Beyond Borders Podcast Episode 022: Overview
In this episode, we sit down with Adam O’Connor, Chief Commercial Officer at Gear Inc. Gear Inc is a leading provider of tailor-fit BPO solutions designed to align seamlessly with each client’s unique needs, creating a powerful engine of growth that drives success. With a passionate workforce of over 6,000 professionals spanning multiple industries and time zones, Gear Inc delivers world-class business services to some of the world’s most renowned brands.
The company’s commitment to excellence is evident in its continuous investment in technology, talent, and infrastructure, ensuring that clients receive top-tier support whenever and wherever they need it. Gear Inc remains dedicated to helping businesses achieve their goals with customized solutions and unparalleled service quality.
Guest Bio
As a strategic leader with over a decade of experience, Adam has successfully driven sales and marketing initiatives in executive roles including Chief Operating Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. Currently serving as Chief Commercial Officer at Gear Inc., Adam excels in relationship building and strategic thinking, leading international teams with a servant leadership approach. With a proven track record in business-to-business (B2B) environments and client relations, he effectively works across all company sizes, from small and medium to large enterprises.
Interview Transcript
Wayne: You’ve just joined Beyond Borders, a podcast by OutsourcingFit where we talk to some of the people who know about Outsourcing because they run Outsourcing businesses today we’re joined by Adam O’Connor. Adam’s Chief Commercial Officer with Gear Inc. and we’re going to talk about what Gear Inc. does and we need to talk to Adam about how he came to be where he is. Adam, welcome to the show.
Adam: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Wayne: It’s a pleasure. Now, first of all, just to give you some credibility because many of our listeners haven’t met you before. Fill us in, how you got to be in a senior role with a firm as big and significant as Gear Inc.
Adam: I’ve been working in the outsourcing industry for about 15 years now. I started off with a company where I was employee number 30, moved over to Asia and helped build that company up to a significant amount leading sales teams, entering into different regions. I left Asia a couple of years ago and moved back to Europe. I’m based in the UK now and after about 11-12 years working with that company. Then I decided to go on to a new venture and found Gear Inc. who we’re doing big things in the outsourcing industry.
Wayne: So now you mentioned you’re in Asia for a long time. Asia is certainly a very significant hub for outsourcing but it’s not the only place in the world? Where does Gear Inc. operate?
Adam: We operate in about 23 different countries at the moment from nearly every continent on the planet so we’re in Asia, we’re in Europe, we’re in North America, South America and Africa as well as Australasia and we cover about 75 different languages with our workforce. Our workforce is over 6,000 strong and growing rapidly.
Wayne: So now I am tempted to ask you the name and population of each one of those 23 countries but I won’t do that to you. Six thousand is not an insignificant number of staff on any scale and 23 countries is extraordinary and even more languages. Tell us what it is that Gear Inc. does.
Adam: Our core competencies are customer service, content moderation, financial services, back office, game development and moderation as well as some sales and other call center functions. They would be our core competencies. The language comes in, we work with quite a lot of large social media companies around the world. We work with a lot of travel, automobile companies as well providing customer service and omni channel support for them and we just work through finding the right solutions for the customers as they need them.
Wayne: Now you mentioned call centers there and I guess call centers are one of the things people think about when you talk about outsourcing with people. Certainly in some other industries you talk about outsourcing and they’re talking about break assemblies or sewing textiles and clothing in other parts. Now we’re talking about outsourcing people, what’s the difference between Gear Inc., a call center, an employer of record and co-managed outsourcing?
Adam: So an employee record essentially would be somebody who’s looking to do everything and just needs a company to look after the staff within the country that they’re trying to employ them when they don’t have a presence in that country. A call center does sales, it is almost a managed service. A company would say that they want 100 full-time employees to look after the customer service for whoever they may be. The call center will look after the QA side of things, the training side of things, the hiring, the firing, the workforce management, and making sure that all of the above are looked after and managed rather than the customer themselves doing it. Gear Inc. sits in the middle. The management team come from a long line of of different outsourcing call center backgrounds so that we have the experience to put together teams from small BPO teams all the way up to call center functions, whether they be managed by the Gear Inc. themselves or managed by the end user customer. We’re able to for any different tasks and make sure that the teams are performing to the standards that are required.
Wayne: Now that’s a very flexible positioning for Gear Inc. by the sound of it. How do you cope with so many different languages?
Adam: We have a broad range of different management teams who come from all across the world in all different time regions. We base the languages or we base our centers in countries where different languages are prevalent. So for example, just in Asia we’re in the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore. What we find is by spreading out across the different countries, you can get four, five, six, sometimes even up to 10 different languages per center that you do but a lot of the people will also speak the local language which allows you to manage them in the local language so it makes it a lot easier.
Wayne: I see. That’s a very flexible way to do things. What’s a typical big customer and what’s a typical small customer?
Adam: A big customer would be somebody sort of 50 to 100 FTEs. We have some customers with over 500 FTEs and a small customer would be somewhere between three and ten starting looking to grow as they move forward. So we can deal with those real estate agents and accountancy firms who are looking for a few staff, not hundreds. But correct, we can also cope with those clients who are looking for hundreds of staff. The customer I was talking about which I’m not allowed to name due to privacy, they have a significant amount of staff with us. They spread over a significant amount of territories and they’re a global very well-known social media company but we also work with some smaller customers who are looking to grow who are using the services to be able to extend their bottom line and make financial sense for them but also free up their time to be able to focus on building their businesses rather than be working in them.
Wayne: Now you mentioned there very briefly privacy and my compliance hackles went up. How do you cope with the rules and regulations? Are there lots of rules and regulations? Do the normal laws apply in outsourcing?
Adam: Absolutely. Each customer has different needs. Each country has different needs whether that be GDPR, whether it be ISO certifications. All of these kinds of things, we work towards whatever the customer wants. We’re working towards improving that all the time and keeping abreast of all of the regulations that come aboard for the different countries but we are compliant and we’ll work with the customers to make sure that they get the coverage, the privacy, the protection that they need as well as what we need and their customers’ needs.
Wayne: Given that there are all those compliance needs around the place, one of the things that I think bothers everyone who’s outsourcing is data security. How do you address that given the scope of where you’re operating?
Adam: We work a lot of the time, the customers will want us to use lists that they’ve got but it’s the same as how we address data security in the west within an office. We can lock down people’s PCs. We can do all of the different things that are needed um we can comply with PCI DSS regulations if needed which we can put into sites depending on the level of security. We can achieve it. It just depends and there’s a cost associated with that as well obviously if you want a really high level of security. In terms of locking down everything, then we would have to build a facility to manage those expectations. Now in this post-Covid world, everyone’s learned how to work remotely anyway.
Wayne: Does outsourcing save a lot of money?
Adam: Typically it saves anywhere between 30-70% on the roles that you’re looking for but what it does do and what people don’t take into account is the amount of time that it can save companies as well. If you outsource a role in a fully managed service, then you literally are pushing that out to somebody else without having to do the daily follow-ups, the daily check-in, and you will just get your monthly reports or weekly reports depending on what you’re looking for and a check in with the guys. We can have people working closely with the management team with the companies to make sure that they feel like they’re involved as well but it will save a significant amount of time in training, hiring, HR, payroll – all of these kinds of things. You just pay one monthly bill and you get the workers working for you. So it is so simple and fast.
Wayne: Adam, I’m sure with a title like Chief Commercial Officer and you mentioned before a background in sales. There has to be some part of your job that’s about sales so how do we sell this? What would you say to people listening about why they should talk to you about outsourcing as opposed to anyone else?
Adam: The team at Gear Inc. as I touched upon earlier are very experienced in the outsourcing call center industry bringing together the whole management team with the experience allows us to find and solutions for each customer whether that’s a small customer with three to ten people or that’s a really large corporate with over 500 or a thousand seats, we can work with them to give them the tools, the processes, the scoring, all of those kinds of things to make sure that outsourcing is a success for whoever’s looking for it.
Wayne: Adam O’Connor, thank you for your time. For people who are looking to reach out to you I guess it’s www.gearinc.com. Thank you for your time today, Adam.
Adam: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
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