The High-Growth, Tech-Enabled Outsourcing Startup – with Roland Polzin of Wing Assistant

In this episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek catches up with Roland Polzin, the Co-Founder and CMO of Wing Assistant. 

Wing Assistant has grown to become an amazing global product in the staffing industry. The two talk about the company’s growth and how technology plays a central role in its strategy. 

Wing Assistant

Roland brings us up to speed on Wing Assistant and how the firm has been doing since its last episode. 

“I’d describe Wing Assistant as making outsourcing available for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Our value proposition is [if] you don’t really want to do payroll, you don’t really want to deal with the administrative hassle of hiring people, [then] with Wing, you can have a flexible month-to-month subscription all done for you.” 

The company sources talent from the Philippines, India, Latin America, and some places in Africa and Europe, depending on the capabilities that clients need. 

Roland is proud to say that Wing Assistant lands in the “top three or top five companies in terms of size and number of seats, compared to [others] in the market.” 

He credits their Silicon Valley background, as “We didn’t come in biased. We came in with an open mind and always explored how we can actually use technology to make things better.

And not only make things more efficient so we can keep prices down, but also how we can leverage technology to keep quality up.”  

Building an operational model for staff augmentation

Roland recognizes the challenges of this line of work.

“The clients are humans with their individual problems, expectations, processes. And then on the other end you have another human, and that human is different, they have different expectations from their employer, different skill sets, different personality, right?” 

He finds that the key is to leverage technological solutions properly. 

“I think the key here is not to try to fix individual problems with technology, but use technology to tackle the big problems.” 

Wing Assistant was born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to apply the remote work model. 

“If you have an office, it’s super expensive and it doesn’t really do much for you. Especially if you have a sophisticated quality management system like we have. 

And secondly, you make it that much less attractive for employees to come and work for you.” 

Roland mentions that many of their talents already come from an outsourcing background that are exhausted from the in-office setup. He says the key is to provide all the technology requirements to ensure service proceeds uninterrupted. 

This has afforded them a steady stream of applicants. 

“We have grown to be such a big player in the space that we don’t really have to worry about applicants. On average we get more than 30,000 applicants a month for specific roles, and we filter them with our in-house assessments.” 

Technology and AI in outsourcing

Roland sees the future of outsourcing as settling into a mix of AI and human efforts. 

“Outsourcing for Fortune 500 companies, let’s say for customer support. That’s very structured, very process-based, [so] those jobs you can automate with AI very well.”

The reality is different in SMEs, as “those kinds don’t really have those rigorous or rigid processes.”

“I’m sure that down the line AI will definitely get better, and it’s gonna come fast. But I also want to say that we’re ahead of the curve ‘cause we’re actually already augmenting our human staff with AI.” Roland explains. 

He believes that his Silicon Valley background aids in his mindset when it comes to trying new technologies in outsourcing.  

“We don’t reinvent the wheel, but we use the concept of the wheel in our own house to make something happen that is value-adding for the customer.

And that’s basically how I think about technology in general. There’s always opportunities to combine certain technologies and utilize thoughts or ideas or principles that are out there in a new way.” 

If you’re looking for outsourcing solutions, you can visit Wing Assistant’s website. Roland is also happy to connect via LinkedIn.