Question

Step 1: Choose a company

Select a company with which you are reasonably familiar (on the basis of your work experience, educational experience, or other outside interests) - EXCEPT Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.

Step 2: Choose an objective

The objective of the assignment is to solve a problem (real or perceived) an persuade and audience to take action (think of it like an episode of Shark Tank). The topic can be one of the following:

1. A new process, procedure, or way of accomplishing something within the organization that solves a problem or makes them more efficient.

o Example: I work for Ann Taylor and I have invented a new computer program for our stockroom because we keep losing inventory. I am unveiling this program for the rest of the Dallas managers in an internal meeting.

2. A new product.

o Example: I work for Chick Fil A and I want to discontinue the mini ice cream sundaes, since they are not selling, I want to introduce a frozen lemonade instead at the national headquarters.

3. A new vendor.

o Example: I work for Bank of America and we have a high incidence of broken ATMs; therefore, I want to use “EZ ATM” company instead of our current ATM company and I am introducing this at the executives’ meeting.

Step 3: Pick a specific audience

Put yourself in the role of employees within the company and give an oral presentation to an internal or external audience based on your objective. This is a persuasive message, so you need to think about the decision makers in the audience. You will need to understand your audience:

• Consider the audience's characteristics - what do they already know about the topic?

• What objections might the audience have?

• What do they already know and what do they need to know?

Complete the following:

1. Introduction
   • Statement of Purpose - what is the solution you are proposing (i.e. the objective of your presentation)?
   • Problem Statement - what is the problem you are solving?
   • Chosen Company (Remember, you CANNOT choose Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or Amazon)

2. Intended Audience
   • Based on your chosen topic, put yourself in your audience's shoes (who you are trying to persuade; i.e. decision makers who would be watching your presentation). Analyze the Audience by answering these questions:
     • What do they already know about your product/service/idea?
     • What is the need that your product/service/idea fills?
     • What is the expected response of your audience to your presentation (positive, negative, neutral)?
     • What bias does the audience have against you? (Think about any objections to your presentation they may have)
     • What will your call to action be?
     • What are some things you'll want to know about the situation and about your audience before starting your research. Briefly explain why each of the items on your list is important.
   • Based on this information, what should you do to make your presentation more effective for your chosen audience?
3. Types of Data and Appeals
   1. What data and content is required to make your persuasive argument?
   2. Sources and Methods of Data Collection: Which of the following will help your audience understand your presentation: technical data, historical data, demonstration, sample? Why?
   3. Talk about the kinds of appeals you think would be helpful to your audience and why.
4. Preliminary Outline of Presentation (Draft, does not need to be detailed)
   • Potential ideas for Attention-getter AND closing statement (IMPORTANT!)
   • Scope of work: What to include and not to include in Presentation and why?
   • How you plan to organize your presentation
5. Questions you would like to ask the Class
   • Ask the class for advice with your presentation. Come up with specific questions you would like them to answer and help you with.

Answer 1

Introduction:

Business process outsourcing is one of the most dynamic business to run and operate in the service industry. Big companies are all outsourcing their certain part of work like contact centers, back office operations, finance and accounts reconcilliation and so on to other countries where it is cheaper to operate mainly because of the labour costs involved. Even the best of manufacturers outsource their manufacturing units to under develop countries where the raw materials and cost of labor is cheaper. This inturn gives them more revenue as their fixed costs go down and that ways they can then spend more on marketing, consulting and other variable cost optimization methods all resulting in a bigger revenue or income. However, outsourcing a supplier, process or a service to another geography is not an easy task. There are huge set up costs and the operations dynamics become more complex to manage. There are certain challenges that one faces geographically when a company outsources their business and only after a few years they can determine whether they want to continue or discontinue.

Company: British Telecom

British Telecom has outsourced a lot of their contact centers to developing countries like India, Phillippines etc. These outsourced centers perform the same level of work and provide customer service pertaining to any problems which are faced by British Telecom's customers.

Objective of the presentation:

To propose a solution for employee retention within our company which is currently affecting the business and to come up with a solution for reducing our fixed costs that we spend in operating one of our contact centers in India. The solution for this problem would be to move our entire back office and customer support operations to Philippines, where the attriition rates are lower and there is better employee retention. Ultimately this would result in closing our India operations and expanding the our operations in the Phillippines.

Problem Statement:

We have noticed that there are a lot of employees who are leaving our company in India. Due to the huge attrition rate in India (which is one of our outsourced location) for our contact centers world wide we are spending more on training, knowledge improvement methods and retaining our current employees who are demanding more hike in their salary. As a result our Indian contact center is becoming more and more expensive to operate when compared to our Phillippines contact center.

About the Audience:

• The audience for the presentation will be the CEO and the Boards of Directors. They are already aware of the high attrition rates of employees in India and the rapid increase of costs for retaining our existing employees in India.
• My projected idea can reduce our overall fixed costs to great extent and make our global revenue more stable.  
• The expected response from my audience is going to be positive.
• The proposed idea will lead to a lot of people losing their jobs in India. Hence there could be certain people in the senior leadership positions who are emotionally attached to the India contact center might object this idea strongly. This further could be a major concern for the boards of directors to make this decision.
• My call to action will be a list of other multi national companies who have done what I am proposing and have achieved great results.
• I definitely would like to know if any of our directors has brought this issue forward in any of there meetings earlier. What our CEO's opinion and image is about our Philippines contact center and also whether they have an alternate solution to this problem. Also whether this has been proposed earlier by someone else or not.
• To make the presentation more effective, I will do a in-depth research about the all historic, technical and demographic data present and available. Will include success stories from other companies who have done the same and achieved great results. Also include any publications from external sources on this topic which would make my presentation more effective. However the most important data for my presentation will be based on the comparison between the attrition rates in India and Philippines, the average salary revision that we provide in Philippines versus India.
• The overall appeal for the presentation will be very persuasive and practical. With very little stress on emotional appeal coming from the presentation. The entire presentation will be based on problem solving and revenue growth strategy. Hence the overall presentation will be very informative and contain a lot of data for decision making.

Outline of the presentation: Below are the topics that I will include in the presentation:

- Executive Summary on current attrition rates of India. How it is briefly impacting our business and revenue.

- Historical attrition data of India and the Philippines for the last 3 years.

- Break up of the impact of rising attrition rates in India.

- About the stable attrition rates and performance of Philippines.

- Duration of seeding the employee gap for transferring the total no. of seats from India to Philippines.

- Projected growth in revenue for the next 3 years after we expand the contact center in Philippines.

- Recommendations and publications on this topic from external resources.

- Final Thoughts

Potential ideas for attention getter will be the graphical respresentations of historical, techinical and demographical data on attrition in India. Representation of annual turn overs of other companies who have followed similar course of action.

Closing statements will include advantages of moving our contact centers from India to Philippines completely. How this can benefit our organisation growth and revenue model. Further how it can improve our position in the market and make us more competitive.

Scope of Work: What should be included is all data available regarding the cost of operations in India which is higher than in the Philippines.

What should not be included is anything which negatively represents Philippines as our contact center of choice for expansion. Any major problem that we have historically dealt in the Philippines.

Questions to ask the class:

- What are some of the popular Business Process Outsourcing destination in the world?

- Why is Philippines a popular destination for Outsourcing?

- What are some of the major challenges faced by big firms when outsourcing their work to other countries?

- Which countries have English as their primary method of business communication apart from America, Canada, New -Zealand, UK and Australia?

- Which is their favorite Asian country and why?