Nasscom's India Leadership Forum: Business process management spreads wings

Leaders feel the first industry conference in US will give them the required exposure in customer market

The $28-billion business process management (BPM, which was earlier called business process outsourcing) segment is coming out of the shadow of the information technology (IT) services segment. BPM players, along with the Indo-US Chambers of Commerce and the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) hold first industry conference in the US in March. Industry leaders from the sector feel this give them the required exposure in their customer market.

Over the past two years, the BPM segment of the $108-billion IT-BPM sector had been undergoing a rebranding and spreading its wings in terms of differentiating itself from the IT services players.

Keshav Murugesh, chief executive officer, WNS, and chairman Nasscom BPM Council, believes the BPM segment has been represented in a poor light with phrases such as "low-end work", "nightshifts", call centre etc. "First, IT and BPM industries are two different segments. We need to ensure that people outside of our client environment know what work we are doing," Murugesh said.

The Indian BPM industry has moved away from just voice-based work to the use of technologies such as analytics. "We want to communicate the right value provided by the Indian BPM players. We want to showcase the skills that the industry is hiring, the work that the GICs (global in-house centres) are doing in India and much more," said K Vishwanathan, vice-president, industry and initiatives, Nasscom.

Of the total BPM market, about 40 per cent is pure call, but even this is evolving from pure call to media chat and digital. The industry believes about 50 per cent of the people who look at the segment believe it is still working on full-time equivalent (FTE) basis. An FTE is the hours worked by one employee on a full-time basis. The concept is used to convert the hours worked by several part-time employees into the hours worked by full-time employees.

"This is the first time that India is making a marketing programme outside of India," Vishwanathan said.

Mohit Thukral, senior vice-president and business leader, Genpact said: "There is a lot of activity happening between technology and BPM. Besides, it is also about how we have been about value and employment capability in the US." Of the $28 billion, $24.4 billion represent export revenues from the BPM sector, which are expected to grow by 13 per cent compound annual growth rate to touch $50 billion by 2020. Sandip Sen, global CEO, Aegis, the BPM arm from Essar, said the conference would debunk the myth that the Philippines has taken away the majority share of the BPM work coming from global customers.

"BPM or BPO segment has undergone a fundamental shift. We want to let the world know that when it comes to BPM, India is the default place to come to. We want to displace the myth that the Philippines is taking away business from India. We also want them to know that BPM also creates job opportunities in the key markets," Sen said.