Title: Project risk assessment of an outsourced call centre project for a national health insurance scheme

Authors: Samuel Famiyeh; Daniel Bassaw

Addresses: GIMPA Business School, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, P.O. Box AH 50, Achimota, Accra, Ghana ' eServices Africa Limited, IT Department, P.O. Box CT 3524, Cantonments Accra, Ghana

Abstract: This work assesses the perception of risk associated with an outsourced call centre project for a National Health Insurance Scheme. The study employed the ISO 31000:2009 risk assessment framework with risk probability and risk consequence parameters to interview experts that participated in a call centre outsourcing project. The study identified the following as major or high-risk factors that may affect a typically outsourced call centre project: integration challenges between contact centre and the existing client's systems; inadequate project scope definition and scope creep; telecom providers not delivering effective services; poor coordination and communication among key project stakeholders; changes request by the client; estimating errors; and lack of process alignment between the contact centre and the client's back office. The study is relevant especially for countries interested in outsourcing their national health insurance customer relations to outsourced call centres to enable them to focus on their key services.

Keywords: healthcare insurance; outsourcing; project risks; risk assessment; outsourced call centres; national health insurance; ISO 31000:2009; integration; project scope definition; scope creep; telecom providers; coordination; communication; key stakeholders; client changes; error estimation; process alignment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSS.2016.076971

International Journal of Services and Standards, 2016 Vol.11 No.1, pp.81 - 105

Received: 14 Dec 2015
Accepted: 03 Mar 2016

Published online: 09 Jun 2016 *

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