Personiv: The People-Powered Outsourcing Solution

Business leaders today are consistently asked to do more with less while at the same time, scaling fast. To overcome this challenge, more and more companies are turning to third-party providers to complete routine tasks, comprising everything from back office work to customer experience. Whether it’s a CFO facing a talent shortage, a marketing firm needing help with online campaigns or a startup looking for more talent—teams are strapped, and outsourcing becomes a viable solution.

As many execs know, outsourcing low-impact tasks to a provider is one way to get better results, save on talent costs and accomplish high-priority projects. And although outsourcing as a strategy isn’t new, many applications are reinventing the way businesses operate today.

Third-party outsourcers, or BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) providers as they are known in the industry, can take on tasks from traditional voice and call center work to admin and accounting, even creative – be it graphic design or digital.

Services that Drive Results

Personiv, an Austin, Texas-based BPO provider offering services with offshore talent, is one such firm that is changing the way organizations grow, while showing U.S. companies how tapping into the global economy can give them an enviable edge.

“We provide customized, talent-based solutions that fulfill our clients’ repetitive tasks, which save them anywhere from 50-75 percent,” David Lesniak, CEO, Personiv said. “But what’s really incredible to see is how our clients use these savings to deeply influence the trajectory of their businesses. We’ve seen clients use it to spin up a new program, increase sales and marketing or enhance their service offerings, and the effects can be measured across verticals with multi-faceted, impactful results.”

The results are indeed indicated by the growth that the firm has enjoyed themselves, increasing their headcount by a whopping 700 percent in the past five years alone. Lesniak attributes much of this growth to the quality of their work and the talent of the Personiv team, which numbers at nearly 3,000 in five site locations across the globe.

The company has also utilized acquisitions as a strong go-to-market strategy, announcing their acquisition of the Delhi, India call center JKBPO in October 2017, which added not only 350-plus team members but also full-service customer contact, sales and tech support solutions to their list of available offerings.

Talent in the Global Economy

In the outsourcing world, the talent acquired to complete tasks is essential to the firm’s success, which is why Personiv goes after educated, hard-working and dedicated team members who fill their seats and fulfill the needs of their clients.“We owe all of our success to our people—the teams we hire, train and retain in our delivery centers offshore,” Lesniak said. “Our people are our business, which is why we focus heavily on investing in them because when our employees are happy, so are our customers.”

Investing in their people is a core tenet of the Personiv philosophy which also includes the pillars of focusing on quality and a dedication to giving back. The company takes the value of employee investment not only to heart but to hand as well, providing glitzy reward and recognition events at their sites, yearly mountain trek excursions to the Himalayas, weekly engagement activities, quarterly opportunities
to give back, and more.

“Across our sites, you can often hear our team members claim they are ‘Personiv Proud.’” Lesniak said. “To achieve this level of buy-in from our employees, our team investment must consistently stay a top priority. By making our culture a key focus, we’ve been able to enhance our partnerships with clients and drop our attrition rates well below the industry average.”

With a young, educated and dependable workforce overseas, Personiv continues to add to existing relationships, and at the same time, create new service offerings like their finance and accounting outsourcing division, which debuted last year, and to open up markets in other global areas such as their recent pushes in Canada and Australia.

Three Decades in the Making

The majority of the growth that Personiv has experienced can be seen dating back to 2014 with the hiring of Lesniak as CEO. With more than 20 years’ experience leading middle market companies on behalf of private equity owners in varied industries such as media, manufacturing and business services, Lesniak proved to be a great fit for the BPO, and his strategy is paying dividends in company development and reputation.

Despite the impressive growth of recent years, the Personiv success story starts well before the late-aughts, going way back to 1985 when they started as a small outsourcing provider with one delivery center in Manila, Philippines offering back office and admin services.

With three decades of experience under their belt, the firm has seen and overcome challenges spanning domestic and international markets, adapting as the global economy emerged and outsourcing became
the norm.

This adaptability is evidenced by their emergence as a top provider of outsourced creative services around 15 years ago, when the company successfully gained leading clients in the creative space, providing billboard design, graphics, print ads and eventually, websites, digital fulfillment services and online presence. To date, Personiv employs more than 600 designers across their creative and digital programs.

“Our approach is one of filling the needs of our clients in whatever capacity will benefit them most,” Lesniak said. “We offer a flexible process that allows us to plug into the way our customers do business, not the other way around. This model, paired with our one-on-one, U.S.-based white glove service explains why our customers consider us a partner, not a typical vendor.”

The Path Forward

No matter what services Personiv offers, (or how much the firm grows in the future) one thing that will remain is their commitment to quality work, practice of giving back to their communities and their strong belief that this industry is powered by people.

Alongside the company’s success are the stories of giving back that fill out their history, whether it is the recent Trek for a Cause campaign benefitting the Miracle Foundation as part of their executive Kilimanjaro climb, the six solar panel community projects they installed at for-need centers across India and the Philippines or their efforts to give back to the vulnerable populations of children, the hungry and the elderly worldwide.

“Throughout our history, Personiv has always retained a culture of quality, a focus on giving back and a strong investment in our people,” Lesniak said. “When you look at how we’ve adapted in our nearly 35 years in the industry, our culture is what makes the difference, and that’s one thing that’s never going to change.”

About CEO, David Lesniak

David is CEO of Personiv and oversees the strategy and delivery of our products and services. Under his leadership Personiv has grown significantly by introducing new services to new markets and expanding relationships within existing service areas. David has more than 20 years’ experience leading middle market companies on behalf of private equity owners in varied industries such as media, manufacturing, and business services. He earned a B.S. Manufacturing Engineering degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an M.S. Operations Research degree from the University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. When he’s not working, David enjoys leading Boy Scouts on camping trips, hiking, golfing, cooking, high school marching band and spending time with his family. Lesniak has been published in CEO World Magazine, Innovation Enterprise and Corporate Board Member.