But where are the people?

The shortage of people in the coming years will crimp the BPO industry's growth

Shankaralinge Gowda is busy preparing to conduct assessment tests next month for nearly 300,000 students in Karnataka. Karnataka's secretary for information technology, biotech and science & technology plans to use assessment companies like MeritTrac (recommended by the BPO industry) to conduct aptitude and voice tests in eight centres to select students for employment as part of a unique state-business process outsourcing (BPO) industry partnership, the first of its kind in India.

With the first phase of testing in Mysore and Mangalore, Gowda hopes that the assessment initiative will help the BPO industry in its attempt to attract and retain talent at entry level positions.

Attracting and retaining skilled personnel at the base level and especially at the middle management level is a key roadblock for the growth of BPOs in the country, says a new report by KPMG, the consultancy company.

India hopes to employ a million people by 2010 as call center specialists and transaction processing clerks but the industry lacks project managers and mid-management personnel to realise this vision, the report states.

It warns that even in countries like China there could be a shortage of up to 10 million workers by 2020 because companies will be able to automate only 13.5 per cent of all service jobs.

KPMG personnel warn that the shortage of people in the coming years will put a crimp on the BPO industry's 50 per cent plus annual growth rate. Over a million people will be required by 2009, but supply will fall short by 262,000. The total number of people that will be available is expected to be 741,000 by the end of the decade, says the study.

"On a ratio of 15 is to 100, the industry will be short of team leaders and project managers," warns Rajiv Prakash, associate director, advisory practice, sourcing.

"Maintaining high quality and keeping costs low is the biggest challenge the BPO sector faces," says K Sriram at Singapore's DBS Bank, a former executive at ABN Amro's BPO arm in Chennai.

Prakash says that despite competition catching up from Philippines for voice services, from Malaysia for transaction processing and South Africa for other BPO operations, India can ride the BPO wave if it improves the quality of people.

E Balaji, executive director, staffing solutions, at Ma Foi Management Consultants, agrees that quality people continue to be an issue. " We have a hit rate of around 5-6 per cent of applicants for BPO positions. There is a big challenge at entry levels to find the right people." Prakash says that the selection ratio needs to increase to 15-20 per cent to achieve the industry's growth targets.

Some like ABN Amro which has a huge BPO operation in Chennai for transaction processing are resorting to in-house training programmes to develop staff. Infosys Technologies is setting up a training center in Mysore at a cost of Rs 260 crore.

But many BPO employees tend to leave for much higher pay after a couple of years. At a recent Confederation of Indian Industry conference, Johny Joseph, vice president, training and development, 24/7 Customer.com, pointed out: "There are some agents who have collected their pay checks at various call centres for two years without actually donning a head set even a single day. They have spent two years only getting trained at various companies."

Initiatives such as those by the National Association of Software and Service Companies and the Karnataka government to introduce a programme of certification for entry-level employees are expected to make the selection process more productive and cost efficient for the industry.

"We are working towards greater industry and university interaction so that graduates will be trained in the latest industry practices, making them ready for employment by the IT industry," Nasscom president Kiran Karnik told Ice World.

Nasscom is working with QAI India Limited to develop quality middle management for the BPO industry. "Most of the middle managers working in BPO companies have experience which is as low as six months. This programme will help to train middle managers in soft skills like people management and group dynamics," Karnik explains.

Industry snapshot

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• 246,000 were employed in the BPO industry in March 2004
• Of these, 95,000 are in call centres, 105,000 in transaction processing and 46,000 in content management
• The call centre business grew by 46 per cent year-on-year
• The transaction processing business posted a 68 per cent growth rate and content publishing grew by only 5 per cent.