Jonelle Lasala didn’t realize it at the time, but his approach to AdTech outsourcing is truly innovative. Lasala, who is VP of Sales Planning and Revenue Operations with Mansueto Ventures, shared his success story with Rob Beeler of Beeler.Tech and SEBPO’s own Lisa Rosado for Beeler.Tech’s First Impression series. With SEBPO as a partner, Lasala was able to address his major challenge as a leader; retaining top talent. His approach, SEBPO’s guidance, and the resulting solution, however, grew the partnership into something more successful than either party could have foreseen. In the end, this relationship empowered both SEBPO and Jonelle’s internal team members to advance in their career paths.

The Challenge

“The biggest challenge that I saw was bringing on and retaining talent,” says Lasala. The opportunity at his organization was attractive: being a smaller organization, people were drawn to the potential to learn and feel like they were making an impact.

“But to an extent that was also what made it difficult to retain talent because– my team and the organization as a whole–were seen as a stepping stone. So after a year or two, young talents spread their wings and explored other opportunities.”

The First Steps

Lasala wanted to be strategic about how he could best leverage the existing talent while simultaneously working to make the team more stable. 

“Naturally, outsourcing came into strong consideration for me. To be honest, I had already thought about it, but I was just never in a position to make that decision myself.” He had already met some great companies at events like the AdMonsters Pub Forum, and he found that SEBPO’s culture was the right fit.

SEBPO’s Lisa Rosado says each client’s initial approach is different, but they all have a need. “After we go through our discovery and assess what their need is, it really depends on what the motivating factor is for determining which center to engage, or both.” In Lasala’s case, it was cost, skill set, and tasks.

Dipping their toe into outsourcing started with engaging just one of SEBPO’s resource centers to start, as Lasala’s approach is to test, learn, refine, and grow. To fit this approach, each stage of implementation was broken down into what tasks and responsibilities his team needed support with. 

“With us there were two buckets…the more technical aspects of Ad Operations that are more timely tasks and requests. To us, that naturally lends itself to leveraging [SEBPO’s] El Salvador team because they are closer to our timezone.”

The next bucket, or area of support needed, was more on the reporting and analytics side. “We can more easily set expectations that those take a little more time, so those can be done off hours, or before our domestic team logs on for the day.”

Ultimately, Lasala decided to leverage delivery centers in both El Salvador and Bangladesh. Over the years, they’ve added new responsibilities, grown their internal team, and even created new departments within the company.

Retention & Integration

Lasala says that naturally, when he approached his team with his outsourcing plan, there was some trepidation; some team members saw the plan as a threat to their individual positions or careers.  

“There was definitely a lot of effort on my part in terms of proper messaging and getting [my team] comfortable about the idea that this was a career growth opportunity for them, expanding their skill sets and experience.”

Once both of SEBPO’s delivery centers were engaged, Lasala restructured his department and moved two team members into management roles: one oversaw their SEBPO Team in El Salvador and the other SEBPO’s Bangladesh Team. This allowed his team to develop and hone their management skills in a way they wouldn’t have in the old team structure. Lasala explained, “It really gave my team full ownership on how to best leverage the delivery centers.”

Weekly meetings, getting to know individuals and their own career paths and aspirations, cultivating that common culture, and building opportunities for team members to advance are all shared values.

“It’s an inclusive environment so you don’t feel like an outsourced vendor,” adds Rosado. “People feel more engaged and committed. It’s the best return on your investment because you have a true productive employee that wants to do better because they feel you are encouraging them to do so.”

All of the teams encourage growth internally, and these working partnerships foster that pursuit for career advancement on all levels.

“What’s beautiful about the partnership is that it really opened our eyes to some of our blindspots,” says Lasala. “We really saw SEBPO as a strategic partner. Not just another team where we’re offloading tasks we don’t have time to handle. But it’s about looking at our processes, productivity, efficiencies, and continuously finding ways to improve. That has always been our philosophy.”

Growth All-Around

It all comes down to people, and real names and faces, not just tickets and ticket numbers. 

Rosado says it takes good leadership skills to build a successful outsourcing partnership. “Taking the time to invest in the partnership just as you would your internal teams is key. The pandemic changed the landscape of how we do business, most people work remotely, and Joenlle said to me when I asked about what the SEBPO Team should do on these calls, he said: everyone is remote so you’re simply another part of my team!”

SEBPO provides business process outsourcing services to advertising, media, and tech companies and specializes in Ad Operations, Creative Services, Data Solutions, Media Planning, and Quality Assurance. Get in touch today to see how you can leverage a SEBPO Team.