Is India's outsourcing honeymoon over?

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Surprise! India's reign as the world's "Outsourcing King" may be slipping, even with its rock-bottom call center costs.
A new report from market research firm Gartner, Inc. warns that a labor crunch and rising wages could erode as much as 45 percent of India's market share by 2007.
Indian industry watchers acknowledge that the country's outsourcing industry -- its golden goose of the moment -- is indeed facing a "serious" problem.
In an interview with CNN/Money from New Delhi, Kiran Karnick, president of the National Association of Software and Service companies (NASSCOM), said he's concerned that these challenges could stymie India's strong double-digit growth in outsourcing services.
NASSCOM is the trade body representing India's information technology (IT) software and services industry.
More importantly, the Gartner report cautions that a host of emerging countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Eastern European nations including Hungary and Poland, are also starting to challenge India's leadership in offshore business process outsourcing (BPO.)
Many U.S. and international companies maintain that outsourcing business processes such as customer service call centers, administrative and accounting processes to low-cost and low-wage countries like India helps to keep down their own cost of doing business.
Analysts say India's "go to" status as a premier outsourcing destination is a function of the country's vast pool of about 2.5 million mostly English-speaking graduates that are ready to enter the workforce annually.
But India can't afford to rest on its laurels, said Sujay Chohan, one of the authors of the Gartner report and vice president and research director of offshore business process outsourcing with Gartner in New Delhi.
Unless India devises a long-term roadmap to improve infrastructure and consistently grow its skilled labor force, he said India will see some of its offshore BPO clients shift business elsewhere.
"Although India's infrastructure is improving, it is not keeping pace with the rapid growth of the industry," the report said.
The Gartner report pointed out that while no single nation yet poses a direct threat to India as a high-quality/low-cost location, over the past two years, more than 50 other countries have emerged that together could pose a viable challenge to India in the months ahead.
Gartner estimates that India's current 85 percent ownership of the BPO market share could dwindle to about 45 percent by 2007.
In dollar terms, that would be a significant blow to India, Chohan said. In 2004 India raked in more than $2 billion of an estimated $3 billion global offshore BPO market with more than 250,000 workers.
He estimates that the worldwide offshore BPO market will grow to about $24 billion by 2007 of which India will earn about $13.8 billion.

Rising labor costs
Given that India's been doubling its outsourcing operations every year for the past four years, Chohan said he's not too surprised by the current imbalance in the labor demand-supply equation as well as the onset of wage inflation and high levels of attrition.
"Four years ago, a typical call center employee would have earned between 5,000 to 6,000 rupees ($114- $136) a month. Now it may be up to between 7,000 to 9,000 rupees ($159 - $204) a month," he said. "The rise in labor costs isn't significant yet. What's more important is that these increases so far have not been passed on to clients in the U.S."
But if these costs continue to escalate, he predicts that Indian outsourcing firms will take a hit to their bottom line and eventually start to pass along the increases to their international clients.
Chohan said India could learn from Ireland's mistakes more than a decade earlier.
"This is exactly what happened in Ireland in the 1990s," said Chohan. "As a result, companies that were outsourcing to Ireland began to look elsewhere and discovered India for the lower-level work," adding that Ireland today still attracts what's considered to be "high-value" outsourcing such as R&D and software development.
Chohan isn't worried about India losing it lead in IT outsourcing. "India dominates now and will continue to do so in the future because of the sheer scale of skills in the country at low costs. The only exception is China which has become very visible in this space within the last six months."

Moving beyond call centers
Ashank Desai, chairman of Mumbai-based Mastek, said one way for Indian companies to maintain their competitive advantage and ensure their international clientele is to upgrade their services by offering more sophisticated back office functions in addition to the basic call center services.
Mastek is a provider of offshore IT and BPO outsourcing services. The company logged annual sales of $130 million in 2004.
"At Mastek we're already looking into merging BPO and IT services so that our clients get double the advantage,' Desai said.
He gave an example, "We can reconfigure IT used for processing insurance claims to make it more efficient and then process these claims more efficiently for our customers."
In order to emerge as truly global players and undercut the competition, Chohan said Indian outsourcing companies should also think about expanding their brand globally by setting up delivery centers outside of India.
Indian vendors depend too much on the U.S. market. India has to make inroads into non-English speaking markets as well, "similar to what Ireland has done to successfully service the European market," he said.

IT services to cross Rs 1 lakh cr revenue in '08

The Indian IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) market would cross Rs 1 lakh crore in revenue in 2008, while telecom will see fixed-line broadband gain around this year, according to forecasts by analyst firm IDC. The domestic IT/ITeS market will grow at 24% in 2008 to touch Rs 1.1 lakh crore. “By posting a substantial jump in the domestic IT/ITeS market since 2002, the industry is now onto a new growth trajectory. IDC India expects a significant transition in the Indian IT market as part of the Growth Phase 2.0,” said IDC India country manager Kapil Dev Singh. IDC says the Growth Phase 2.0 would be characterised by opportunities arising out of leveraging of the IT infrastructure built so far.
The firm said the Indian IT market will come of age in 2008, on the back of higher demand for sophisticated enterprise and consumer services in the domestic market. While key market segments are growing at a healthy pace, emerging verticals like government also hold a lot of potential, it noted. IDC said the Indian consumer’s digital experience will hit the next level this year. This would be driven by the growth of fixed-line broadband, while mobile phone would remain a useful alternative Internet access device. In the first half of 2008, all major operators are expected to offer broadband with a speed of up to 8 MB per second to consumers in metros and some other key cities. The firm also forecast that the Web 2.0 market would take off in India in 2008 with greater user awareness and participation. The market is also set for shakeouts and a possible string of consolidations this year. Virtualisation would gain ground among Indian enterprises, with IDC expecting share of virtualised servers to double from the current 22% to 45% by 2008-end. Also, heightened business risk perceptions and security concerns will drive increased investments into a range of enterprise-wide and client-centric devices and applications. The year 2008 would also witness a major expansion of software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a way to accelerate small and medium business (SMB) penetration and service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption. This will be helped by the emergence of Indian “niche vendors” as well as multinational application software players, IDC said. Globally, IT market growth will be lower at a moderate 5.5-6%, down from 2007’s 6.9%, with a significant US market downside risk. According to IDC’s Global Research Operation (GRO) team, the earliest impact from economic downturns is felt, historically, in the hardware sector, with software impact lagging by one or two quarters and services impact more gradual.

Promote juniors to check attrition at BPOs

HYDERABAD: Business process outsourcing (BPO) companies have formulated a new hiring strategy to beat attrition: Promoting entry-level employees by the droves. Featuring in this list are Convergys, Zenta and 24/7 Customer, among others. While BPOs claim that the strategy could give employees growth opportunities in the organisation, industry experts caution that it can work to the company’s advantage only in the short term, as attrition in BPOs is linked mainly to salaries. “This is an attractive strategy. But it needs to be bundled with on-the-job attractions to avoid boredom. If not, it may not work in the long run as the employees may end up doing the same work even after they are promoted,” said Adecco (India & Middle East) CEO Sudhakar Balakrishnan.

24/7 Customer, for instance, last year promoted about 50% of its employees at the entry level. “Our aim is to mould future leaders within the organisation. Every employee has to go through vigorous training and learning process to be eligible to bag the growth opportunity,” said 24/7 Customer vice president-HR Nina Nair. Industry estimates suggest that the attrition rate in a voice-based BPO is over 50% and 20-30% in a non-voice BPO. 24/7 Customer has about 6,500 employees and 85% of its process are voice-based. The company’s attrition rate is about 20-22%, which is much less than the industry average. “To be evaluated for promotion, an employee has to complete a year in our organisation. The growth opportunities given to them have helped us bring down the attrition. Last year, we evaluated 540 employees at the entry level and 50% of them were promoted,” she said. Zenta, another BPO engaged in high-end real estate finance services, has about 4,500 employees across Mumbai and Chennai and about 300 in the US. “Last year, on an average, we promoted 25% of our employees. Out of those promoted, 14% have moved into roles that let them manage and lead small teams. This is part of our strategy to provide maximum growth opportunities to our employees. In a way, it helps us control attrition. In fact, we have employees who have risen from entry-level positions to vice presidents in five years,” said Zenta country manager Jaswinder Ghumman. Convergys, which employs about 13,000 people in India, also follows the ethos of promoting from within and providing training programmes to groom future leaders. “A number of employees who started with us as agents now hold senior management positions within the company including Birgit Neumann, our vice president (operations) for India,” said Convergys-India vice president-HR Tim Huiting. Last year, the company promoted 20% of its 10,000 employees at the entry level in India. According to Mr Sudhakar, companies across industries promote entry-levels depending on their contribution, potential and growth. “It is, however, not typically used as a retention strategy alone, unlike in BPOs, which face high attrition at that level,” he said. If promotions are solely used to control attrition, output quality is most likely to suffer. “So, companies should also focus on training in order to ensure quality,” he added.

Billion dollar IT outsourcing deals to decline in '08

BANGALORE: The large IT outsourcing deals, running into billions of dollars, have been on a decline since last two years and it’s quite unlikely that there could be any reversal this year. According to Everest Research Institute, fewer IT outsourcing (ITO) mega deals will occur in 2008. A decline in the number and size of mega deals, defined as contracts of $1 billion or more in total contract value, will instead result in a focus on existing mega deal renewals and an increase in price competition by suppliers, according to a study by the institute. At the same time, multi-sourcing engagements are increasingly becoming the preferred route for outsourcing. Analysts said that this model has evolved over time and a single buyer is increasingly comfortable in working with multiple suppliers of IT services. It has been a trend in the market place for quite sometime now with large IT deals being split into a multi-sourcing contracts with more number of IT services providers being part of it. “A decline in mega-deals is likely irreversible any time soon as few Fortune 100 companies remain that could sign new mega contracts,” says IT outsourcing research firm Everest Ross vice-president Tisnovsky. In the recent past, there have been very few mega outsourcing deals which have come in the way of Indian players. TCS recently signed up a $1.2 billion outsourcing deal with Nielsen spread over 10 years. ABN AMRO awarded its $2.2 billion IT outsourcing deal in 2005, which saw three Indian players being part of the business, Infosys, TCS and Patni Computer. Tholons CEO Avinash Vashistha felt that mega deals will continue to decrease even in the current year as there are lot of issues with managing such large deals. From a buyer’s point of view, it becomes a truly difficult task to globalise such outsourcing agreements while the suppliers are constrained in providing services from diverse locations. “Next year, we expect buyers will gain pricing benefits due to the pressure suppliers will have to grow signings and contend with increased competition for contract renewals. In the large enterprise market segment, comprising of Fortune 1000 companies, we also foresee long-term price decline in the infrastructure outsourcing market due to an influx of new suppliers and increased competition where the most opportunities for ITO exist,” Mr Tisnovsky said.

Call Center Cabs

Gurgaon BPOs to have women drivers -

Waking up to the need for making cabs safer for women BPO employees travelling during night, a group of senior professionals has announced a pilot project to train 10 women drivers for NCR.
The idea has received a mixed response with concern being expressed about the safety of these drivers themselves at night.

Software to track BPO cabs to ensure women safety -

There's hope for all those parents who spend sleepless nights waiting for their daughters to return from a BPO night shift. A new technology will keep them informed of their daughters' whereabouts.
The software will track the car carrying the woman by linking her mobile phone with a central server. The parent's mobile phone can also be linked to the system, which will alert the office and the girl's home if the vehicle deviates from its route. The software - to be launched by a leading telephone service provider - should come as a huge relief to both.

How Speech Self-Service Dramatically Improves Call Centers

Speech self-service is a critical enabler to the future success of the contact center. As with all new technologies, there are challenges with deployment and having the necessary skills in house, the time is now to begin looking at speech self-service. It is rapidly becoming the differentiator for improving the customer experience.

Companies' integrated voice recognition (IVR) applications are being stretched thinner and thinner. Even with the best interface designs in place, customers are still abandoning calls before completion.
Forty-three percent of companies surveyed in the Aberdeen Contact Center Analytics benchmark report are either seeing poorer performance in call abandonment rates or don't measure this key performance indicator (KPI) at all!
As a result, companies continue to search for ways to improve this interaction and, by definition, Best-in-Class (BIC) lead the way. BIC firms attempt to differentiate themselves from their competition by offering speech self-service.

Empowering Customers
A well designed speech self-service application does a number of things. First, it empowers the customer to resolve issues on their own. Customers can interact with the contact center at any time and place of their choosing.
A speech self-service application also reduces the number of agents required to support the customers and frees up existing agents for more complex tasks. By adding speech self-service to the current IVR stack, companies provide a more robust and complete customer experience. Aberdeen recently surveyed more than 325 companies to identify the challenges and benefits associated with implementing a speech self-service application.
Measurable Effects
Aberdeen measured four key performance criteria to identify BIC companies. Those companies saw the following performance improvements when implementing speech self service.
100 percent improved performance in call abandonment rates
95 percent improved customer satisfaction
92 percent improved first contact closure rate
67 percent lowered their cost per contact
This demonstrates that companies that are utilizing speech self service technologies are seeing improvements not only operationally but financially.
This survey results also show that the firms enjoying BIC performance share several common characteristics. Fifty percent utilize analytics to track call center performance across all available channels (i.e. self-service, chat, e-mail and phone). By utilizing analytics BIC companies have better visibility into both the current and historical state.
The IVR is the cornerstone for a speech self-service application and BIC companies (71 percent) have an IVR-enabled phone service installed. Another key enabling technology for speech self-service is agent training and coaching. When transferring from self-service to a live agent it is critical the agents understand how the speech self-service application has been implemented. Eighty-two percent of the BIC companies have agent training and coaching in place.
Finally, BIC firms lead the way by understanding how their agents interact with the customer. By monitoring the agents and their calls they will get a realistic view of what the customer interaction is. It also gives the BIC firms insight into some of the qualitative aspects of the interaction: What was the emotional state of the customer? What are the customer's priorities? How did the agent react to the customer's issues? The insight provided by answering these questions allows BIC firms to adapt and improve their customer interactions.
Getting There
Achieving BIC performance requires contact centers to do some of the following:
Increase investment in contact center processes infrastructure and resources. Lagging companies are not investing in their infrastructure. Fifty-one percent of lagging companies are either not investing or decreasing their investments in their contact center infrastructure.
Even BIC companies need to enhance their usage of speech self service. By implementing the following technologies they can take their speech self service applications to the next level:
Natural Language Understanding
Speech Synthesis
Voice Browser Call Control (CCXML)
Speech self-service is a critical enabler to the future success of the contact center. As with all new technologies, there are challenges with deployment and having the necessary skills in house, the time is now to begin looking at speech self-service. It is rapidly becoming the differentiator for improving the customer experience.

Maximizing VoIP Benefits in the Call Center

Enterprises are just beginning to examine which new applications they can run on their new VoIP platforms. Interactive chat has become more common in companies and VoIP makes it simpler to connect a voice user to this data application. "Companies can now be proactive and ask customers if they need help when they see that they may be having trouble navigating through a Web page," said Beagle Research's Denis Pombriant.

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) has recently become more common in corporations large and small. By combining separate voice and data transmissions onto the same line, this new communications option enables companies to lower their telecommunications costs and, after taking advantage of the savings, companies are looking to extend VoIP's benefits.
"Now that many companies have put VoIP infrastructures in place, some are looking at ways to leverage their investments and gain a competitive advantage," said Rich Costello, research director at market research firm Gartner (NYSE: IT) .
In fact, a number of companies are looking to extend their customer relationship management deployments to more locations. Also, once this new voice infrastructure is in place, enterprises are able to deploy more sophisticated applications, ones featuring items, such as intelligent dialer systems, support for interactive live chat support and unified communications.
Yet, most installations have started simply. "The main attraction for most of the companies that have installed VoIP is reduced telecommunications costs," Costello told CRM Buyer. With VoIP, firms can consolidate autonomous voice and data networks, a change that saves them money. The savings come from the communications lines themselves, one high speed line is needed for all communications rather than separate ones, as well as less expensive network equipment.

Lower Costs
VoIP switches tend to be less costly and easier to maintain than traditional voice devices, such as PBXs (Private Branch eXchanges) and ACDs (automated call dialers).
The lower prices deliver many ancillary benefits. With the introduction of lower-cost-per-port speech engines and new competitively priced servers, the price of providing CRM applications goes down -- sometimes quite dramatically. "With VoIP, companies can justify installing CRM systems for smaller workgroups and in more remote locations," said Denis Pombriant, a principal with Beagle Research.
These newfound abilities have also spurred adoption of the outsourcing of CRM functions. "Because companies have more flexibility in where their call centers can be located and how they answer customer calls, many are using VoIP to help with outsourcing their call centers," said Paul Greenberg, president of The 56 Group.
Also with new VoIP switches, companies do not have to rely on traditional dialers. In many cases, traditional hardware-based ACDs are being replaced with VoIP switches because the former is expensive, costing in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase, and difficult to upgrade, integrate and support.
A More Efficient Call Center
The new VoIP platforms offer appealing features, such as a quick connect function. This feature helps to reduce abandon rates by connecting the call with the agent prior to connecting with the customer, thus eliminating the lengthy pauses associated with dialer-generated calls that many customers associate with incoming sales calls.
Another function that many VoIP switches support is automatic recording, so a company can capture 100 percent of its calls. Consequently, calls can be automatically tagged and categorized for use to either streamline business actions or resolve disputes.
Companies can also automate many of their internal processes, and use the customer intelligence captured to refine and enhance its customer service and sales initiatives. Contact center agents can be trained via best practice interactions, which are captured and later organized via the VoIP recording component. As a result, improvements in contact center service quality and frontline supervisor productivity become more possible.
Solving disputes becomes simpler. A customer may say that they ordered seven items but the order taken indicates four. Since a record of the order has been kept, a company can check to see if a mistake occurred and then take steps to prevent it in the future.
Next Generation Applications Emerge
Enterprises are just beginning to examine which new applications they can run on their new VoIP platforms. Interactive chat has become more common in companies and VoIP makes it simpler to connect a voice user to this data application. "Companies can now be proactive and ask customers if they need help when they see that they may be having trouble navigating through a Web page," Beagle Research's Pombriant told CRM Buyer.
Corporations are also looking to move beyond VoIP to use video on their enterprise networks. "Video can offer some compelling advantages with call center interactions," The 56 Group's Greenberg told CRM Buyer.
Another new application is unified communications, where a speech engine is one of many elements (e-mail, instant messaging, PDA) designed to access data. Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office Communications 2007 Server features VoIP, video, instant messaging, conferencing and presence features that will be bundled within Microsoft's CRM products as well as its Office and ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.
Cutting Costs and Raising Productivity
The potential benefits that unified communications offers include improved productivity and lower operating costs. Employees will be able to respond to messages instantly regardless of where they originate; businesses will be able to cut their communications cost because they will rely on fewer components.
Unified communications meshes well with the growing variety of user inputting devices. "There has been a growing emphasis on mobility and being able to communicate with users who may be working with devices, such as PDAs," noted Gartner's Costello.
While there has a great deal of progress with using VoIP in the call center, there are still a few barriers to adoption. Many companies do not have the infrastructure to support the new devices. In many cases, CRM hardware is a long-term investment, one spanning several years, so companies may have to wait months or even years before being able to re-examine their infrastructure.
Yet, those shortcomings are viewed as short-term issues. Many companies are now using VoIP to enhance their CRM deployment and many more will be joining them during the new year.

BPO! Latest Mantra in India.

BPO [Business Process Outsourcing] has been the latest mantra in India today. As the current sources of revenue face slower growth, software companies are trying new ways to increase their revenues. BPO is top on their list today. IT services companies are making a quick entry into the BPO space on the strength of their existing set of clients. We hope to address all issues related to BPO in India on this portal.
We will attempt to explain what it takes to setup a BPO facility in India. Actually, setting up a call center is capital intensive. An ordinary BPO center that takes care of pure back office operation [e.g. payroll, data entry] will not be as expensive as a call center.
The philosophy behind BPO is specific, do what you do best and leave everything else to business process outsourcers. Companies are moving their non-core business processes to outsource providers. BPO saves precious management time and resources and allows focus while building upon core competencies. The list of functions being outsourced is getting longer by the day. Call centres apart, functions outsourced span purchasing and disbursement, order entry, billing and collection, human resources administration, cash and investment management, tax compliance, internal audit, pay roll...the list gets longer everyday. In view of the accounting scandals in 2002 [Enron, WorldCom, Xerox etc], more and more companies are keen on keeping their investors happy. Hence, it is important for them to increase their profits. BPO is one way of increasing their profits. If done well, BPO results in increasing shareholder value.
Typically, a customer calls the call center [usually a toll-free number]. After pressing numerous numbers [1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for bank balance!] the operator will answer your query by accesing the database. Call centres address sales support, airline/hotel reservations, technical queries, bank accounts, client services, receivables, tele marketing, market research.
If a bank shifts work of a 1000 people from US to India it can save about $18 million a year due to lower costs in India. According to Mckinsey, giant US pharma firms can reduce the cost of developing a new drug, currently estimated at between $600 million and $900 million by as much as $200 million if development work is outsourced to India.
Benefits derived from BPO can be summarized as follows:
Productivity Improvements
Access to expertise
Operational cost control
Cost savings
Improved accountability
Improved HR
Opportunity to focus on core business
Outsourcing is not new - it has been a popular management tool for decade. One can safely say outsourcing has evolved :-
1960's - time-sharing
1970's - parts of IT operations
1980's - entire IT operations
1990's - alliances/tie-ups
2000's - IT-enabled services
India has one of the largest pool of low-cost English speaking scientific and technical talent. This makes India one of the obvious choice to outsource to. Dell, Sun Microsystems, LG, Ford, GE, Oracle all have announced plans to scale up their operations in India. Others like American Express, IBM and British Airways are leveraging the cost advantage India has to offer while setting up call centres. Several foreign airline and banks have too set up business process operations in India. Indian revenues from BPO are estimated to have grown 107 per cent to $ 583 million and this particular area employs 35,000 people in the year ending March 31, 2007.

Many European and US companies have realized that they should focus on their main business and outsource their Human Resource Department, accounting department etc. Bingo! it is here exactly India fits in! Today US corporations have embraced BPO wholeheartedly.
Managed Care Companies, which is more popularly known as Healthcare payers, are increasingly outsourcing business processes due to changing and challenging business environment and technological and legislative changes. There is a good opportunity for Indian BPO vendors in this space. BPO vendors will need to have good domain knowledge, process know-how and competence with technological solutions to cater to these Managed Care Companies.

Aegis BPO designs Ace to curb attrition

Aegis business process outsourcing, an Essar group company, has designed an in-house curriculum based on employee feedback to arrest attrition.
In the last three months, attrition of the company has come down by 25 per cent. The company's attrition on an average ranges from 38 to 58 per cent annually.
While the course -- Aegis Ace -- was conceptualised a year back, it has been in implementation in the company for the last six months. The initial cost that the company incurred to design the curriculum was about $1.5 million (around Rs 6 crore).
To start with, the company created a focus group that interacted with all the employees across levels and centres.
The group also asked the respective 'one-up' supervisor as to what the company could provide to make them more effective. The company designed its programme and curriculum based on the feedback the group received.
The course is unique in the sense that the modules address the employees' work-life issues.
Also, an individual does not need to spend long hours in studying the modules. The company has different curricula for each employee level.
The course duration varies from a minimum of six to nine months. Besides, an employee needs to invest just four hours a month in the course.
The results are quite evident. "In the last three months, we have seen attrition fall by 25 per cent. The level of engagement has increased. While right now its difficult to quantify efficiency and productivity, we have certainly seen an uptake in the key performance indicators of those who have enrolled," says Aparup Sengupta, managing director and chief executive, Aegis.
At present, 1,700 employees have enrolled for the course at its seven centres across India.
By March 2008, the company expects 5,500 employees to enroll. It will also launch the curricula at its US centre by then.
"By September-end, we want all our employees covered by the Ace programme," says Sengupta.
The prime reason for designing the course was to curtail attrition.
The company also realised that many a times money is not the prime reason for people to work or motivate.
The focus of Aegis Ace is to develop six capabilities across the employee base of the company - entrepreneurial, nurturing, negotiating, project management, operational excellence and customer focus.
"Aegis Ace is a micro initiative from the company. Today, there aren't any courses in the country which provide a micro module approach, which has content specific to the need and concise.
Besides, creating a curriculum also means creating an intellectual property which can be leveraged later," adds Sengupta.
The aim of the programme is not specific to Aegis or the BPO industry but for self assessment and development.

Looking for Call Center.

Are you looking for BPO Companies on various segments (Call Centres, Data Processing, Media Transcription, Content Development, HR Outsourcing, Back Office operations including banking and finance related service) across Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and other cities in India? Look no Further...

Contact us at bpoexperts@consultant.com for a report containing the following – in the order of the best companies among the respective cities.
The analysis is based on the following parameters ::
Brand Name, Infrastructure setup, worldwide presence,Team strength, Project experience, Process Capabilities to deliver large BPO projects and international exposure.
The report includes
Company Name
URL Address
Contact details with Names, email
Project report / Case Studies

BPOs talk local for expansion

After establishing their position as the leader in the global BPO (business process outsourcing) arena, Indian ITeS (IT-enabled services) firms are now eyeing their own backyard to expand businesses.

IT vendors, who till recently preferred to earn in dollars are now looking at opportunities in the domestic market. And what’s driving their interest is the unprecedented boom in telecom, banking, financial services and insurance sectors. Suddenly, these areas have become attractive for Indian IT vendors.

As per IDC India, the domestic ITeS market was Rs 6,650 crore in 2006 and it rose to Rs 11,970 crore in 2007. It predicts the domestic IT/ITeS sector revenues are projected to touch Rs 1,68,370 crore by 2011, at a CAGR (2006-11) of 19.7% which is faster than IT/ITeS export revenue growth (17.4%) for the same period.

Gartner too sees the domestic BPO market becoming a big attraction for IT players. According to TJ Singh, research director (BPO) at Gartner, the estimated size of the domestic ITeS sector was around $631 million in 2007 and is expected to be worth $1,576 million by 2011.

And, with deals becoming bigger, the market is poised for big time growth. "The Vodafone-IBM deal shows domestic contracts are now reaching global size and vendors are waking up to it. We expect the domestic deals to become bigger," says Gaurav Gupta, country head, Everest Research.

No wonder, everyone is in the fray for contracts. From big players like Wipro, Infosys, HCL and TCS to Sparsh, Spanco and Infogain. Recently, TCS bagged a $140 million multi-year deal with BSNL for providing business support systems and operational support systems.

To capitalise on the opportunities, BPO player vCustomer is chalking out expansion plans too. ‘‘Apart from our existing centres in Pune and New Delhi, we are opening a new facility in Mumbai,’’ says Sanjay Kumar, CEO. The company is also hiring aggressively from Tier II and III cities to meet the work-flow demand. In fact, vCustomer earned nearly Rs 80 crore from the domestic market alone last year, servicing telecom clients such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Idea Cellular Ltd and State Bank of India. This was 4.5% of its total revenue.

Similarly, Spanco Telesystems, which till now was active in the global space, recently announced its foray into the domestic BPO market. They set up two customer support centres in Gurgaon and Mumbai to provide backoffice and contact centre services to domestic clients. The company already has a partnership with Indian Railways to provide BPO service. "We have invested $100 crore in three months and by 2009, we will invest $300 crore for the domestic market alone," says Sandeep Soni, CEO, Spanco BPO. He believes, this is the best time to enter the domestic BPO market.

Intelenet which acquired a controlling stake in Sparsh, to become one of the first movers in the domestic BPO space, is now planning aggressively.

So what’s driving the growth? "With retail biggies venturing into smaller cities II cities we see a huge potential there," says Lokvir Kapoor of Pine Labs.

Source: Times of India

New business model for domestic BPO to support growing economy

Today, the business models followed by Indian service providers have some semblance of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) models used the world over. However, it would be inaccurate to start comparing the two, right now, as it would definitely take some time before our service providers reach that level of stability and maturity. To ensure stable growth one must be able to transform a platform that will enable him to provide needed value to the customer’s business. This will also help the customers to overcome the challenges in accomplishing their growth. The past five years have been a learning experience for Indian service providers in view of the flood of outsource-able activities in the domestic market, availability of resources and swing in the Indian economy. India is now poised for real, substantial and sustainable growth. The best part is the uniform agreement, which says that the recent trends are only the tip of the iceberg – once the next generation of young earners enters the system, the volume of business is expected to multiply, leaving the entire customer-oriented industry to rely on the service providers to address this growth.
With the rise in business complexity, high volumes and internal issues customer behaviour has shifted towards the value-addition aspect. As the business volumes grow organisations are forced to focus on their core activities, hence de-coupling all non-core, non-critical processes for outsourcing. While doing so, they aim to reap multiple benefits in end-to-end outsourcing, rather than just the economic ones. Today, majority of the processing is done in-house with high costs and low efficiency. Instead of outsourcing the entire process, few activities are outsourced. Another issue is that the vendor’s quality practices are inadequate. Hence, customers are also afraid of ramping up the volumes in view of vendors not having scaleable models and nation-wide presence. In order to change the current scenario, organisations and service providers should work in collaboration towards a common goal of mitigating the myths and clearing all obstacles from their path. An appropriate, transformed business model should be non-linear – to service high growth with erratic volumes the processes should be automated. Customers will expect high degree of accuracy and adherence to certain business rules. Hence, domain specific Business Process Management tools and Standard Operating Procedures should be implemented to deliver end-to-end processes. As most of the growth in economy is envisaged from rural and suburban areas, service providers should, either directly or through collaborations with other service providers, be present in multiple locations. A suitable Hub and Spokes infrastructure is required for this purpose. It is also important to have a robust IT Platform to host large databases and secured networks to connect with customer systems. The Critical Success Factor of the transformed model should address the business needs and challenges of the customer’s business, namely, reduced or no capital cost, keep the operating cost variable rather than fixed, ensure high degree of compliances and accelerated processing to stay ahead of competition.

Making Free Calls

Free calls to USA and Canada by BOK Another callback free Voip provider named Bok allows you to make free calls to USA and Canada. The unlucky thing, it will only works in USA and Canada. However people in Canada can call anyone in USA for free and vice versa.
Bok is actually a SMS callback system. You need to send a SMS with a number to BoK system and then it calls you back and connects your call.
Lets see how Bok works.
Step 1) Send Bok a text message containing the phone number of the person whom you’d like to talk to. Assume that you’d like to call your friend in Ottawa. Her phone number is 611-146-2367. Start a new text message and enter your friend’s phone number as the content of the message.
Step 2) Now that you have completed composing your text message, send this message to BOK (613-614-0285). Hint: It’s really convenient if you’ve stored the BOK number in your phonebook.
Step 3) Your phone will ring in about 10 seconds. When you pick up the phone, you will hear the phone ringing on the other end. Once your friend picks up, you will be connected to her and can start your conversation.
Now talk as much as you want without worrying about phone bills or long distance calling rates. Of course, this is only beneficial if you have a good SMS and incoming free plan.
The only cost you would incur is sending a SMS assuming you have free incoming calls from your mobile provider.

Gizmo Project 4.0 beta with Video Calling.
We all know about the popular Gizma Project. Now Gizma Project 4.0 beta is out with Video Calling and with new look for windows. Currently they are working for MAC version. Works on Nokia, N800/N810 mobile devices too!
Click here to download the software and use it.
Featured Highlights of this Software:
Free Video Calling facility is added now.
Easier redesigned interface for users to interact easily with the other party.
You can chat with Instant Messaging, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live, GTalk, iChat and more chatting softwares.
Supports Group chat also.
You can share your files with your friends and family members.
You can customize your Avatar in Gizmo Project.
Tabbed Chat interface which is easier to tab all your chat windows in one window.
You can log the chat coversation in your PC.

Make free mobile calls, live chat and presense over internet data plan or Wifi
Fring Beta another voip proider come with this new plan now.
fring is based on a unique thin-client technology that for the first time enables true VoIP over 3G, GPRS and WiFi networks. fring dynamically adapts itself to the optimal network and handset characteristics while enabling seamless roaming VoIP on multiple networks. The dedicated three-sided P2P network architecture has been developed to support near telco-grade voice quality and network efficiency.
fring leverages the internet connectivity traditionally used for mobile email retrieval and web browsing to provide mobile VoIP communications so you can talk and instant message for free!
Download fring.fring is compatible with Symbian 8, 9.1, 9.2, Windows Mobile 5 & 6 and UIQ handsets.
Nokia E51 now supports fring. Now you can download and install in that mobile and enjoy it.

Jajah Announces Free Calls
Jajah announced free long-distance calls yesterday. This offer is for landline and cell phone calls from and to the countries listed below. Just a reminder: Jajah is the Internet phone service that enables you to use any phone to call any phone without installing any software or being connected to the computer once the call is initiated.
This offer applies to:
Landline and mobile calls to and within the US, Canada, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
Landline, but not mobile calls, to and within Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea South, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, Venezuela
More rate information is available here.
For free calling, both parties must be registered Jajah users, and the calls must be between the registered numbers. The rest of the fair-use policy is:
The Jajah “fair use” policy simply asks all our users to “play fair” and behave in a manner that best serves the greater calling community. We ask that our users limit their free hours to about one hour a day, five hours a week and about a 1,000 minutes a month. If they use it much more than that, then we ask that they also use some paid Jajah services such as text messaging or scheduled calling. If we determine that over time, someone’s behavior does not favor the overall community of users, we simply ask him to pay for the exceeded amount.”

How To Make Free VoIP Calls

It's not suprising that a lot of readers of this blog ask, via the comments, how they can make a free VoIP call from a specific country to another, where the callee has a phone but no computer. So I thought it'd be worthwhile giving a summary of some of the services that have come out this year, in terms of categories rather than specific software.
First, let me answer the question(s) as simply as possible. There are some countries that are less likely to have free calling between PC and PSTN/ mobile phones - not that I've seen. Two of those countries are India and China. Maybe it's because they're the two most populous countries in the world, and few companies want to give up the potential market share.
The only exception I've run across is Jajah (see below), which is currently offering free landline and mobile calling to/from China. But if you run their trial, you can also make a 5 minute call to/from India as well. If I find any other VoIP services that allow free landline calls to/from India or China, I'll write about it on this site.
On the other hand, if both the caller and callee have a computer with a non-dialup Internet connection, you can make all the free VoIP calls you want, between any two countries, with pretty much any softVoIP client. For example, Skype, Google Talk, MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Gizmo Project, etc.
If you want to call or receive calls on a regular phone via a VoIP network, there are SIP-based adapters (hardware). You'll still need a broadband Internet connection, but won't need a computer. But how many people have a broadband connection and no computer? Not many, I'm guessing.
For many countries, there are a few options for free PC-to-PSTN (PC to Phone) calls, occasionally including mobile. Some are time-limited promos, some are permanent offers. Here are just a couple of options. (I'll not cover everything here.)
(1) Skype just finished a July promo for free PC to Phone calls from Canada and the US to Mexico, Japan, and the UK. I'm guessing they'll have other country offers later this year. They also have free PC to Phone calls within Canada and the US until Dec 31/06. But if you don't live in either Canada or the US, you'll need to pay for their inexpensive SkypeOut service, which lets you call PC to Phone to many countries.
(2) Gizmo Project has a permanent offer that let's you call PC to Phone between 60 countries (but not India and China). However, both caller and callee need to register as Gizmo Project users. (This might mean having to download and install the software as well. So if you don't have a computer, you may have to ask a friend. Keep in mind that you are allowed up to, I believe, three phone numbers per registrant, so your friend may not want to help you :)
(3) Jajah allows PC to Phone calls free for up 30 minutes. It's unclear exactly which countries are allowed and which are not, as I've read different things. They do have a 5-minute trial call, and their list of countries includes India and China. But when I read their web pages, I see only China included in the 30-minute free calls, between registered users. You should note that Jajah allows you to make Phone to Phone calls, not PC to Phone calls.
This is just a sampling of some of the nice VoIP plans currently available. If you know of others, please feel free to mention them in the comments section. I will try to put together a comprehensive free-VoIP guide, before Christmas time, that points to articles both here and on other websites.

Make Free Calls Using Firefox.

With the Zoep Firefox extension, VoIPSter is bringing to the Internet the ability to make a phone call at the click of a button from an Internet browser. With the Zoep Firefox plug-in, users can make free telephone calls and chat directly after installing the Firefox extension from http://www.zoep.com/firefox.

The Zoep extension provides users with a "seamless" in-the-flow experience, without having to switch between applications. By designing Zoep to mimic Firefox's look and feel, extension makes initiating and receiving free calls using the OpenZoep VoIP platform simple. Users will now be able to communicate with any other VoIP user on the open source based OpenZoep platform, so in addition to being able to communicate with other Zoep users, they can also communicate with users on the Jabber platform including, sometime in the future, those using Google Talk. Additional development plans for Zoep include voice-mail, SMS and an inbound phone number to accept incoming calls from landlines or mobile phones. Written for the latest Firefox version 1.5, the Zoep extension is produced and maintained by developer Glaxstar Limited, developers of recently released Firefox extensions for clients Paypal and delicious. Ian Hayward, managing director and founder, Glaxstar, said, "Zoep is the perfect tool for smart people using Firefox who want to seamlessly integrate communication into their browsing experience with minimal fuss. It makes perfect sense to add telephone capabilities and a chat system into your browser, which is often your most used bit of software on the desktop. Now, you won't have to stop browsing to answer the phone."

BPO boom in India

EPO to follow BPO success story. EPO market in India may exceed $40 billion by 2020

India's engineering process outsourcing (EPO) services would be a key element of the country's engineering export strategy, just as the business process outsourcing (BPO) enabled domestic software company in recent years to make a mark abroad.

The development of the EPO sector would have a far-reaching impact on Indian engineering industry as a whole, the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr Kamal Nath, has said here while presiding over the consultative committee meeting attached to his Ministry.

Market Share

"The EPO market in India has the potential to exceed $40 billion by 2020, which will catapult India's market share in this category to 30 per cent from the current 12 per cent.

And to tap the EPO market share, all the important stakeholders, including the Government, service providers and trade bodies, will need to boost investment in infrastructure and improve marketing efforts," he said. Engineering exports from India have crossed $5 billion in the first quarter of the current fiscal, registering a growth of 20 per cent.

But it has the potential to grow at a rate of 30 per cent annually; the Minister said citing a recent strategy paper prepared for the Engineering Export Promotion Council by A.F. Ferguson.

Stating that the Government has been attaching high priority to engineering sector, he said that 19 products and 34 sub-product categories had been identified as thrust ones for export thrust countries and products.

Taxation Issues

The EEPC Chairman, Mr Rakesh Shah, said that Indian engineering exporters faced a disability factor of 16 to 18 per cent compared to 6 to 8 per cent sustained by their competitors in South East Asia. He urged the Minister to address taxation issues such as service tax, State levies, which amounted to `exporting taxes' and eroded the competitiveness of Indian engineering products.

In a power-point presentation, the Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce, Mr Rajiv Kher, said that EPO services are India's next billion-dollar opportunity and they are no more just an adjunct of R&D services. He said EPOs have grown by compounded annual growth rate of 37 per cent between 2003 and 2006 and their potential could be $10 to $20 billion in the next five years from the extant level of $3.5 billion. He said EEPC is conducting a study on a strategy paper for the promotion of EPO services from India.

Genpact Plans More BPO Hubs, Nagpur on the List
28 Dec, 2007
Genpact may soon expand its footprint across Eastern Europe. They already have offshore subsidiaries in Romania and Hungary, the company is considering floating subsidiaries in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Secure with Motif
28 Dec, 2007
When one of the largest financial institutions in the USA decided to outsource its high-end processes to Motif India, it was secure in the knowledge that it was in safe hands. Here’s how Motif helped the global organization scale up the value chain.


Banking on Scope for bottom-line benefits
1 Jan, 2008
Take a glimpse at how Standard Chartered Bank is “cashing in” on the benefits of outsourcing to India. The MNC, which has set up a captive BPO operation in India has gained myriad benefits from its outsourcing foray.


Flying high with outsourcing
3 Jan, 2008
A look at how Indian ITES-BPO major Kale took charge of Qatar Airways’ revenue accounting and revenue recovery processes, enabling the company’s productivity and efficiency levels to move skyward.

HCL BPO writes an Indo-Irish success story

‘Call Centre Deal Brings New Jobs.’ This news item published in icNorthernIreland (icnorthernireland.icnetwork.co.uk) on February 10, 2004 might not have had an unusual headline, but the text certainly did: “Seventy-five new call centre jobs have been created in Belfast, it emerged yesterday. HCL BPO, based at Apollo Road, has taken on the extra staff after securing a major deal with a UK retail chain…The latest jobs boost brings its total workforce to 861. And it said staffing levels have risen by 30 percent over the past year.” The report went on to add how HCL BPO, a subsidiary of HCL Technologies of India, has made a commitment to develop and increase business in Northern Ireland.

While this news story might stand out as an exception among the outpouring of angst in the western media about loss of BPO jobs to India, for the company itself this is a logical extension of the business strategy they had the foresight to initiate more than two years ago. HCL Technologies became the first Indian company to acquire an ITeS organisation outside the country when it took a 90 percent stake in the Belfast-based Apollo Contact Centre in December 2001. Since then the company has not only sizeably increased the staff strength, but also taken many initiatives for business and cultural integration, including a unique Employee Exchange Programme. A success story today, it could well be a model for other BPO/ITeS organisations to follow.

Advantages

Sumit Bhattacharya, executive vice president of HCL BPO, lists the reasons why the company decided to acquire the BPO unit in Belfast. “HCL BPO believes that in order to be a credible global BPO service provider, one must have a combination of offshore, near shore and onshore facilities. This is because, due to a variety of regulatory or corporate sensitivity-related reasons, hundred percent offshore outsourcing is extremely unlikely. Further, in order to penetrate the UK market, it was important to be associated with a blue-chip British brand. The Belfast venture is a 90:10 joint venture with British Telecom (BT).”

Yet another factor is the continuous challenge for Indian BPO service providers to find well-experienced process/project management staff at mid and senior levels. This turns out to be a tough task, taking into consideration the relative immaturity of the third-party industry in India—just four years—vis-a-vis the spiralling growth rate. As a consequence of the Belfast acquisition, the transferred employees included 44 managers with experience ranging from five to 25 years in process delivery.

Adding to this is the fact that Ireland is acknowledged and accepted as a high-quality outsourcing location by the world’s largest BPO market, the US. “Most Fortune/Global 500 companies have a significant presence in the European market. However, from India, our voice-based language capability is limited to English. From the Belfast Centre we can deliver many European languages,” explains Bhattacharya. The company employs French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch-speaking staff. The centre also provides the company with international disaster recovery and business continuity capability.

While there is no specific pre-ordained division of functions between Belfast and India, certain processes like European language voice support are provided only from Belfast, and the high-end technical support proce-sses are delivered only from India, adds Bhattacharya.

Last year HCL BPO also started a centre in Malaysia at the specific request of an important client (a global software major) to run the product support help desk for the Malaysian market. “Since then we have positioned the Malaysian centre as both a disaster recovery site as well as the location for providing multi-Asian language support. Currently we are also in advanced negotiations with a number of local organisations and businesses for a variety of processes to be delivered from the Malaysian Centre,” informs Bhattacharya. Still a start-up, an Employee Exchange Programme is yet to be initiated here.

People concerns

People-related factors often lead to the failure of mergers. When HCL took over Apollo Contact Centre, the primary concern of the employees was related to their jobs. “The other concerns were regarding the culture, approaches and practices of the new owner. Obviously, the fact that we were an Indian company added another dimension to the natural sense of concern and uncertainty,” points out Bhattacharya.

So how did the organisation address these issues? “Firstly, by preaching. Secondly, by practising what we preached. We clearly communicated that we saw the Belfast Centre as a critical part of our global BPO operations and aspirations, and then rapidly went on to take steps that clearly demonstrated our intentions,” affirms Bhattacharya. He lists the steps:

* Seamless and on-time transfer of payroll;
* Programme of offering permanent employment contract to high-performing contract staff;
* Enhancement of technology infrastructure;
* Deployment of experienced Belfast staff to mentor and guide process migration, management and training;
* Deployment of non-BT processes;
* No overt Indianisation.

The company also made a conscious decision not to impose a common HR policy for its India and Northern Ireland centres since it believes that these policies must necessarily reflect local practices, norms and nuances. Neverthe-less, there are common elements such as rewarding performance, recognising commitment, and providing a career path.

Employee transfer programmes

The company has initiated two employee transfer programmes—the Employee Deputation Programme and the Employee Exchange Progr-amme. The former is for 6-12 months and involves transfer of employees for specific skills aligned to specific tasks/assignments. The latter is for three to six months, and for 10-20 people.

“As a global company, transfer of staff is integral to the process of cultural integration, percolation of best practices, and the capability of deploying appropriate expertise and experience,” states Bhattacharya.

The Employee Exchange Programme has turned out to be a major success. HCL BPO staff from Belfast are sent to work at Noida, on Indian salaries, for the period of their stay here, while those from India go to Northern Ireland and get the salaries paid there. The programme has generated a lot of enthusiasm among employees in both countries. Its success can be judged from the fact that for every vacancy in each country, there are at least 10 applicants from the other side.

The transferred employees are given a crash course prior to their departure on various aspects of the host country. This content ranges from cultural nuances to culinary delights.

The right cultural fit

Cross-cultural integration of staff has always been a primary concern for most global organisations. “A successful organisation should focus on how to select the best people, brief them well, and ensure pastoral care,” says Iain Herbertson, managing director, Asia Pacific, Manpower Inc.

A global recruiting major, Manpower has hired at least 8,000 people around the world who are currently working in countries which are not their homelands. It was also involved with the Belfast centre. One of Manpower’s most successful operations was in Scotland, for which 1,200 people from 14 countries were recruited.

The company has designed a Web-based assessment system to judge the cultural compatibility of people. “As part of the briefing, the objectives of the management and their expectations from work prospects should be made clear,” Herbertson points out.

With Indian BPO/ITeS organisations now attracting employees from other countries, it will not be long before more foreigners try to find the right cultural fit over here.

About Service offered by BPO Experts .

We offer a diversified range of solutions and support services to fulfill the back office needs of middle market enterprises on an outsourced basis. We support middle market businesses new to the BPO market, established businesses that already outsource, and businesses seeking to maximize return-on-investment from their in-house workforce. We are designed to help your business whether you are already using some business process outsourcing or just starting to explore it as a strategy. We either evaluate your current outsourced operations for efficiency and effectiveness or prepare an outsourcing plan that is custom designed for your business.

We provide a broad portfolio of business and technology solutions to help our clients worldwide improve their business performance. Our core portfolio includes human resources, information technology, enterprise content management, and finance and accounting, all of which are focused on supporting the back–office functions of the under served middle-market enterprises. Our business strategy is to become the leader in the middle market by offering the same comprehensive back-office services to mid-sized Companies at lower cost as compared to the higher priced Tier-1 providers. Additionally, because of our lower cost structure, we offer selective outsourcing services to Fortune 500 companies for those functions which are not being cost effectively met either internally or by their primary Tier-1 providers.

The services we offer are,
1. HR Outsourcing & Consulting
2. Enterprise Content Management
3. IT Infrastructure & Outsourcing
4. Finance & Accounting Services

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

We are specialist recruiter for organizations providing Business Process & Transformational Outsourcing solutions to their customers. We provide services for the enterprise outsourcers, advisors and consultants, specialist service suppliers and niche players.

We work with enterprise outsourcers who provide Human Resources Outsourcing, Finance & Accounting Outsourcing, Customer Management Outsourcing and Procurement Outsourcing services to their customers across the globe. We specialize in finding the hard to get skills including business development managers, solution architects, transition and transformation experts, service delivery managers and a whole range of subject matter experts to support engagements across the sales and delivery functions.

We offer advisers and consultants to source individuals who are experts on advising organizations on their sourcing options including insourcing, offshoring, shared services and outsourcing.

Where are the BPO professionals in a fast growing market?

It is a feature of an emerging market that experienced professionals are thin on the ground. The talent that does exist is often ‘home grown’ by the trail blazers. A few established and leading players emerge and their demand for resources naturally grows with their business. More and more new entrants come along looking to get a foothold in what looks to be a potentially large and lucrative market. New entrants look to attract experienced professionals from the market leaders putting even more strain on their resources and so it goes on….

Finding talent within competitors is unsustainable

In an emerging and fast growing market it is not possible to just keep hunting talent from the competition, continually driving up demand and salaries. Other sources of talent must be identified and developed to become tomorrow’s BPO experts. Whether you are already a leading player, an emerging player or a completely new entrant, finding and retaining the right people is critical to your business.

So how do you make sure you secure the right people when talent is scarce?

As you might expect, we believe it is essential to find the right recruitment or headhunting partner. This is a specialist market and you need an organization who understands the market, the key players within it and the sources of talent that can be developed to become tomorrow’s BPO experts. Your recruitment partner should be able to understand and add value to this process.

If they can't perhaps it's time to give us a try. For an informal discussion email us at bpoexperts@consultant.com We have a track record for finding and providing BPO specialists.

India: An avenue for Outsourcing.

It’s no real secret that Call Centers have been taking off in India at an amazing rate. It is also well known that many companies have shifted their growth from, or are in the process of shutting down Call Centers in Philippines in favor of Call Centers based in India.

One key reason that Indian based call centers do so well is that the call center agents have such a neutral accent. Many of us have been on the phone with a call center agent in the India and did not even know. Frankly, that’s just how good many are.

Recently, I had a technical support problem with a piece of computer networking equipment and called the technical support line for assistance. When I reached the agent, I was sure I was speaking to someone in the United States. If I had not lived in the India myself, I probably would have missed a phrase that was spoken by the agent that is fairly unique to India. The expression was “for a while”, which in American colloquialism means “just a sec”.

Through a fairly detailed technical discussion, it was not obvious to me that I was speaking with someone outside of the country. To get through a conversation like that without me picking up on it is actually quite an achievement. As you and I know, but many call center companies seem to miss, conversation is more than just understanding and verbalizing the language. There are nuances and conversational styles and cultural clues embedded in a conversation.

The educational system in India more closely mirrors that of the U.S. My experience with quite a few Philippine based call centers has not quite been the same. It is pretty much understood when I speak to someone in an Philippine based call center that the person I speak with is reading a script. When I go off script, it is easy to tell that they are getting confused and hunting through other scripts trying to figure out what to say in response. When the centers first started in Philippines, I could generally understand their accents. Now I have the advantage of having also lived in Philippines for over four years so my understanding of their accents is probably better than the average person on the end of a phone in the United States.

With that said, I must confess that even I have had difficulty understanding some call center agents in Philippines. Additionally, I find that I have to repeat myself in order for them to understand me. Typically, my approach is to spend as little time as possible in this position and ask to speak to a supervisor pretty quickly. Generally, the supervisor has a somewhat better command of the language, which is what got them promoted in the first place.

When one considers other types of work being done offshore of late, it occurs to me that the experience with call centers should easily translate into other services having the potential to be delivered with a higher level of quality.

What I can report is that the U.S. customer base we served almost never cited communications or misunderstanding of requirements as an issue. I am certainly not saying we never had issues, but communication and not being able to understand each other in phone discussion or email were not problems that came up.

I would encourage anyone considering diversifying their offshore strategy or looking to begin offshoring of call center, software application development/maintenance, or BPO to take a closer look at India.