The business community has been navigating a problematic economy in 2024. There’s a shortage of able and willing talent, combined with an environment where many end customers have been forced to tighten their belts and lay off staff. These companies are expected to produce the same results with a smaller workforce. In these situations, few things would be as welcome as the ability to maintain or expand staffing levels without applying constrained in-house resources. This represents a perfect opportunity for managed service providers, who can offer margin-rich “smartsourcing” services as a white label offering to their customers through a sophisticated, third-party smartsourcing agency.
Smartsourcing refers to a more intelligent outsourcing strategy using knowledgeable and highly trained agents with experience in specific markets instead of the traditional outsourcing of lower-level contact centers or customer service workers. The ability to offer smartsourcing as a service generates revenue for the MSP and reinforces its position as a trusted advisor with the foresight and resources to help its clients overcome essential business issues.
Addressing Staffing Challenges
Businesses know that replacing staff is especially difficult since each lost team member takes with them a certain amount of hard-to-replace company knowledge, leaving the remaining employees with the burden of compensating for the loss of skill and expertise. In this dynamic, workers are often stretched to their limits.
Many of these tasks and assignments can be filled by outsourced knowledge workers. Yet traditional outsourcing typically involves short-term, minimally trained workers often located overseas. Although recent layoffs may address at least some unfilled positions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still reports 9.5 million job openings nationwide, with only 6.5 million people claiming to be unemployed. That means that even if every jobless worker in the U.S. took a position, more than three million spots would still be unfilled.
Smartsourcing as a Service
Initially considered a budgetary measure to provide baseline customer service, outsourcing has evolved in recent years into smartsourcing, or intelligent outsourcing, which is better suited to satisfy the growing need for skilled and experienced knowledge workers. Smartsourcing leverages career-oriented professionals with expertise in complex verticals like financial services or healthcare. These agents can quickly and seamlessly onboard as part of an existing team, taking on more complicated tasks beyond the typical front-end office duties. An efficient smartsourcing service employs agents knowledgeable about regulations and compliance issues in specific industries and niche markets.
Not only does smartsourcing present a cost-effective potential fix for end-user staffing deficits, but it also creates new benefits for the MSP. Managed service providers and VARs constantly seek more creative services to expand their portfolios and weave deeper into their customers’ ongoing operations. Unique services like smartsourcing can create that all-important “stickiness” for the MSP, where they provide such a high level of intrinsic support services that it becomes prohibitive for clients to disengage.
An MSP can bundle a smartsourcing component on an “as a service” basis along with familiar elements like unified communications, network infrastructure, contact center solutions, and other capabilities. Adding smartsourcing to the mix helps the MSP’s clients improve their outcomes and demonstrates the partner’s ability to deliver tangible services that solve real-world business problems.
What Smartsourcing Agents Can Bring to the End User
A sophisticated smartsourcing team can fulfill needs in sales, fulfillment, customer service, marketing, and collections, all under the customer’s brand. Smartsourcing can help end-user organizations improve productivity or expand their core competencies. In turn, the MSP can realize substantial margins from these services with minimal requirements. An effective smartsourcing company will also leverage cutting-edge technology. This should include AI-powered tools to streamline workflows and add automation for agents, allowing them to execute short- and long-term projects swiftly and efficiently.
MSPs have been fighting against margin compression and commoditization for years, looking for new services and value-added offerings that can help build ongoing revenues while further ingratiating them as a trusted partner to their clients. Smartsourcing, the latest evolution of outsourcing, is a novel way to achieve this by offering highly skilled personnel to supplement or stave off hiring new in-house staff cost-effectively. It’s a winning proposition for channel partners, presenting the opportunity to generate revenue streams and elevate their status as trusted advisors.
