Careers in BPO

Kinds of jobs available in BPO

The basic question that strikes a young mind seeking a career is that what is a BPO Career all about which sometimes leaves him or her in a confused state. A BPO career revolves around the core activity of delivering business process outsourcing services. This involves voice (telephone) and non-voice (email, chat) based customer interaction services, transaction processing, telemarketing, technical support or analyzing of customer specific data. It also involves back-end jobs such as claims processing and processing of Finance & Accounting transactions. In short we can say that the BPO industry has doors open for every field.

In a growing BPO organization, career opportunities exist across various facets of the business - extending from the core contact center to support functions like HR, legal, marketing, quality, administration etc. Opportunities in the contact center include customer support, telemarketing, technical support and multilingual support (which require people having knowledge of foreign languages like French, Spanish etc.). Opportunities also exist for experienced people from various backgrounds and industries. - like hospitality, services and the retail industry.

1)In the last financial year, ITES-BPO companies were the largest recruiters in the IT/ITES sector adding about 70,000 jobs. This sector is estimated to register a growth of about 40% in FY 2004-05 to reach revenues of US$ 5.1 billion.
Source: NASSCOM

2) India would require over a million people by 2008 to meet the demand of the ITES sector.
Source: Hindu Business Line
3)The average income between the age group 20-30 has risen three folds in the past five years due to the emergence of the BPO Industry.

Careers in BPO

We put such a great value on education that this event usually represents the fulfillment of a big part of parents' dreams for their children.

Graduations bring pride, happiness and hope to Indian families. But the sobering reality after the graduation rites is that thousands of new entrants to the labor force will have to find jobs. And the perennial situation is that there are too few jobs to go around. Many of these young hopefuls end up as part of the unemployment statistics.

Low end services : At this level of the business, one might start with Voice or Non-voice services depending on the individual's skills to qualify for the same. Most opportunities lie in Operations, given the sheer number of people needed for operations. Though there are opportunities in other departments, but their numbers are significantly low.

Voice Based Services – telephonic interactions, be it Inbound customer queries or Outbound Telemarketing. Qualification needed to start with might be as basic as good command over the English language (both oral and written). To achieve growth to the next level, of Team Leader position, one might need at least 2 years of good operational experience at the starting level, coupled with Domain Knowledge and specific skills. Management and Team leading traits are a must have requisite.

Non-voice Services - email, chat based customer interaction services, transaction processing, telemarketing, web based technical support or analyzing of customer specific data. It also involves back-end jobs such as claims processing and processing of finance & accounting transactions.

To achieve growth to the next level ( within the lower steps of the value matrix in BPO Services) to the Team Leader position, one might need at least 2 years of good operational experience at the starting level, coupled withal round domain knowledge and specific skills. Management and Team leading traits are a must have requisite.

High End Services : For the very high end of the value chain, services like Data Analytics and Equity research, the underlying capabilities of the individual are severely tested. The basic qualification could be at the tertiary level. Opportunities exist from nanotechnology research to genome research and much more around it, everything extremely high end and needing very special skills. Needless to say this is a high profit low volume business, and skill sets in these domains are paid for through the roof!

In the current situation in the India, one sector that is counted on to provide jobs to new graduates, and others who have been scouring the job market for a longer period, is the business process outsourcing or BPO sector. This includes the most familiar type of BPO operation, the call centers, as well as a range of other activities, such as medical transcriptions, accounting and other back office operations, and higher value-added ones, such as animation and other creative services and software development. These services are provided either by local firms under contracts with the outsourcing global firms or by foreign firms that either use the outsourced services directly or also for sale to global firms. These BPO operations usually pay relatively higher salaries than other industries, and this is why job seekers, including graduates from the best schools, vie for the still limited number of jobs that they offer. But BPO operations definitely remain a growth area in the Indian economy as the process of global economic integration proceeds.

Moreover, like free trade in general, outsourcing brings the benefits of increased specialization and bigger markets, such as greater efficiencies and the so-called economies of scale and scope, increased employment, and lower prices of goods and services. The benefits accrue not only to the developing countries that provide the labor services but also to the developed countries that purchase them.

With such clear and substantial benefits, we should therefore aim to attract as much BPO activities as possible to maximize our country's potential gains from this global trend.

Doing an F5 on Technology

The time for a technology refresh. While contact centers are evaluating an enticing new technology called VoIP. It can simultaneously increase productivity and the bottom line. Contact centers may soon be opening their wallets to everything from voice over IP (VoIP), to speech recognition and analytics, to performance management technology. Anything that will get them a fresh breath of technology.
"The mantra is to do more with less," says Darren Voice, principal with a N.J based technology firm. He adds "The best products are ones that immediately improve the bottom line. It's about the ability to reduce cost before anything else, increase in revenue and improve productivity are almost a taken for granted by today's buyer."

VoIP: Is it the next Killer App

VoIP is going to be at the top of most wish lists, said Don Van Doren, founder of Vanguard Communications Corp, an independent consulting company that focuses on the contact center. "It's a hugely important issue, and part of its importance is that all contact centers will have to go there sooner or later," he said. "As existing gear ages and contact centers start moving to new equipment, it's going to be IP based. All the vendors are focusing R&D on IP architectures. Things are clearly moving that way. An idea whose time has arrived."

There may not be a business case for it right now for some but for others, it's a no-brainer. Communications Data Services (CDS), Iowa, an order fulfillment service provider for publishers and direct marketers, is one of those contact centers in no rush for VoIP. "VoIP's maturity and reliability have not been proven to us conclusively though there stands a strong case for its immediate use," says their senior product manager for customer service systems. "It would be a significant investment for us to rebuild our network to accommodate VoIP and we may want to take some time to act on it."

Another source from a large Call Center in Gurgaon says "I don't see significant savings to justify transferring our existing contact center to VoIP. We've got a reliable network in place right now, and the costs and T1 charges don't outweigh that right now." With VoIP, the source said, "Contact centers wouldn't have to share bandwidth between data and voice traffic; no more separate circuits or management systems". He said they would need to see large contact centers use the technology successfully and reliably for him to reconsider.

"A mid-sized contact center I visited kept its old systems as a backup because there were so many problems with VoIP," he said. VoIP, however, may be as close to a killer app as the contact center has right now, especially for multi-site centers.

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ROI on Technology Spend

* Consider the model on which your selection is based; it is best based on your organizational strategy. ROI may take a different look when seeking cost savings versus driving revenue.
* Understand and fully account for miscellaneous costs, including staff, technology, network, maintenance, internal support, etc.
* Clearly define benefits, with workforce as the focus. It is where most of your return comes from.
* Let savings play out if you say you're going to be more efficient then the options are - cut staff, reallocate staff, or let attrition play out.
* Always follow through quickly to assess (and quantify) results and benefits after implementation to boost inertia for the next business case.