We are bringing communities across Scotland together to spread kindness. Our goal is to help anyone who is vulnerable and struggling with self-isolation during the coronavirus outbreak.
Contact us on 0800 054 2282 or visit the website at viralkindness.scot
A free helpline has been launched to assist vulnerable Scots with their shopping deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic.
Around 500 convenience stores will be part of the initiative, called Viral Kindness Scotland, which also aims to tackle loneliness.
The community project was launched by the Sarwar Foundation, run by Labour MSP Anas Sarwar. He sent out a plea for help via Twitter on Monday, which was met with responses from a number of organisations across the country.
To view the full article click here.
Our Approach to COVID-19
The leadership team are following government guidelines and the updates very closely.
The safety of our amazing team and customers are of the highest importance to us. So much so we have taken quick action to move our operation to a work from home solution. Our Disaster Recover and Business Continuity plans have worked very effectively and our technology infrastructure continues to support our home working colleagues across the UK. We are aiming to be 100% remote working from mid March until further notice. It is business as usual for all your end customers who can still expect the same great service from our team.
Should you need any additional support or have any queries please reach out to us on 0333 014 4401.
Also if you are a company reading this that needs support to ensure continued service to your customers we would love to hear from you on 0333 014 4401.
Just like most companies today, all events, meetings and non critical travel have been postponed until further notice. We hope to see all our customers soon but in the meantime we are set up for video calls and remote meetings.
We will keep our customers very much in the loop should anything change.
Our thoughts and wishes are with anyone affected and the vulnerable who need our support now more than ever.
Thank you for your cooperation and support.
Stay safe, stay healthy.
For some, the word outsourcing used to be a shudder-inducing word, invoking images of cost-cutting, poor quality services, mass redundancies and more. Traditionally, outsourcing relationships focused on cost reduction and providing back-office services, often with very little focus on quality.
Those days are long gone. Outsourcing has been quietly evolving for many years, both to keep up with an increasingly competitive market and to accommodate the incredible pace of digital change, creating seismic shifts across most industries.
What organisations want and need now from outsourcing is strategic partners, experts in their fields, who will have quality as a top priority, delivering value-add services, but remaining cost-efficient. They need their outsourcing partners to enable them to secure an edge on their competitors.
Share the risk and reward
At go-centric we believe in sharing the risk and reward with our partners – with contracts based on outcomes rather than outputs. If our goal is to help your business grow and thrive, it makes sense that we agree the right targets and measures and that we’re incentivised to make that happen.
So, when looking at your strategic partnerships, are you measuring the right things? Are your partners truly incentivised to do the right thing for your business, or just hit volume targets regardless of outcomes?
We believe in doing the right thing for customers. Sometimes that means identifying an improvement to the customer experience that is not necessarily profitable for go-centric in the short term. But that is the strategic difference in our approach to partnership. We need to care as much if not more about our clients’ customer experiences.
Make use of technology
What business doesn’t have cost pressures? Cost to income ratio is the key to competition in many industries. But to remain competitive you need to be agile and using cutting-edge technology and digital innovations.
The right strategic partner will hold the expertise and tools and technology to keep you ahead of the game. They’ll also carry the pressure of keeping up with technology and digital developments.
At go-centric we consider it a key part of any partnership to share our best practice and industry knowledge with clients, to help them develop their customer experiences. Our agility means we can offer completely flexible solutions to any size of business – from a sole trader, SME right through to key corporate brands.
We know we can add value to any size of business. The omni-channel technology and 24/7/365 service we offer can utterly transform the service of a small business, providing access to technologies that would ordinarily be out of their reach, as well as providing unrivalled service access for their customers, something they could not achieve internally without significant investment in office space, technology and people.
Our tailored solutions also add value for our national and international corporate clients, through dedicated teams of brand ambassadors. Services that can flex throughout the year to cope with the peaks and troughs of seasonality, as well as offering multi-lingual omni-channel services, making the customer experience completely seamless.
Leverage the flexibility
Outsourcing used to be about off-loading your non-core activities to a partner to make a significant cost saving. But what companies now realise is that cost should not be your number 1 priority. If you don’t make quality and customer experience your top priorities (after looking after your people), you will never compete in today’s marketplaces.
Outsourcing contracts used to be long and hideously difficult to get out of regardless of the service you were receiving. Nowadays, partnerships are completely agile, outcome focused and, in some cases, you only pay for the actual service received on a month to month basis.
For an agile organisation the length of contract shouldn’t matter – because the outcomes are what’s important. If you’re delivering as promised, your partnership will last.
Flexibility is key to successful partnerships. At go-centric we have partnerships based on a ‘pay per call’ basis, ensuring that our clients are paying purely based on that service they are using. Others prefer a fixed-fee arrangement, to ensure they can budget ahead for the year. We have partnerships where we ensure we are incentivised to get the right outcome for our client – and we share the reward of that outcome.
Ultimately the flexibility is being focused on our clients’ needs, what their business challenges are and how we can add value and support in the right way. That conversation takes place regularly, through a close working relationship, to make sure we adapt our offering as the business develops.
You need trust
Like any successful relationship, a strong outsourcing partnership requires trust and honesty. It’s a leap of faith to hand over parts of your business to a supplier, but the rewards and benefits are clear. So, getting the partner right is the big step.
Investing the time in getting to know your partner and their team is worth every minute. We love to visit our clients and we encourage them to visit us at every opportunity. It’s brilliant for the relationship, engaging and motivating for the team and is really productive in helping us to progress the relationship.
To truly be brand ambassadors, our team must be immersed in the client brand, live and breath it. They feel just as important as the in-house team, they’re true advocates of the brand and they care passionately about their customers.
Disruptive outsourcing
There are high profile examples across many industries of the risk of ignoring progress. Blockbuster, Nokia, Tesco, Xerox, Thomas Cook and many more spring to mind.
You can’t ignore or delay acting on industry disruption. The disruption to outsourcing gives agile companies a chance to quickly drive positive change and gain competitive advantage.
Customer experience is about to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Do you think your customer experience is or will remain ahead of your competitors? Do you stand out enough?
Don’t let your customer experience risk you being left behind your nimbler competitors. Come and talk to us. We have the solutions, the expertise, the people and the technology. Our focus is the success of your business.
Call us for a free consultation today on 0333 014 4401
Introducing our new Finance Director, Jamie Beal.
Jamie officially joined go-centric in May 2019, having acted as an external adviser to the Company from October 2018 whilst working with a mid-tier Scottish accountancy firm. His return to an FD role within industry from professional services after a period of ten years allows him to leverage against an enhanced skill set, having specialised in a wide range of activities including debt, grant and equity finance raising; business acquisitions and disposals; MBOs; MBIs; corporate venturing and strategic advisory.
His previous time spent as a principal, as well as an advisor, enables him to better understand the operational and people issues within businesses, and their impact on the financial and commercial well-being of the organisation. He is a valuable addition to go-centric, ensuring we have a clear financial strategy and robust financial management, whilst also providing input on all new business proposals and cost-benefit analyses in relation to new and existing suppliers. Jamie is a qualified Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland.
Welcome to the team Jamie!
Invest your time, money and resources into doing what you do best. As businesses grow in size, they inevitably get more complex. More people, more space, more governance, more cost, more control.
As a fast-growing industry, outsourcing proves there are a number of reasons why it can be the right strategic choice, and make a significant contribution to the success of your business.
You’re buying specialist services, with extensive knowledge and expertise in specific products, processes or services. Your outsourcing partner constantly builds on best practice, learning from what works and doesn’t work across multiple clients. You’re also buying the ability to run a 24/7/365 business, without the overheads.
A good outsourcing partner will have robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place, to ensure your customers don’t take the hit if anything happens. They can provide you with overflow or emergency services, so if your system fails or the phone lines are down, your customers will continue to receive a consistent, seamless service.
Recruiting a multi-lingual team is complex and expensive. A good outsourcing partner will help you go global, with skilled resources providing services across a number of languages.
The right partner will provide you with a cost-effective service, costing you far less than the recruitment and headcount, office space, technology, training and management costs you would incur delivering in-house. Their services will be flexible and scalable, to support the peaks and troughs of your volumes, without the need for costly headcount.
Keeping on top of digital development and trends isn’t easy, for any size of business. It takes significant time and investment. The Cloud enables your outsourcing partner to connect with your systems seamlessly, and their development team will constantly be looking for ways to innovate and improve your customer experience.
The one thing that outsourcing won’t do? It won’t harm your customer experience. At go-centric we’re committed to delivering an outstanding experience for you and your customers. From omni-channel customer services, through to membership services, administration, social media management and back office solutions, we can support your business and help you thrive.
Please come and talk to us about your business goals.