Andy Schachtel, an industry expert in strategic outsourcing and CEO of Sourcefit, discusses the dynamic partnership between outsourcing and artificial intelligence and its potential to revolutionize business success in today's fast-evolving environment. As global markets become increasingly competitive, companies continuously seek innovative strategies to streamline operations, improve productivity, and maintain a competitive edge. In this context, the integration of outsourcing and AI emerges as a game-changing combination, transforming the way businesses operate. While outsourcing allows companies to leverage external expertise, access professional talent, and optimize cost-effectiveness, artificial intelligence technology revolutionizes task performance by enabling advanced data analysis, process automation, and intelligent decision-making.
The following Q&A with Andy Schachtel, the founder and CEO of Sourcefit, provides insight into this innovative collaboration.
Why are AI and outsourcing the perfect match for business success?
Business process outsourcing, with a global market value of over $100 billion, has already proven itself over the years to be an essential tool for business success by helping companies lower costs, improve efficiency, gain access to expertise, and scale more quickly. The increasing integration of AI into outsourced processes just enhances each of these benefits. I like to think that AI supercharges our outsourced professionals. Our content creators can create better content, our customer service professionals can be faster and more helpful with smaller teams providing better results, and our developers can code more quickly. We service over 20 industries and over the next two years AI will improve our delivery in all of them.
What is the evolving role of AI in the outsourcing industry?
Since the release of ChatGPT there has been a lot of speculation, some quite breathless, about how quickly and deeply AI will impact the outsourcing industry. Certainly, servicing information related processes and providing large numbers of staff to engage in relatively low level work such as content moderation and customer service puts the outsourcing industry on the front lines of potential exposure to disruption by AI. But despite beginning to integrate AI into many of our processes and consulting with clients about how we might create new efficiencies for them, the changes have been incremental. In the near term, I see AI nibbling at the edges of most processes to increase speed and efficiency, while in the medium term there will certainly be processes that will be completely transformed by AI. We hope to replace those processes with others that perhaps we couldn’t deliver at scale before AI that now we can.
How does AI impact business processes and productivity in the context of outsourcing?
I can best describe the impact of AI on our business into three tiers: The first is informational. AI allows us to gather and communicate information much more rapidly and effectively. But someone must still orchestrate this work by devising use cases, checking quality and determining delivery channels. Processes may require a similar number of people but the quality and quantity of their output is greatly enhanced. The second impact of AI is operational. In this case, AI is actually carrying out operations such as retrieving information and publishing reports, assessing job applications, and answering customer queries. While this aspect of AI integration is more disruptive to a traditional outsourced workforce, putting the output in the hands of clients and providing context will still be a requirement.
Finally, the last level of AI integration is analytical, in which an AI system looks at sets of data and provides analysis. Not only will AI be able to provide routine analysis more quickly and more broadly than traditional means, it will also be able to suggest modes of analysis that may have been missed by humans or traditional software. But there will still be a need to conceive and design plans to implement these types of systems and organize the required data. Most SME’s don’t have the technical skill to implement this type of program so they will have to rely on outsourced professionals.
Why is it essential for businesses to train their workforce to utilize AI?
As described above, some roles will be eliminated while other new roles will be created. And the overall shift will be from less skilled positions to positions that require more training and the ability to engage with processes on a higher level. For example, writers will become editors, agents will become escalation specialists and draftsmen become quality specialists or designers. AI could become as disruptive as the Internet; and the same skills of adaptability, resourcefulness and determination will determine the winners of this great revolution as well.
How does outsourcing, combined with AI, provide agility for businesses to scale rapidly?
Outsourcing has always been a tremendously effective tool for companies to scale quickly because outsourcing firms can bring existing expertise, staff and technology to a process, alleviating the need for companies to build from scratch. AI not only enhances each of those components, but it is almost infinitely scalable, always available, and nearly instantaneous.
Andy Schachtel is a highly experienced professional with a background in technology, media, and outsourcing services spanning over two decades. He is the founder and CEO of Sourcefit, where he has overseen numerous successful BPO projects worldwide for prominent organizations. Andy's career began in advertising and marketing, working with renowned brands like P&G, Coca-Cola, Toyota, and Sony. He later ventured into global technology projects, including creating an early mobile-first social media network for Vodafone. Recognizing the potential of outsourcing, Andy established Sourcefit in 2009 to offer process optimization and cost-effective extensions of local teams. Fluent in French and Japanese, he excels in bridging cultural divides and fostering strong global partnerships.
