Acquire BPO was established as a captive environment by two entrepreneurs in response to the lack of offshoring providers. The company has since evolved into a full-scale outsourced contact center and BPO, enjoying exponential growth year on year. Today, Acquire is an award‐winning, global business outsourcer with locations across the United States, Australia, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. With a global workforce of 7,000, Acquire provides a suite of contact center and back office services for clients across many industries including telecommunications, banking and financial services, insurance, media, education and retail. With a strong focus on culture, Acquire has built a team that is passionate about service excellence and innovation—developing and leveraging some of the latest technologies to ensure its clients are at the forefront of their respective industries.
A Passionate Leader
Scott Stavretis is the CEO of Acquire; he started his professional career at a tender age of 16. He founded the first Internet Service Provider in Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. Four years later, he sold his business and hasn’t stopped forming businesses ever since.
Scott was the founding executive of Dodo Australia; he was pivotal to its rapid growth as Australia’s largest private telecommunications company. He then transformed the business into a household consumer brand selling electricity, gas, home security, home and car insurance. Dodo was later sold to M2 Group for more than $200M.
At the age of 31, Scott initiated the merger of Eftel, which provided wholesale and corporate telecommunication services, with consumer brand ClubTelco, and took the reigns as its CEO. Within two years, he increased the market capitalization from $16M to $53M through an on-market sale, providing its shareholders with unprecedented returns. Scott’s success and contributions were recognized with the prestigious ACCOMS—Young Achiever of the Year award. He also co-founded Bet247, which later on became a fast-growing sports-betting company in Australia, prior to being sold to Tom Waterhouse. He also established a consumer electronics brand, Pendo Industries, manufacturing touch-screen electronics, which quickly gained more market share in Australia than its global competitors.
His passion in cutting‐edge technology drove him to acquire Animation1, a 3D animation studio that specializes in high‐end 3D visualizations of architecture and infrastructure projects, utilizing mobile technologies including augmented reality and virtual reality. Scott also re‐entered the telecommunication sector when he founded Yomojo, a national mobile phone company that enables consumers to customize their mobile plans. He also runs Degünt, a cloud‐based bookkeeping company and SHORE Solutions, which is a sister company to Acquire BPO.
Helping Clients Achieve Growth and Success
Acquire understands and values the relationship its clients have with their end customers. For this reason, Acquire’s team is comprised of experienced industry experts from the contact center and BPO industry, enabling it to deliver desired outcomes of its clients every time. The organization offers a full suite of outsourcing services:
- Contact Center ‐ A full range of top quality services that include voice, chat and e‐mail support.
- BPO ‐ A comprehensive portfolio of non‐voice, back office and KPO solutions.
- IT & Professional Services ‐ Best quality, cost‐efficient technology delivery solutions based on a high‐touch, high‐quality approach.
- Animation ‐ Cutting‐edge 3D animation and simulation to transform product and conceptual blueprints into uniquely creative and consistently flawless virtual visualizations.
- Marketing ‐ Services to address objectives of customer acquisition, branding, customer retention and cross‐
The organization is proud to have a portfolio of stable partners that represents a diverse array of global organizations, including private high achievers, as well as household brands listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). Acquire has a wealth of success stories from clients who have achieved massive sales growth, reduced SG&A costs that enabled reinvestment into innovation, scaled operations seamlessly to support expansion, improved customer satisfaction results, etc. Recently, Acquire signed a landmark 10-year extension with a customer after it has enjoyed tremendous success with the organization.
A Different Organization Working Round the Clock to Make the Industry Better
Acquire has a definitive edge over its competitors because:
- It offers low‐risk, innovative solutions ‐ The organization understands local privacy and regulatory frameworks in ways the monolithic, multinational BPOs cannot. Its clients’ data can be stored onshore and it is globally PCI‐DSS certified and independently audited. Its fully-redundant international network is built using multiple diverse subsea cables — meaning clients’ offshore operations always remains operational. Acquire is powered by world‐leading technology, including Genesys’ omni-channel platform. As Genesys’ one true BPO partner, it has dedicated in‐house service engineers to design, deploy and integrate optimal solutions.
- Its culture drives productivity and minimizes attrition ‐ Acquire’s people are engaged, happy and this ensures great outcomes for its clients. The organization attracts great talent and invests in training, free family health cover, community assistance, team‐building, strong engagement activities and much more.
- It makes offshoring simple ‐ From day one, Acquire has its client’s back. Its local Project Managers expertly guide clients through transition and ensure they get complete support by a local Account Manager at go‐
Acquire maintains very active membership and participation in industry organizations and events including the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, Auscontact, etc. These associations advocate for and enable the growth of the BPO industry and the development of its workforce, foster collaboration among its members and promote excellence in the field of outsourcing.
Development of employees also plays a big part in Acquire’s strategy. Nurturing skilled and high-performing individuals with more capabilities than just basic call center functions will ensure a steady pool of resources to evolve with the BPO industry’s needs. In order to facilitate programs geared toward competency and leadership development with focused expertise in training facilitation and training effectiveness measurement, the organization has set up a specialized team in its learning and development department called Employee Development Services. By upskilling existing employees and promoting internally (about 900 in a year), Acquire continues to create growth pathways that keep the organization flexible and adaptable to the evolving needs of the industry.
Prepared And With A Vision For The Future
The entire organization’s infrastructure and processes have been purpose‐built to deliver superior results for the unique demands and complexities of Acquire’s clients.
Acquire is well on its way to becoming a true Business Process Outsourcer, addressing organizational needs for business efficiency, automation and exceptional customer experiences. Its automation initiatives include automated reporting and real‐time analysis allows it and its clients to make rapid, informed decisions, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), National Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning. Further, Acquire is making inroads in assessing call drivers and business processes to identify use cases for virtual agents/chatbots and are fortifying its systems and processes to achieve the highest level of certifications and safeguard the privacy of its clients, customers and employees.
When the Going Gets Tough
Back in 2006 Acquire was established as a small business process outsourcer of 200 seats to fill a gap in the market by providing offshore contact center services to Australian businesses. Clients came on board quickly wanting to take advantage of investment Acquire had made in infrastructure and people. Thanks to all these, Acquire’s outsourcing services started to grow at a rapid pace, as did the need for much quicker and much greater investment. By 2013, Acquire had 4000 employees and a new headquarters in Melbourne.
Later in 2014, the organization moved to diversify and expand its range of services with the acquisition of two fast growing businesses; Animation1 and SHORE Solutions. Animation1 is a premier visualization studio that provides services including 3D modelling, walkthroughs, Augmented Reality (AR), interactive applications and film production for various verticals, including architecture, real estate, medical and forensics and entertainment. Whereas SHORE Solutions is a Philippine‐based BPO distinguished for its flexible range of outsourcing models.
In 2016, Acquire launched its nearshore facility in Dominican Republic in order to provide its US clients with capabilities to reach their English and Spanish speaking customers. Later that year, Acquire advanced its offerings with two enterprise‐grade platforms. Its flagship solution is powered by Genesys and offers its clients the ability to provide universal omni‐channel service from a single platform. In fact, Acquire is proud to be Genesys’ first true BPO partner. Projecting this market‐leading enterprise technology into Acquire enables it to provide a single unified experience for a client’s onshore and offshore operations. In addition to Genesys, the organization has also developed its own customized solution, Segue—a highly flexible, fully customizable solution that can cost‐efficiently be deployed to accommodate client’s immediate requirements.
In 2017, to align with its mission to “connect businesses with skilled people globally,” Acquire rolled out its core values across the entire organization to drive the way it works and who it strives to be. With a focus on Ambition, Collaboration, Impact, Judgement, Leadership, Leverage, Passion and Transparency, Acquire’s corporate culture has taken the organization into the next level of engagement with a goal to be a true employer of choice. It’s an ongoing process to ensure that it hires, manages, retains and promotes people based on these values.
Some challenges include learning how to effectively manage multi‐disciplinary teams across four continents, multiple time zones and various unique cultures while trying to embed a global outlook. Acquire resolves some of the challenges by establishing shared support teams, building a cohesive corporate environment and maintaining local best practices. With a global workforce of 7,000 full-time employees, addressing these challenges remains a key focus of Acquire’s agenda. Another challenge would be earning clients’ trust. The outsourcing industry can be fraught with misconceptions about taking work offshore: quality of work is sub‐par, clients lose control of their operations, false setting of expectations, etc. Acquire has learned that having an onshore Client Services team is essential to building that trust, where communications are real‐time and risks in managing transitions are mitigated. It has also ensured governance processes are in place for transparency—the organization also provides regular reporting, health checks on campaigns, executive dashboards and more.
Source :- The 10 Most Innovative Contact Center Solution Providers 2018
