How Two Australians Raised The Bar For International Business Process Outsourcing

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / December 1, 2021 / Australian BPO business, Pandr, is reimagining the outsourcing industry with its hand-picked top tier staff, remote office hubs for clients and price-slashing packages.

Pandr began with an observation by two Australians, both featured on Australian Financial Review's 2021 Fast List, who had been hiring remote staff for more than fifteen years: "If a business is paying you for remote staff, you have to be an expert in the field to add more value than what they could have achieved using their own staff." Anthony Gunter and Jesse King decided they would make Business Process Sourcing (BPO) better. They would remove its flaws.

Gunter was in charge of running a 600-seat Australian based contact centre in Australia before he set up and sold an online ecommerce business. The two men had then established a successful solar retailer business in Australia. The idea of making remote staff services greatly appealed to both their experience and their ambitions. They rolled the workers they had collected in their earlier businesses into their new venture, jumped on a plane and flew over to meet them, sourced an office and Pandr began. Their first office was small, a 10-seat room above a milk bar.

On the plane, they had written themselves a list of essentials. "We put reliable agents at the top, followed by a great workplace culture, caring for our people, interviewing and hiring the best people available and maintaining our advantage - our experience - against our competitors," King says.

If that sounds easy, it wasn't. "We quickly realised that the freelance model isn't right for reliability. Power outages, remote staff working for multiple companies and lack of attention to detail thwarted what we wanted to achieve," Gunter recalls.

What they wanted to achieve was to "create a reliable, professional, engaging, supported offshore environment to enable clients, especially SMEs, to attract and retain the best staff at a fraction of the cost." This was their mantra. They also realised that they would be providing real job opportunities for Filipinos, for whom career development and growth was not readily available. They would also be able to work in their local province without having to move to a major city and be away from their families.

While they ironed out problems, the business grew from their network - friends in business asking if they could provide staff. "This alone grew our business fivefold in 12 months. We now have over 400 seats and provide solutions worldwide, specifically to AUS, NZ, UK and USA," King states.

At the forefront of the challenges was attracting the right people. "We now handle the interviews ourselves to ensure that any applicant we put forward to clients is interviewed and vetted by us, business owners, who understand the calibre of staff business owners need," they note.

"We expected that operating in two different countries would be a challenge, but it absolutely wasn't. The two of us spent half our year over there pre-COVID but the management team we have there is so amazing that without us being able to even step foot in the country for almost two years, we have almost tripled our business in a globally challenged period. We will be on the first flight over there as soon as we are able to."

Were there any "gifts"? "We had no handouts; just hard, honest work. The only gifts we have are our staff," Gunter says. "We've worked to develop our senior management team to work the exact way we would expect them to in Australia, however, they simply do it better."

Their moment of success came, they say, when they finally started advertising instead of relying on referrals. They have now had more than 70% of enquiries convert to long standing, happy clients. "And we are the first, and only, company in our province to be internationally recognised as a Great Place To Work," the partners add.

The idea that it's easy to enter a thriving industry is a fallacy. Gunter and King know exactly what it took for Pandr to be a success. "We stand out for our ability to attract and retain the best staff available. We stand out for our culture, our staff engagement, our incentives; for our open-book payment structure - we don't hide what agents make in the Philippines. We are entirely transparent with their wages and our margin. Our terms are palatable - no lock in contracts, no lock in periods and no upfront costs. All we ask is for our clients' permission to source the best two to three candidates for the role they need filled. Our clients have the option to interview them and decide whether they want to hire them. We are one of, if not the only BPO that offers this. We are so confident in our candidates that we back ourselves to deliver."

What are Pandr's goals for 2022? "We have reimagined an industry. Built a service that raises the bar for international business process outsourcing to a new level. Our goal is to continue to grow and we will. We are only beginning to realise our ambitions. The range of outsourced staff needed is ever expanding. The sophistication of the jobs they are required continues to grow. As a team we are adapting to meet every need and we will continue to do so," Gunter & King say.

Contact
Jesse King
Phone number - +61 1300 014 383
Contact - jesse@pandroutsourcing.com
Company - Pandr Outsourcing

SOURCE: Pandr Outsourcing