The Challenge
Scaling Up Customer Staffing Efficiently For Short-Term Busy Periods
Flowers are welcome at any time of the year, but there are two days when they are a must: Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
For this premier provider of floral arrangements and mixed flower bouquets for over 100 years, these were the busiest periods of the year, requiring as much as ten times more support staff.
To best support their customers during these specific timeframes, they carried out very extensive short-term ramping of human resources. Historically, they had relied on a large partner network of multiple outsourcing firms.
However, this large web of vendors required a complex management operation, which led to unnecessary overspending – especially when this network was only needed for very short periods throughout the year. With so many partners, they were struggling to forecast the true needs of the business, with often too few or too many outsourced support agents during the holidays.
They knew they needed to consolidate their partner network under a single global provider - one who could reduce their management overspend and provide the scale they required for busy periods.
The Outcome
A True Single Partnership to Deliver Flexible Staffing Efficiencies
After working with Sutherland for over a decade, this florist selected us as their exclusive scaled staffing provider.
We started by opening up several new Philippines-based sites dedicated to this client during the main holiday periods. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we also opened up new GEOs in India and Egypt to ensure continued staffing availability.
With Sutherland as their single partner, they were able to reduce their internal vendor management operations and ensure forecasting and staffing needs were aligned throughout the year.
As a bonus, they could focus their efforts on increased customer satisfaction and higher sales conversion. Coupled with our new and efficient provider relationship, this resulted in a 6% uptick in topline revenue and an 11% boost in staffing efficiency.
