Christina Snyder Podcast Transcript
Christina Snyder joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Do you work in emerging tech, working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.coruzant.com/brand.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Christina Snyder. Christina Snyder leverages decades of leadership and global growth to help their clients scale efficiently.
Through strategic outsourcing with deep expertise in building high performing dedicated teams, she has led transformative initiatives across industries including retail, mortgage and financial services, technology, customer experience, healthcare and finance, and accounting, driving measurable outcomes for clients around the world.
Well, good afternoon, Christina. Welcome to the show.
Christina Snyder: Thank you, Brian. I’m glad to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it. Hailing out of the great state of North Carolina. I appreciate it there in Raleigh. I’m in Kansas City as we were just chatting before, this weather’s kind of crazy this time of year.
So, we’re everybody’s buck buckling down for this. So, I just appreciate you making the time, jumping on today. So, Christina, if I could, I’m gonna jump into your first question. You’ve spent decades leading global growth initiatives through strategic outsourcing. What has changed most in how companies think about outsourcing today compared to even five or 10 years ago?
Christina Snyder: Great question, and it has changed dramatically, especially over the last five years. When I think about my decades experience of doing outsourcing, it used to be as a leader, thinking about cost containment and it being a bit of a transactional tool. At the board level, and now it’s shifted into a strategic initiative, global workforce transformation, that most boardrooms are talking about how to access these highly special skills no matter where they reside around the world.
A recent survey that we did confirmed that it’s become rather mainstream, especially in the US whereas, five plus years ago, it was only the enterprise grade companies that would leverage outsourcing as a tactic. But now 60% of our recent respondents in the survey attested that they outsource more than three of their functions, globally.
And so not only are companies shifting in the way that they’re looking at their workforces they’re also being given access to different models. So, years ago, 20 years ago, it was just the traditional BPO outsourcing models that existed. And today there’s many more models, dedicated staffing, some of the part-time work, the EOR. And so, companies have a lot more ability for choice.
Brian Thomas: I think that’s. I mean, we’re seeing that today. Obviously we’ve come become really a global economy, but having that flexibility again, I know back in the day we all think about the old school brick and mortar where there’s we talked about cost containment as you mentioned, but that this shift to a global strategy and finding that special specialty talent is certainly the way companies have been moving.
So, I really appreciate your insights and what you’re doing there. Christina with remote and hybrid work now normalized. How has global talent access reshaped the way companies scale operations and customer experience?
Christina Snyder: It’s a large shift because just as you said, this highly skilled labor, I liken it to now companies can focus on orchestration, not necessarily location.
And looking at what they want to do with their brands and be able to unlock this ability to have an offshore or near shore team of highly skilled, high performing teams that they can access to be part of their go forward and go to market strategy. And you can see that this global talent access that has these role-based skills and functions like finance and accounting, business intelligence.
AI enabled ready talent have given more flexibility and capability and scale to organizations. And because there’s this, invitation to engage remote workers or hybrid workers, you can have a distributed team that follows the sun type, modus opera operandi for faster response times, 24/7 engagement.
The customer at the end of the day doesn’t care where the team sits, nor does in many cases today. The senior leader onshore as long as the innovation and the customer satisfaction and the brand, DNA, is accepted and upheld. So, it’s really changed this remote and hybrid and what we’re seeing.
78% of enterprise survey respondents have said that this remote capability has increased their scale and flexibility to running their businesses.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I love the fact that people are seeing that they can increase that scale, having the talent being able to serve customers worldwide in their time zones.
Obviously improves the customer experience, but I like what you said early on companies can focus on orchestration, not necessarily location. I thought that was really cool. And of course, we’ve got highly skilled talent near shore offshore all around now, and that’s helping businesses adapt more to their customer needs.
So, I appreciate that. Christina, you’ve driven measurable outcomes for clients worldwide. What metrics should leaders track to ensure their outsourcing strategy is delivering real business impact?
Christina Snyder: When I meet with C-Suite and I think about my own business and my experience, it starts what, with the question of what does a leader’s success look like when they think about their company, what do they foresee?
Success is in the future for that business. Whether it’s revenue enablement, whether it’s customer satisfaction, retention, lifetime value, speed to market, quantifying and clearly understanding what their success looks like is an imperative. And so based on that, when you access talent, whether it’s onshore or offshore.
You, you match and marry that, success factor with the metrics that you choose to evaluate the performance of your talent. And so, I always say that your KPIs tied to your goals should be the same for your onshore talent and your offshore. They should have the same performance metrics and whether it’s a healthcare company that’s focused on RCM.
That revenue and customer care and that speed to cash is their priority, or it’s a company that’s in the financial service or a financial firm that you know is very laser focused on, invoice to cash order to cash speed to closing and forecasting, whatever those metrics are. It’s vitally important that you connect your talent strategy to those KPIs to have success at the end of the day.
Brian Thomas: I really love that. Tying that again, as you said, talent strategy, back to those metrics, you talked early on how does a, what does a leader’s success look like at an organization? And you highlighted some things like revenue enablement, speed to market, customer experience, and retention. Those are so important.
But without those KPIs or metrics to measure that performance, you’re really not gonna see much progress there. So, I totally get that, and I appreciate your insights. And Christina, the last question of the day, as we look ahead, how do you see. Outsourcing, evolving in the age of AI automation and digital transformation, what should leaders do now to prepare
Christina Snyder: a common question, especially since every day all of us hear about AI, and I’m very proud to be in an industry global talent that is as fast a trending industry as AI and an enabler. AI, especially with companies that provide and access highly skilled global talent. I was very pleased, personally to receive the results of a recent survey that we did that was consistent with what our clients are seeing, that AI is a disruptor as well as an enabler, and outsourcing is a key enabler for ai.
So rather than diminishing outsources role, AI is basically expanding its strategic relevance and it’s become a testbed outsourcing for companies, leveraging AI and, and utilizing their ai and innovation strategies and accessing. Key talents, like data annotation, you know, snowflake developers all around the world to be able to access this capability, in some cases even stronger than onshore capability and available to allow organizations to leverage that capability, increase their agility, use it as a test bed.
And we know from the survey that 44% of our enterprise. Survey adopters were saying that they view the outsourcing industry as a way to enhance AI and their strategies, as well as looking for outsource companies that have AI tools, AI talent, and I know organizations that actually have training that bring AI ready talent right to the front door when companies need this.
And so, when companies take a step back. Think about how do we leverage global talent through the outsourcing industry with the D different models and engage that with what we’re trying to do with our brand and our adoption of ai. They’re actually setting themselves up to be resilient for the future as, as well as resilient for the future of their work strategy.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. AI is certainly a game changer. We talk a lot about AI here on the podcast. Just a ton. Doesn’t matter, what the guest background is, but it’s, it’s just amazing to see that. And AI is certainly a huge enabler in the global talent business. As you mentioned, outsourcing is a key enabler for AI as well.
But leveraging this technology across teams increases capacity, efficiency, as you mentioned. I liked hearing, bringing that AI talent, or I should say that talent that’s AI ready for the table is a game changer as well. And I thought that was interesting. So, I appreciate that. And Christina, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Christina Snyder: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate the time.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Christina Snyder Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
