Defining Next-Gen Outsourcing – with Nick Ogden of Offshore MVP

In this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek Gallimore speaks with Nick Ogden. Nick is currently the General Manager of Offshore MVP, a trusted outsourcing provider based in Clark, Pampanga, Philippines.

Derek and Nick discussed the latter’s sales and outsourcing background, the shift from selling products to services, and the recent merger of Extenda Outsourcing and Offshore MVP.

Nick’s outsourcing background

Nick Ogden spent 15 years working with BMW before settling in the outsourcing industry.

“I was looking for a new challenge… and through a strange sequence of events, I ended up meeting some founders of a business here in the Philippines.”

This new business is going through the initial phase of a startup and is looking to take the next steps.

“One of the key pieces of the puzzle they were looking to solve was the sales function, and that piece of the puzzle came very naturally to me.

The industry itself was completely foreign to me at that time, which seems funny looking back now, given that the last 10 years of my life have really been dedicated to business here in the Philippines,” said Nick.

What was supposed to be a three-month stint ended up becoming long-term for Nick due to the pandemic.

He recalled, “Once I actually got my teeth stuck into the role, I just found that it was a natural fit for me… Honestly, my professional career is the first time where I [thought that] this is a great fit for me.

It’s been a real privilege to see young people progressing [in] their careers here in the Philippines and to watch the evolution of the outsourcing industry. It’s been incredible, actually.”

Extenda and Offshore MVP: A win-win merger

Nick and Derek also discussed the recent merger between Extenda Outsourcing and Offshore MVP

Nick and Offshore MVP’s CEO Clint Luna “have a great working relationship,” and the merger “was really just a natural progression for Extenda.”

The Offshore MVP General Manager acknowledged that mergers may mean negatively for some people, but for this particular union, “that wasn’t the case at all.”

“We were growing nicely, and we’ve gotten to a point where we were having to make some decisions about what the next steps were. We were already working closely with MVP, and I had a great working relationship with our CEO.

This merger for us was just positives all round, including my ability to be able to take up the operations role here in the Philippines because that filled a gap that MVP had.”

Nick added, “It ticked a lot of boxes, and I’m very happy that we made that decision. We’re a couple of months into that now and the business is really clicked into gear. It’s exciting times ahead for us.”

Selling products vs. selling services

Shifting from automotive sales to selling outsourcing services to clients was a drastic change for Nick’s career.

He noted, “It was completely different. [With product sales], you’re selling a tangible product with a great brand story backed up by a hundred years of history…

Thinking back then, in our sales process, we’d have to teach people how to use Zoom for example, which is in a post-pandemic world is quite hilarious to think about, but [back then], people didn’t know how to use Zoom.

We had to explain to business owners how they were going to interact with their teams working remotely from the Philippines. So, the sales journey now is so much easier in a post-pandemic world where everybody’s completely used to working remotely, and businesses are well set up for that.

That certainly wasn’t the case looking back nine or 10 years ago.”

Nick believes that those cases are “almost behind us now,” though “there are still some organizations that are stuck in the past.”

“I think the thoughts of a global workforce is increasingly becoming the norm. One of the wonderful things about the outsourcing industry, and particularly here in the Philippines, is that it’s just been so flexible and fluid with the changes that have been happening in our world so rapidly.”

To learn more about about Offshore MVP, visit their website at www.offshoremvp.com/. You may also reach out to Nick at [email protected].