ISO/IEC 30105 – the ITES-BPO standard series

IT Enabled Services-Business Process Outsourcing (ITES-BPO) services covers the delegation of one or more IT enabled business processes to service providers who use appropriate technology to deliver that service. Such a service provider manages, delivers, improves and administers the outsourced business processes in accordance with predefined and measurable performance metrics. This covers diverse business process areas such as finance, human resource management, administration, healthcare, banking and financial services, supply chain management, travel and hospitality, media, market research, analytics, telecommunication, manufacturing, etc. These services provide business solutions to customers across the globe and form part of the core service delivery chain for customers.

ISO/IEC 30105-1 – ITES-BPO lifecycle processes –  process reference model (PRM) and ISO/IEC 30105-2 – ITES-BPO lifecycle processes – process assessment model (PAM) define a process reference model and a process assessment model, with more than 30 business processes for the ITES-BPO industry, that enable the determination of a BPO organizations process capability and organizational maturity across the end-to-end BPO lifecycle. 

These process reference and assessment models, include a continual improvement process, whose purpose is to manage the identification, analysis, prioritization and implementation of continual improvements. ISO/IEC 30105-8, Continual performance improvement (CPI) of ITES-BPO, further elaborates the continual improvement process to support ITES-BPO service providers who want to effectively achieve business service performance goals by implementing the continual performance improvement (CPI) methodology, complementing improvement programmes arising from the ITES-BPO process assessment.

In addition, ISO/IEC 30105-5 – ITES-BPO lifecycle processes – guidance, whilst providing guidance on the ISO/IEC 30105 series and the application of the process assessment model, it also provides guidance on how to strategically leverage the outcome of the process assessments (as defined in ISO/IEC 30105-2) in the context of an improvement programme to improve the capability and maturity of an ITES-BPO organization’s delivery.

ITES-BPO service delivery stakes

BPO service delivery excellence is a worldwide quest. However, it is getting more and more complex, with many suppliers across the service value chain, geographically spread, and relying on technologies to continually improve speed and quality of delivery.

To address such a systemic challenge, acquiring a competitive edge through continual improvement in the reliability of service delivery becomes strategic for all organizations.

Continual Performance Improvement (CPI) of ITES-BPO service delivery

To foster a collective and sustainable approach, easing up the management of suppliers, the international standard ISO/IEC 30105-8 suggests the CPI methodology to iteratively boost the effectiveness of action plans in the field of service delivery performance. It consists in correlating permanently the progress achievements with their tangible operational benefits.

The CPI methodology is comprised of the following components:

• root causes of past and current issues and threats across all ITES-BPO service delivery. The STAR (stability, transparency, adaptability and reliability) classification, introduced in the 30105-8 standard can be used to evaluate the root causes criticality.
• service performance criteria that contain the gap analysis between critical root causes and selected work products (WPs) characteristics which are defined in the ISO/IEC 30105-2.
• lifecycle continual performance improvement (LCPI) method that assess the ITES-BPO service delivery by using quantitative or qualitative service performance criteria.

The service provider should enrich its knowledge repository with CPI results (such as service performance criteria, root causes criticalities, assessment results, resolution effectiveness and cost) to support the continual performance improvement of its ITES-BPO services.

To implement the CPI methodology in an ITES-BPO continual improvement process (TEN8):

• additional inputs and outputs for existing ITES-BPO processes which are required in order to optimize the lifecycle of new (CPI components) or existing (such as improvement plan, risk mitigation plan) WPs that are essential for the CPI methodology.
• additional BPs for the continual improvement process, which drive the successful and continual integration of CPI methodology within ITES-BPO service provider processes.

Benefits of implementing the CPI methodology

Through the successful implementation of the CPI methodology, with additional base practices and work products or characteristics of work products from service delivery execution, service delivery reporting, solution development, change management, audit management and continual improvement, ITES-BPO service providers will be able to enjoy the following benefits:

1) identification and actioned analyses of improvement opportunities;

2) planning and implementation of continual improvement programmes;

3) selection of specific objectives and goals for the programme based on priority and value added;

4) monitoring and review of programmes against objectives;

5) communication of progress to relevant stakeholders;

6) involvement of the customer organization as appropriate;

7) analysis and reporting on the impact of changes, issues, threats and improvements on continual improvement policy and measures.

Summary

The CPI methodology results in an assessment score for the ITES-BPO service delivery that supports the prioritization of business service performance improvement opportunities.

The CPI methodology consists of a CPI repository and an assessment method for ITES-BPO service delivery, based on identified service performance criteria.

For ISO/IEC TS 30105-8, see https://www.iso.org/standard/78335.html.