No More Call Centres: From Transactional to Transformational Outsourcing in Engineering and Construction

Waiting on hold with a big company’s call centre, knowing they’re outsourcing while they downsize at home—and imagining terrible working conditions. The early stages of outsourcing earned their bad reputation. In fact the post-COVID world of high-level remote and hybrid workplaces looks very familiar to anyone working in engineering construction outsourcing—where over the past decade transformational outsourcing has been ‘the new normal’ for some time. But things have moved on in outsourcing—especially in engineering and construction. Let’s look at how things have changed for the better.

The big western telcos pioneered outsourcing because they could take basic tasks, raw salary savings, and scale them for commercial benefit. Modern ‘production line’ offices of vast, cramped cubicles showed up as background noise on our phone calls—all fed by a huge pool of inadequately educated operators hired purely as a numbers game—and treated terribly.

Not anymore—and not with Cybalink.

In fact we hire degree-qualified industry specialists—professionals in high demand. And we take care of them. From health benefits to compassionate leave, from family-friendly hours to clean, modern offices. From a full-size basketball court to modern gym, from pool table to fully stocked café—our offices look more like Silicon Valley than the ‘sardine cans’ of early call centres.

Security once had a very well-deserved bad rap in outsourcing. Huge data leaks, personal information on the black market—home companies needed their own cybersecurity specialists to design and oversee security.

But that’s all changed.

Transformational outsourcing companies have now pioneered and benchmarked new security standards—to way beyond most Western companies. From fingerprint and facial recognition security to cloud technology that removes data downloading and print risks—Cybalink’s transformational outsourcing puts control firmly in the hands of home companies.

Basic outsourcing was all about doing—not thinking. Call centre staff were trained to read from scripts, and we all experienced the terrible results. Outsourcers shaped their hiring around this model, ‘filling and billing’ from massive pools of staff quickly trained ‘production-line’ roles. Traces of that model linger—even in EPC outsourcing.

At Cybalink, we think engineering and construction deserves better—so we mirror best practice in home countries. We advertise, run a series of interviews, and run an inhouse Engineering Technical Assessment—checking skills in modelling, estimating, or software—whatever we know the client will need.

Early outsourcing evolution brought limited improvement. Skilled experts were paid to solve problems on their own. Apple, some banks, and marketing entrepreneurs developed this approach back in the 1990s. Tactical outsourcing involves core business processes. And it works—to a point. The job gets done, but the culture doesn’t evolve—workers remain separate, and you can’t shift the needle on their working context to produce results as good as in-house staff. At Cybalink, our staff join and develop your own culture.

Our engineering and construction focus means we’re not trying to please everyone—and because we’ve worked onsite in EPC first-hand, we know the nuances of culture. From the ‘in it together’ aspect of delivering massive infrastructure projects to the ‘absolute deadline’ dimension of how the smallest part in EPC affects the whole—we live and breathe EPC. So with staff supported to join that culture—and even contribute to it—we invest in and nurture long-term relationships that get beneath the obvious deliverables. We don’t hide behind SLA’s—and we learn everything possible about host companies.

Everything remains on company terms, matching culture and meeting standards. As a transformational outsourcer, Cybalink Solutions’ has been at it for some time. Our staff attend your team meetings, listen to your ideas and share their own. The goal isn’t restricted to getting things done—it also includes improving the way things are done. So transformational outsourcing teams gradually make your company stronger, and they become more valuable for every new collaborative project. One day you’ll face a choice about EPC outsourcing going from risky new idea to effective evolution. As transformational outsourcers, we like to make that choice easy.