In a bid to help Indian BPO companies tide over challenges, technology solutions company Anantara Solutions has embarked on a model that would enable clients in the BPO space to realise their potential.
Ravi Chander, partner, North American operations, Anantara Solutions, outlines the challenges faced by the industry, the possible way out and the company’s strategies in this regard.
With the emergence of cost-competitive destinations such as the Philippines and China, what lies in store for the BPO industry in India?
The BPO industry in India is currently estimated at $11 billion. The industry, according to a Nasscom-Everest Group study, has the opportunity to grow five-fold to be over $50 billion by 2012.
However, realising this potential can prove to be challenging given the fact that cost arbitrage is no longer the source of competitive advantage for Indian BPO companies. It is a level-playing field, with global companies now offering the same value through out-located operations in India.
Further, competing destinations like the Philippines and China are poised to overtake India in terms of cost competitiveness. Customers are also now asking 'what next?' after cost arbitrage. Anantara Solutions believes Indian BPO companies can address the challenges and realise their potential through strategic and operational excellence.
Could you elaborate on that?
They can achieve these by going beyond providing outsourced business process services to providing solutions that address the specific pain areas of customers.
The companies can identify potential 'white space' opportunities, where offshoring is yet to take off in a significant way; evolve the pricing strategy to be more ‘value-based’, and provide services that permit non-linear growth.
Some of the key initiatives that Indian BPOs can undertake from an operational excellence perspective include establishing the capabilities to implement a service strategy that is business solution focused.
This includes creating capabilities in the up-front relation initiation and solution development processes, which is a key focus area for the eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers (eSCM SP); re-architecting their metrics program to be capable of measuring business performance as opposed to service quality; driving greater optimisation of personnel and technology resources through consolidation, virtualisation and automation; focusing on knowledge management as an enabler of business solutions and continuous improvement in business performance.
Could you explain eSCM and its importance in the context of a changing order?
The eSCM models are developed by the IT Services Qualification Center (ITSqc) at Carnegie Mellon University. The ITSqc is supported by an industry consortium comprising leading global players in the IT-enabled sourcing space.
The eSCM models contain best practices, and are used as a reference to drive improvement in IT-enabled sourcing relationships. Certification to an eSCM Level provides organisations with competitive differentiation in the marketplace by providing an external validation of effective implementation of eSCM best practices.
The eSCM models are relevant now more than ever, considering the changing order in global outsourcing.
What role does Anantara play here?
Anantara supports organisations in eSCM adoption, across the full life-cycle, from providing consulting support to organisations implementing eSCM, providing authorised eSCM training programmes, to conducting eSCM evaluations for certification to a particular level of the eSCM SP.
In terms of consulting, Anantara not only does strategic analysis and planning interventions, but also provides hands on implementation support for implementing eSCM SP best practices. Anantara is a Carnegie Mellon authorised Organisation for eSCM.
How far have you gone in terms of driving eSCM adoption in India?
Anantara is proactively undertaking several initiatives, both at the level of industry awareness and working with individual companies.
This includes contributing to thought leadership and commentary in industry fora as well as in the business media on the imperative for change, and also the value that the eSCM can provide to aid organisations making this change.
We are also working with individual organisations to conduct eSCM workshops. Anantara also plans to conduct authorised eSCM SP training programmes in India and in this context will soon be announcing a training programme where our trainers will co-teach with trainers from the ITSqc.
Given the thrust on eSCM in your strategies forward, what do you foresee in the next half decade in the IT, ITeS space in India?
Going forward, there will increasingly be a trend of convergence of these different disciplines. Business processes and underlying IT will be fused so that one cannot be delivered without impacting the other.
Customers will increasingly want these business services available in a ubiquitous way, with tremendous amount of flexibility, implying that business processes and IT alike will need to be globally delivered as a utility. The company has 40-plus customers in over 15 countries.
