France-based consulting, technology and outsourcing services major Capgemini is looking at offering integrated solutions combining technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) services to Indian companies. The company, under its Local Business Services unit, is currently offering services to around 80 companies, both Indian and multinationals.
While Indian companies were earlier focusing on rapidly developing their businesses overseas, the global turmoil forced them to have a closer look at the Indian market. This called for services from specialists in segments like accounting technology and process. Capgemini, with its specialisation in technology and services in specific outsourcing activities, can provide its services to these companies, said Hubert Giraud, business process outsourcing CEO, group executive committee member, Capgemini.
"The fact is that we are specialists, we are investing a lot and we have the right technology. It is not their (the companies in India) business to develop accounting technology or accounting process. We do that. And I believe that even for an Indian company, we could have a good answer for them," he added.
B L Narayan, head of BPO Capgemini in India, added that the company is also providing services in areas including supply chain management, where the company believe a lot more relevant in Indian market compared to the core accounting services.
"There is a bigger initiative called Local Business Services, a business unit that looks at Indian market, they already made big inroads in that, we work for government corporations, for public sector and private sector companies in technology space and certain allied consulting and we are now progressing into BPO. That is a gradual movement that we are looking at," said Narayan.
"We already did some work for some Indian based companies or rather the Indian subsidiaries of global brands. We started work in supply chain managment, master data management, order management," he added. "I guess we may combine some of our efforts in this market and wholistically look at it, so that it is not a piecemeal solution, but an integrated solutions that we look at. That will then be relevant to the Indian market, instead of standalone," he said.
The Local Business Services was set up in 2008 and has over 80 clients - Indian companies or Indian subsidiaries of global companies.
"Out of this 80 clients, only a handful are for BPO services. But we never looked at the market from a BPO context, to go and address. We were looking at the global clients' Indian subsidiary. Now that we have got a channel, we may try to integrate and approach," said Narayan.
Speaking about the current global scenario and its effects on BPOs, Giraud said, "We are not immune from the global economy evolution, but I think that BPO is well positioned whatever happening, to continue to develop." Whatever happening to the global economy, BPO is surfing pretty well and when times are good people are requiring BPO to deliver lot of value add, a lot of new things to betterment the market and beat their competition. When times are going badly and economy is in a turmoil, they address you to reduce strategy. There are different drivers, but there is a huge demand for BPO services, he said.
"People are not using any more BPOs just to reduce the cost by 25 per cent. They take BPO to transform their process to manage business outcomes," he added. He said that the offerings of basic transactional service has become less while lot more value added services like big data analytics and social network media opportunities, which are new avenues of services for the clients to take better decision for developing their business. "I believe that positioning ourselves on these new offerings, we will be uniquely positioned to win the market," said Giraud.
