Outsourcing Adoption, Globalization and AI – with Donovan Lazar of PrimeSync

In this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek speaks with Donovan Lazar, the SVP of Sales at PrimeSync. 

They talk about the growth of outsourcing and how more companies are becoming open to the idea of hiring offshore workers. They also touch on Donovan’s thoughts regarding AI’s impact and potential.  

PrimeSync

Donovan begins by introducing PrimeSync. 

“We got together…many of us have significant experience in the BPO industry. 

We wanted to create something that was more customer-centric where we’re not only really valuing our customer base, but also valuing the talent and resources we’re putting together for customers.” 

Donovan himself has a long experience with the industry, having begun outsourcing different functions in the late nineties. 

He describes PrimeSync as “taking together everything that didn’t necessarily work in other BPOs and combining it into a product or service through PrimeSync.” 

He says their goal is to “help companies, generally your small to mid-sized businesses and a lot of startups, to scale in any way they can and to bring our services to them.” 

PrimeSync offers two main services. 

“Our main business would be staff augmentation. If you come to us [with a need], we’re going to go out and find that person. That is probably about 85 percent of our business today.

On the other side, the managed services side, we do about 15 percent of our business in that.” 

Outsourcing acceptance and awareness

The business landscape was very different when Donovan began outsourcing. The aim of many corporations was only to hire people locally. 

However, he has a more practical perspective. 

“It’s not about taking jobs away from people locally. It’s about pushing jobs that people don’t necessarily want to do overseas where [others] are very happy to do those jobs.

I see it as the ability to really scale a business without having to worry about a significant onshore or local talent pool.” 

He thinks that this is the logical solution for most businesses in the kind of environment they’ve built. 

“At the end of the day, we live in the US, we live in a capitalist society. So it’s our job to find opportunities and to be able to expand those opportunities. 

And if we need to offshore to drive a much larger bottom line, then that is only going to benefit everybody else down the line.” 

He points out that many major companies now integrate outsourcing and offshoring as part of their internal operations.

“The companies that are in the Fortune 500 today require a significant amount of customer service, IT support, all of these areas where outsourcing has become very large. 

So when you generally look at the Fortune 500, every one of them outsource to one country or another, if not multiple countries. So it’s become very well accepted in the upper echelon of business.”

He hopes that more small and medium-sized companies come around to the strategy, especially in the US.

“The US is a great place when you want to create technology and stuff, but we never implement it. It’s always other countries that implement the technology, and [it’s the same] with outsourcing.”   

However, he trusts that younger generations, especially Gen Z, will eventually make this more of a reality. 

“As we get older, we’re going to see these next generations take the reins and they’re going to bring us from 20, 30 percent adoption to 60, 70, 80 percent adoption rate for outsourcing.” 

The march of AI

Donovan fully believes that there will come a time when AI will allow one person to handle the work of teams. 

For now, he thinks that leaders should concentrate on finding the niches that work best for them.

“Every AI company is going to have to realize that if they try to do this across all industries, it’ll never work because there’s way too much machine learning.

But if they focus on very specific industries, then they’re going to be able to reduce the cost significantly for those players.” 

He looks forward to the day that AI advances to that point, but for now is content to see humans help it along. 

“AI is going to be able to facilitate a lot of things, but there’s still going to be people that are going to need to move forward with whatever that new technology is that they’re starting to build and enhance.” 

You may learn more about PrimeSync on their website. Donovan is also happy to answer any questions and chat through his email.