Dean Pascoe – Former Outsourcing Client to Running his own Outsourcing Operations

Intro: Welcome to The Outsource Accelerator Podcast. This is a short format podcast where we explore business and outsourcing mastery. My name is Derek Gallimore. And I am really excited to bring you the leading podcast in outsourcing.

Derek: Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Outsource Accelerator Podcast. My name is Derek Gallimore. And this is episode number 180. So, Dean Pascoe of Boomering.PH. Dean has been in outsourcing about 12 years. He’s from Australia. He has been living here, I think it’s about four or five years now, and runs Boomering. He’s the president of Boomering, which is an outsourcing supplier in Clark, which is just outside of Manila. So, Dean has huge experience in outsourcing. He has an accounting background. So, there’s really a lot of insight in what he shares here. We go into Dean’s own journey, his own story with outsourcing, and what he’s learned along the way over those 12 years. So, a really good episode, and I certainly learned a lot. If you want to get in touch with Dean or know any more about this episode, go to our show notes, which is at outsourceaccelerator.com/180. Enjoy.

Derek: Okay, welcome back everybody. Today, I’m really excited to be joined by Dean Pascoe of Boomering Inc. Hi Dean, how are you?

Dean: I’m great Derek, how are you?

Derek: Fantastic, fantastic. Thank you for joining us today. You have just said, you’ve been, you’ve only had four hours of sleep because of meetings to the U.S. clients. And this is sort of what we face isn’t it in the outsourcing sector, is this is such a kind of 24/7 industry. But yeah, so really appreciate you coming on board. We are going to learn about Boomering Inc. and kind of what you do for clients and businesses out there. But I suppose initially, do you just want to introduce yourself.

Dean: Well, so again, Dean Pascoe, Boomering President. I guess I’ve been living in the Philippines for five years. Boomering’s only one year old, and I worked for two other BPO’s prior to this. But before that, I guess I was on the other side of the desk. I was an outsourcing client for about seven years. So, with two different businesses.

Derek: Right. And you’re, I just want to dig into your origin story a little bit and kind of understand to help the audience out there, understand I suppose how on earth people get into outsourcing and how on earth people sort of live in the Philippines and things like that. So initially then, how were you introduced to outsourcing? You said you were on the other side of the desk for about seven years.

Dean: Yes, I was working, all my background was in accounting. So, worked my way up through the ranks of accounting, like as we do assistant accountants through to accountants, etcetera. And I was involved heavily in the outsourcing with the wholesale business in Australia. They had about 70 branches across Australia, and they were constantly breaking even, or losing money. And outsourcing was one of the ways that they ended up, turn it around by moving approximately 20 to 25 administration staff from Australia over to, well a mix of two countries, which included the Philippines. And that changed the bottom line by almost 300,000, and that kept all those jobs that were across those branches of Australia in operation. So that was an exciting adventure.

Derek: And you were one of the pioneers in Australia that was sort of implementing the outsourcing process? Were you along that journey from the beginning?

Dean: So, with that company, it wasn’t any of my ideas to do etcetera, but I was the implementer I was the one that dealt with the politics of people facing the loss of jobs. Or even if they weren’t faced with that, some people had it in their head anyway that the whole company was changing. And it was a big learning curve of putting SOP’s on dealing with people from other countries to the persona’s that how the company is changing and how it won’t work and dealing with negativity and dealing with attitude once you’ve proven it does work.

Derek: Yeah, and this is part of it’s a different process to actually have an outsourced operation. And you have to go through a learning curve yourself, you know whether you are a start-up or a pretty established operation like it sounded your once was.  Initially were you, obviously I assume you are a believer in outsourcing now, but what was your position then? Were you a little bit sceptical, was it a hard sell for you, yourself?

Dean: At the time I guess, my naiveness, let’s say that I was always one to go with the flow. I was very happy to please my bosses, and if this is what they wanted me to do that’s what I did. So, not until I got involved in it deeper did I understand the repercussions or what other employees dreamed up, right? So, and how people reacted to that, right? So, it was amazing how many jobs that would probably never ever get outsourced, yet people still felt threatened by outsourcing, and there was no need. What these people didn’t see the big picture of is that at that time and at the stage of that business, without implementing that outsourcing the other let’s say 150 jobs across Australia wouldn’t have survived.  You know?

Derek: Yeah, yeah. And that’s the reality. It’s difficult people can have quite a set of myopic view, and often they don’t sort of see the whole business and its entirety and often reality is tough isn’t it? And businesses go down, and outsourcing is an opportunity to make the business efficient, not so all the jobs go overseas but so that it can prosper and grow and contribute more to the community.

Dean: Oh yeah, and outsourcing has got the perfect ability to make some of those Australian jobs more valued, where, and salesmen are the perfect example, where they are not doing all the let’s say the mundane tasks of the paperwork, which salesmen are notorious of being bad at anyway. They implemented stages where their salesmen where ringing in, reading the notes off back to the admin staff in the Philippines while they drive into the next client.

Derek: Right. It’s systems and processes, isn’t it? As you mentioned, you were probably the one developing the SOP’s, the Standard Operating Protocols, because it’s probably the sales people that didn’t have the procedural insight. They were just following new procedures as opposed to necessarily designing new efficient procedures.

Dean: Correct, so I was involved. In truth, most of my tasks back then for the business we’re talking about right now, I was involved in the accounting side of things, and how each department reacted with the administration of outsourcing, and how it reacted back to the management of accounting that stayed within Australia.

Derek: Now, it’s amazing. I want to move on from this. I want to find out how you got to the Philippines. But you say you worked for an accounting firm, and you were outsourcing the administration stuff.  One of the more common roles to be outsourced is accounting. Did that company eventually move to outsource some of its backend accounting functions?

Dean: Oh, yes. So, it wasn’t an accounting firm. It was a wholesale, it was a wholesale company. But it moved its 25 accounting/admin people overseas. The second business that I was involved with that sort of led to us here was a security business. It outsourced its security monitoring service and its accounting departments over here. And it’s a very similar story. It’s how that business stayed alive and stayed ahead.

Derek: Yeah.

Dean: Because, and it’s not all about moving jobs over here, it was about getting more for the money, where for the same money they could have three people on the phones servicing clients better than just one if you compare it to Australia.

Derek: I think we, as you know we have mutual friends in that business. And it’s true, isn’t it? With outsourcing again, it’s not just replacing like for like, but it’s enabling companies to wow their clients with really good proper service, as opposed to in the West, it seems to be a race to the bottom of kind of stripping out everything, doing as little customer service as possible, as little customer contact as possible. Whereas in the Philippines, you can offer things like 24/7 servicing. You can offer real human contact and customer service and things like that.

Dean: Correct, and the Philippines is the perfect place to do it, because we’ve got a very passionate people that love to go out of their way to see that a customer is happy.

Derek: Yeah, they’re certainly people out there that are communicators. And yeah, so what was the move then? What was the conversation like for you to come over to the Philippines? You’ve been working then for about seven years on the other side of the desk as you’ve said in outsourcing. But was it a shock to you to come to the Philippines, or had you been visiting here previously.

Dean: No. So, everything I’ve done in the past was, let’s say, through Skype and multimedia. In truth, I got sent over here to set up a brand-new accounting system department. So, I got sent over to Philippines for eight months, eight weeks, sorry. It extended to 10 or 12 weeks. And I just fell in love with the place. A big difference for me is, in Australia we’ve got people that have everything. So, you’ve got, like live in a nice suburb. People have got two cars and houses, and you can still have negativity all the time where a lot of the people over here could be sleeping on a dirt floor and be cheery every day as you walk past them and say, ‘hello’.

Derek: Yeah, there’s a stark contrast, and there’s a lot of keeping up with the Jones’s in the West that I think is just not just so much a good vibe, yeah. And so, you were dealing with outsource operatives and arranging all these for many years prior to coming over here. What was the difference in your insight from the day before you came here to the day that you came here, and actually just saw people in real life and connected with them.

Dean: Well, understand, it brought a much broader scope of what they were dealing with here. And more, we got to see the cultural side of things that shine through, okay. So, I got to see passionate people that might not understand every single question that we ask straight away, but they go out of their way to understand things and research things. And it’s just amazing at how diverse the Filipino people are.

Derek: Fantastic. So, you are in Clark, which for those that aren’t aware, is kind of like a satellite city outside of Manila, isn’t it? Just kind of in the verge, edge of Manila. It’s also a free port and has sort of really interesting background. But there’s a thriving outsourcing and business community out there with also like a favourable tax exemption kind of thing.

Dean: That’s a perfect explanation.

Derek: I cobbled that on together.

Dean: I guess we’re on an old American airbase. So, we get the benefits of the infrastructure they started. And now Clark’s becoming a designer city.

Derek: Okay.

Dean: The growth here is extraordinary. It’s actually an exciting time to be here.

Derek: Fantastic. So, I want to get you back, and I want to really deep dive into Boomering. I want to find out what you do, where your value adds are, where your strengths for that company and the clients of that company. But just briefly, do you want to give us an introduction into Boomering. It is based in Clark then. You’ve got years of experience now. What in, I suppose an elevator pitch does Boomering really offer?

Dean: I guess simplicity. Boomering offers an insight into how we can work with you, with people’s companies, how it’ll affect them and what they could go through. And potential business owners need to know that I would class Boomering as a boutique BPO, meaning that we’re here to work with them in every step of the way. So, we’ve got foreigners on the floor at all times, ready to reach out to any client’s needs at any one stage. So, we’ve taken all the things that we can and tried to make a BPO as flexible as we can, so any business or client could have the agility they need.

Derek: Right, and we’ll get into this when we get you back. But, and people really severely undervalue that, don’t they? They have all of your expertise. It’s not like they ‘re just paying someone, they get a bump on the seat for X amount, but they’re actually, they’re buying into the expertise that you bring along with it and your management team.

Dean: Correct, they get, with the expertise they can hear all the wrong things, not to do that other people have learned lessons through.

Derek: So anyway, we’ve just been interrupted there by a walk-in, but that’s absolutely cool. I am looking forward to getting you back next time, so we can really deep dive into exactly those values. Thank you so much Dean. And if anyone, Dean Pascoe, of Boomering, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Dean: I think reach out to myself personally, [email protected]

Derek: Fantastic. And all of those details will be in the show notes. Thanks Dean.

Dean: Thank you so much.

Derek: That was Dean Pascoe of Boomering.ph.

If you want to get in touch with Dean at all or want to know any more about the episode, go to outsourceaccelerator.com/180. And of course if you want to drop us an email, then do so at [email protected].  See you next time!