Indian IT BPM now at par with customers after tech shift: Roy

Emergence of new technology has brought Indian business process management (BPM) at par with their customers during business discussions, IT industry body Nasscom Chairman Raman Roy said today.
"Earlier as we sat on table with our customers we were order takers because the customer would tell us what to do. but in the new world, we are no more order takers because our customers don't know what to order. We sit on the table as equals," Roy said at 13th Indo-US Economic Summit.
He said that the business process management in India was created on the basis of labour arbitrage that Indians could do the work done in Western countries, specially the US, at cheaper rates.

Roy, who is Chairman and Managing Director of Quatrro BPO Solutions, said that when the industry was created in India, the customers in the West trained some trainers who then imparted training to Indian IT professionals.
"When we ran in to problem, our customers had seen that problem before and they told us how to solve it. We grew to USD 150 billion and we now employ 4 million people and we do lot of international work," Roy said.
The Indian BPM industry is projected to grow to USD 300 billion by 2020, Roy said adding the industry needs to understand the factor that will bring in growth with emergence of new technologies.

He said that now there is a paradigm shift with emergence of new technologies such as big data analytics, cyber security etc. Roy said that these new technologies are creating new business model in which customers ability to impart training has disappeared as the customers have not experience them before.
"There is a knowledge base with our customers and there is a knowledge base with us. It is a very fundamental emerging trend. We have to graduate to sit on the table as equal and our customers largely out of the US have to accept that somebody will have to sit on the table as equal," Roy said.

He said when both sides are able to to accept each other as equal then it will bring win-win situation for both the sides.