Progeon to enter knowledge services

Progeon, Infosys' BPO subsidiary, is to enter the knowledge services segment, Akshaya Bhargava, CEO of Progeon, announced on Monday.

The new segment is essentially a high margin business and will include opportunities in equity research, credit analysis, fixed income research, bond analysis, economic analysis, industry analysis and company analysis for leading investment banks from across the world.

Currently, Progeon is in talks with all its 16 customers for offering this as a value proposition. The company has already done a few pilots in this regard and feels that it is ready to offer this as a full-fledged service.

According to Bhargava, "Initially, for typical voice or non-voice processes to be outsourced, customers look for pilots. However, the knowledge services segment does not behave like that. As there is no such tactical behaviour, our strategic response was to enter into this segment."

While Bhargava did admit that BPO companies were entering the segment as a result of the higher margins, he did not comment on investment or recruitment for this new initiative.

On the revenues expected from this venture, he said that Progeon continues to stand by the guidance that it has given for the whole year "" $30-31 million. He said that unless the company decides to revise its guidance in the future, revenues from Knowledge Services, for now, has been factored into the guidance.

Bhargava added that this high margin business will mean that the company may need to recruit people like CAs, MBAs, financial analysts and mathematicians. Progeon feels that the industry is currently moving from low exit barrier work (like customer support) to mainstream BPO (like end-to-end policy administration, mortgage, etc).

"In five years from now, we intend to be present mainly in the mainstream BPO as well as key support services like finance and account outsourcing, level 2/3 tech support, collections, etc. We have learnt and believe that this new business initiative will add greater strength and versatility to the DNA of our organisation," he added.

For the first quarter-ended June 30, 2004, Progeon registered a 21 per cent increase in revenues to touch $7.2 million.