- Why Yempo’s set up to be like a trusted internal department.
- How our Safe Operational Scaling (SOS) model integrates with your business.
- How our SOS model focuses on building your team, your business.
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Why Yempo Solutions was set up to be like a trusted internal department.
I wasn’t sure how to answer this question recently: “What is Yempo Solutions’ philosophy?”
When I thought about it, I realised Ian and I had never consciously created one. It had developed organically because of our decades of corporate experience.
Looking back, I think it comes down to one simple idea. Yempo Solutions should feel less like an external vendor and more like a trusted internal department.
For decades, I worked in the IT department of national or global enterprises. In my role, my clients were other internal departments. I didn’t feel like my team was a vendor; we were all on the same team. Our ultimate shared goal was to provide cost-effective services to our end customers, the customers of the organisation. As a back-office function, I had no visibility of those end-customers, but I knew they were there, and why the services I provided were important. The company was also a for-profit, but again, I was shielded from that aspect of the business.
Working with our vendors was different. It didn’t feel like we were all on the same team. They obviously serviced multiple different organisations, not just mine. Their objective was to provide services to their customers in way that generated profit. Working with vendors took me much closer to the financial drivers in business.
I found working with many of the vendors frustrating. Monthly or quarterly review meetings with lengthy agendas seemed to achieve little for the time spent. Contract variation meetings. It would often seem that we had just settled on a price for products or services when there were “gotchas” that made what I needed more expensive than my allotted budget.
I didn’t want branded mugs or expensive corporate gifts. Ultimately, clients pay for those things anyway. I just wanted vendors to perform their function and deliver their services competently and efficiently, without fuss. In the same way that I provided services to the other departments in my company. That thinking has stayed with me at Yempo.
It was somewhat of a shock in 2015 when I started Yempo Solutions and realised the shoe was on the other foot.
I was now the vendor. I might be faced with clients who showed me the same lack of warmth and trust that I had shown to vendors in my past.
It wasn’t until later, with some excellent client relationships under my belt, that I realised what had happened. Without ever setting out to do so, we’d built the kind of company I always wanted to work with. One that felt less like an external vendor with remote employees and more like an internal department.
Once a client engages Yempo Solutions, there are no contract variations. The commercial model is clear from the outset, with documented processes for routine matters such as staffing changes and salary reviews.
In eleven years, we have never needed to renegotiate a client’s contract.
How our Safe Operational Scaling (SOS) model integrates with your business.
Yempo Solutions isn’t intended to sit at arm’s length from a client’s business as traditional outsourcing companies in the Philippines do. We operate as the recruitment, HR and operational support function for their offshore team. Our role is to make that part of the business work smoothly, transparently and without unnecessary management overhead.
My team works the way I always expected a good internal support function to work. It’s as if each client is our only client. In fact, one of our clients said exactly that:
“Michelle is so responsive. She makes it feel like we’re her only customer. The staff around Michelle are very good at what they do, and very clear processes are in place for us to follow.”
– Ron, Prezzee, Yempo Solutions client.
I don’t see myself as the CEO of an external supplier. I see myself as the head of my clients’ offshore operation. I am accessible, responsive, and backed by a mature, experienced and long-tenured team of professionals. If I can’t answer a question, I have a team member available who can.
Over the years, I have had clients who are a little cool to begin with, but eventually all of them, once they’ve become familiar with our operating model, are delighted with how we provide services.
How our SOS model focuses on building your team, your business.
We do invite clients to our annual staff Christmas celebration because it’s an opportunity to meet the people who make their offshore operation successful. But we don’t spend heavily on client gifts or lavish entertainment. We’d rather invest those funds where they have a lasting impact: employee benefits, which help us attract and retain exceptional people, and our corporate social responsibility program, where clients can choose to support our nominated charity.
Yempo Solutions is best suited to organisations that want the benefits of an offshore team without feeling that they have handed part of their business to a distant vendor. We aim to become a dependable extension of the client’s own operation. Clear, responsive and quietly effective.
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