Ownership
Who owns the provider. Examples may include woman-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned, and other economically disadvantaged ownership categories where the classification is accurate and supportable.
Impact, built into the sourcing decision.
Customer operations can create economic opportunity too.
ArenaCX has deliberately built impact-oriented providers into its ecosystem so customers can consider social and economic impact alongside capability, quality, cost, scale, resilience, and other operating needs. The goal is not to trade performance for purpose. It is to create more ways for the work to do both.
Four lenses. One practical framework.
Impact should be defined through characteristics that can be understood, supported, and incorporated into real sourcing decisions — not through vague labels or assumptions.
Location
Where the work is performed. This can include underserved, rural, Indigenous, economically challenged, or otherwise opportunity-constrained geographies where employment can create greater local economic value.
Employment
Who gets access to the work. Historical ArenaCX categories have included people with disabilities, refugees, trafficking survivors, veterans, second-chance populations, and other groups for whom access to quality employment can have outsized economic value.
Mission
Why the provider exists and the communities it seeks to serve. Mission-driven providers may qualify where their business model intentionally creates supportable social or economic benefit for a particular community, including some faith-based and other mission-led organizations.
Impact was built into the ecosystem, not added as a marketing layer.
Where relevant, impact characteristics can be incorporated into provider discovery, sourcing criteria, RFP requirements, evaluation, solution design, and measurement alongside the operating and commercial requirements.
Make impact goals part of the operating decision, not a separate exercise.
Meet impact-sourcing objectives
Incorporate appropriate social and economic impact goals into sourcing strategy without separating them from the operating need.
Broaden supplier participation
Identify capable providers that bring relevant ownership, location, employment, or mission characteristics.
Create employment opportunity
Direct suitable work toward populations and regions where access to quality jobs can have greater economic effect.
Support public-sector or prime strategies
Identify providers relevant to subcontracting, workforce, geographic, supplier-diversity, or impact goals without implying automatic statutory, set-aside, or compliance credit.
Measure what happens
Where the program supports it, track agreed indicators such as spend, workforce participation, location, or other relevant impact measures.
Impact is an additional decision dimension. The provider or solution still has to work.
ArenaCX should continue to evaluate the factors that determine whether a customer-operations solution can succeed:
Capability and quality
Scale and capacity
Economics and commercial fit
Geography and language
Technology and systems fit
Resilience and implementation readiness
When impact matters to the customer and the program, agreed impact criteria can sit alongside those factors rather than replacing them.
Impact is another dimension of a sound sourcing decision — not a substitute for operating fit.
The Impact sourcing process
Turn the intent into sourcing criteria, evaluation, selection, and measurement.
Define
Agree on the customer’s impact goals, definitions, evidence expectations, and how impact should be weighted relative to operating requirements.
Source
Identify qualified providers with relevant ownership, location, employment, or mission characteristics.
Evaluate
Assess impact evidence alongside capability, delivery model, commercials, risk, and implementation fit.
Select & Structure
Choose the provider or provider mix that best fits the complete need, then structure the commercial and delivery model accordingly.
Measure
Track agreed impact measures where practical and where the underlying data is sufficiently reliable.
Impact works better when it is connected to sourcing infrastructure and execution.
Ecosystem
An intentionally curated provider ecosystem can create more opportunities to find capable providers with relevant impact characteristics.
Experience
ArenaCX’s sourcing history can provide repeated market context and real tradeoff experience.
Technology
Sourcing and evaluation workflows may incorporate agreed impact criteria alongside operating and commercial criteria.
Execution
ArenaCX can stop at sourcing or continue into contracting, launch, administration, governance, and managed operations when customers want broader accountability.
Frequently asked questions
Have an impact-sourcing goal — or want to understand what is possible?
Tell us what you are trying to accomplish. ArenaCX can help determine where impact considerations can fit into customer-operations sourcing and delivery without compromising the factors the program needs to succeed.