your skill count, decoding the talent genome, measuring human cognitive abilities, and digitizing Talent on the Human Cloud.

Read the full report here.

Take a look at the Talent Alpha website here.