India’s Business Process Management industry
As part of the guest speaker lecture, I invited Ajay Gupta, a senior manager of a large software outsourcing company to talk to my Information System Management class. Following is what he said:
“For over twenty years, India has been very successful in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) but the image of low cost workers with low technology skills such as help-desks, answering phones, coding and testing is NO LONGER applied to India. Today we are managing key Information Technology (IT) functions for customers and perform sophisticated works to support their business. That was why few years ago, we changed our name from Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to Business Process Management (BPM) to give a new image of India being a full-service provider. Our industry has fully matured and we are now moving towards higher-end full services.”
“There are others who develop their BPO industry to compete with India such as China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam but as they claim to have lower cost, India with its skilled workforce as well as its English speaking capabilities will continue to remain on top. Today India’s BPM industry does not have to compete on cost anymore as our quality is better, our skills are better, and our workers have more experiences. We also do not compete for small projects because we often handle the entire IT functions as we have the size and the experience that others do not. Our people are now working alongside with customers to support them with new emerging technologies. Our industry is moving up to better position as we broaden our scope from project to full functional services. We know global market demand, we understand customers’ needs, and we make the necessary adjustments to support them. Our skilled people work closely with customers to help them overcome the enormity of technological change so they appreciate the value proposition offered by our service providers.”
“Our BPM model will continue to evolve and drives our global business. We understand evolutionary process so we have been very cohesive in our strategy and actions. We do not wait for customers to come to us but we come to them. We open offices all over the world to actively engage with potential customers. This has made us very successful as we always looking for opportunities in newer services and newer business. We train our workers on new skills, new technologies and that is why we evolve from providing call centers, phone services, testing and coding services to process outsourcing services, managing IT functions, and provide sophisticated IT solutions. Basically India wants to be the IT center of the world where all IT works will be done by Indian companies.”
“Our evolution from low cost to high quality; from support services to high productivity is based on a well-defined strategy that we execute flawlessly. Currently we are moving to specialization, process reengineering and technology-enabled platforms. Our BPM industry is now providing platform support based on our business outcome-based revenue sharing model instead of the old model of achieving service level agreements (SLAs). We have many skilled workers trained in big data analysis, cloud computing, mobility and are able to provide new services like consulting, business transformation and optimization. To increase operational efficiencies, we offer customers new business proposition. Instead of set up a contract based on negotiated prices, we can offer our services based on transaction-based pricing where we are willing to share the risks with customers if they share their revenues with us. It is a partnership approach rather than a client server approach. We are moving to strengthen our research capabilities through specific domain focus and encourage more collaboration with customers.”
“India‘s BPM industry has achieved over $100 billion dollars in the past few years and created five million new jobs for our economy. Our goal is to achieve $200 billion by 2020 and we are working toward it.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
