Cristina Man, Valoris Center: Our BPO industry is focused on cost-competitiveness and this makes business development even more challenging

Last year, Valoris Center reported a 33 percent increase of its revenues and also opened a new hub Bacau for 90 specialists.

Company’s performance: 

Company turnover 2019: 5.328.211 EUR

Company employees 2019: 361 employees

Company employees 2020 (expectations): 450 employees

“We plan to continue the development trend in 2020,” Cristina Man, owner and founder of Valoris Center, told Outsourcing Today. “Our main objective is to grow our client’s portfolio and become a strategic partner for companies looking to outsource their services. Thus, we have great expectations in 2020 and we’re looking forward seeing what opportunities the near future will bring.”

Man  says the industry is focused on cost-competitiveness and this makes business development for contact center companies in Romania even more challenging: “Over time, we’ve developed our strategy around delivering quality services at competitive prices to our customers, while adding value to their businesses. We’re doing it by automating our working processes, by anticipating their needs and by offering tailored solutions for their requests. We have more than 13 years of experience within the industry, therefore we have the required expertise to generate cost-effective solutions that help our clients to achieve the best results. We’re also focusing on extending our presence in other regions of Romania, other than big hubs like Bucharest, Timisoara or Iasi, in order to extend the redundancy of the services and to offer more competitive fees.”

The BPO market is continuously developing in Romania, so it’s important for Valoris to remain relevant on this very competitive market

“We focus on being efficient and flexible when collaborating with our partners,” says Man.  “We manage to attract and to keep our customers satisfied by offering them services that support their business growth. So, we’re always ready to face the challenges that arise in our activity and we continuously improve our services. On a medium and long term, our objective is to fully integrate RPA and AI in our activity, to automate most of our working processes. This way, we’ll be able to focus more on bringing added value to our clients and gain a competitive advantage.”

Man goes on to say that the industry is characterized by technology development and new systems emerge constantly to help optimize the activity. “There are some trends that already started in the recent past and we expect them to become even more important in 2020,” she explains. “Integrating business tools like BI, CRM and ERP systems into our activity to get all the customer data in one place and implementing cloud communication will become essential within our industry. Working remote also becomes more popular in companies, so cloud-based platforms are necessary to enable remote agents to interact with consumers in a proper way.  Cloud also provides flexibility for companies, so we expect many organizations to shift operations on cloud in 2020. Another big technology trend that will have a huge impact in 2020 is recall technology, which is relatively new. This system removes errors within messages, without interfering with the flow of the conversation. This way, call centers will maintain the accuracy of information when dealing with customers, thus making it an important tool to improve the quality in 2020.”

Company’s location offices in 2019 in Romania: Bucharest, Valcea County and Bacau.

CSR initiatives

“In 2019 we’ve focused on involving our entire team in CSR initiatives,” says Man. “This approach engaged our employees and they clearly realized the real impact those actions had for society. For example, we’ve organized a successful fund raising in our company to help underprivileged children to continue their studies. The action was well received within our company and our employees had the opportunity to be directly involved.

Another trend that emerged in 2019, which we’re looking to develop more in 2020 is becoming partners with charitable associations and external CSR Foundations. Our focus is towards the educational initiatives. In 2019 we’ve donated books with the help of our partners, and we hope we’ve made a small difference for the underprivileged children.”

Cristina Man feels that in terms of CSR Projects there is a strong need to get involved in education programs to help youngsters create a future for themselves.

“We see it as a key strategic solution for most of the society’s problems,” she explains. “Educated children have more chances to develop into productive and happy adults that will improve the world we live in. So, education really solves problems, like emigration, environment, poverty and our actions are oriented towards them. Unfortunately, Romanian educational system is outdated, and a lot of children do not have access to learning materials and experiences that will truly help them. Therefore, we think it’s important to get involved in actions that will support the future generations.”

For 2020, Valoris is looking towards giving employees’ access to e-learning programs, like online courses and webinars: “Using these methods, we aim to help them improve in every area they need to. We’re aware that each employee has different learning needs and styles, so, offering a platform with learning programs from every business area will help them improve professionally even more.”

By the end of 2019, the company had a rough estimate of 360 employees and by the end of 2020 it expects to grow towards 450 employees. “Our recruitment needs grew over the last years, so in terms of HR we are more focused on the existing colleagues,” says Man. “We are working on implementing modern onboarding programs that will help our employees adapt easier within our company and loyalty programs focused on reducing our attrition rate. Also, we are creating a modern HR team, ready to face the recruitment challenges within our industry.”

In her opinion, the recruitment market in Romania is truly dynamic and is currently dictated by the employee’s needs: “There are endless opportunities for candidates, therefore organizations must find new ways to attract and retain them. Perhaps the biggest challenge within the workforce market is represented by adapting the companies’ culture to the generation Y and Z requirements, like having work-life balance, flexibility at work and growth opportunities. Nowadays, the number of millennial employees is increasing and, by the end of 2025, they will represent 75% of the workforce, so companies must adapt their culture in order to integrate them. Those trends are even more present in the contact center industry, where most employees are young students or graduates. If, in the recent past offering more flexibility, work remote and wellness programs were an option, in 2020 they’ve became mandatory. So, in order to remain competitive on the recruitment market, this is the time to take action.”

Workplace importance

Cristina Man believes that happier employees are more productive, so their wellbeing is a priority within Valoris.

“We are looking to offer numerous learning and development opportunities, to organize various engagement competitions and to integrate our employees within our company’s culture,” she explains. “Creating a pleasant work environment is a collective effort, which starts with our management team and finishes with each employee. We encourage honest communication within our company and we found that our employee’s creativity is very valuable. Thus, we’ve created ‘The lab of ideas’, an internal project which offers our employees the possibility to share their suggestions for improving the workplace. The best ideas are implemented and rewarded.  The purpose of this action is to make employees feel heard and to offer them the possibility to contribute to developing our work environment. We also organize regular team building activities with the whole company and also for each project, to strengthen the relationships between our employees.”

Last year, Valoris opened a new office, so in 2020 it will concentrate its efforts to optimise the activity in the existing locations: “We spend most of the time at the office, so it’s important to create a pleasant environment and it all starts with the space where we work in. Due to our activity, an open space was the perfect choice. It facilitates the interaction between colleagues, and it makes it easier for our agents to receive support in their activity when their team leaders are sitting nearby. Also, by working in an open space there are fewer psychological barriers between colleagues. But it’s not just the building itself that’s important, the location is just as relevant. So, we chose a location that made access to our office easy, having numerous transportations possibilities nearby, like metro and bus stations.”

CEO vision

“We acknowledged that our employees need diversified learning and development experiences, so our priority in 2020 is to implement an e-learning platform within our company, containing various courses from which our employees to choose,” Man underlines. “Another project that we’re developing this year is a Talent Management Program that will focus on identifying and developing high potential employees. And to complete the educational programs overview we’ll mention also the implementation of regular assessment centers that will allow us to have a high level of competences across the entire team. Our company has a long history of involvement in CSR projects, which allow our employees to get involved and interact in activities for a good cause. We aligned our company’s culture with educational CSR Projects that are meant to help scholars and children. For 2020 we’re looking forward to get involved in CSR campaigns that will continue to support the educational efforts of young people.”

 CEO’s memo for 2020: “Every moment is precious so let’s use it carefully!”