A relationship, like a product, needs a relaunch after a time, which can do nicely with a new slogan. | |
| The Indian BPO industry, which is entering the age of maturity after the initial heady days of enthusiasm may have just been given that. |
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| From "Come to India for cost and stay for quality" it can now be "Come to India for quality and stay for innovation," Romi Malhotra, managing director of Dell International Services, creatively articulated at the Nasscom ITES-BPO summit in Bangalore on Thursday. |
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| This transition and need for new imperatives was the focus of a detailed presentation by a team from McKinsey & Co which presented to the summit the first cut of its findings while executing the brief from Nasscom to define how Indian BPO could achieve operational excellence. |
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| Noshir Kaka, a partner at McKinsey, invokes the parallel of the Japanese auto industry to visualise a "Toyota initiative" for Indian ITES-BPO which takes a benchmark approach to remote shared services so that just like Japan and cars, country advantage can be turned to company advantage. |
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| The problem that McKinsey faces in this is that while there are any number of certifications available for the manufacturing industry, there is none for remote services. |
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| So the consultancy is inventing "Process 360", a diagnostic and operational benchmarking tool which has been constructed by deeply interacting with the top ten firms, both captive and third party. |
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| And what it has found is both surprising and fits in with the transition that is taking place. India massively leads in global outsourcing but there is poor alignment between clients and internal stakeholders at the vendor's end on operational excellence. |
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| What is even more serious, this misalignment is apparent not so much in the first year but during 3-5 years of an engagement. |
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| Are relationships going sour? No. Kaka emphasises that customers are quite satisfied with what they have got so far, on quality and costs. The study is a bit futuristic, in the sense that it tries to foresee the challenges ahead, and the key finding is that "alignment decreases over time." |
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| Clients initially expect to save on costs and this in line with the priority of the vendors. But after a time when the cost reductions have happened, the client is looking for innovations, ideas on new and better way of doing things, with greater speed and flexibility, but the vendor is still focused on costs. This is both the challenge and the opportunity. |
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| The fact is that in the US, where reside most of Indian BPO's clients, innovation is a way of life. But in India we are still struggling to understand it, explains Malhotra, adding that the onus is really on us to innovate. |
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| If you do not innovate you will be in the classical position of General Motor whose loss of market share can be attributed to misalignment between stakeholder and customer, recalled Raju Venkatraman, president and COO of ICICI OneSource, who has spent many years in Detroit. |
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| The Indian disconnect is partly due to overselling the capability to innovate. His imperative is clear, "The honeymoon is over." Now get on with it. Engage with your customer, commit and deliver, and for heaven's sake, "don't over-commit." |
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| But the problem, as was pointed out, was that some clients, particularly in finance and accounts want you to precisely follow the process evolved and standardised by them. |
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| Kaka's reply to that is you have to educate customers on the need to innovate and Malhotra's feeling is that clients tend to be open to innovation ideas from those vendors whom they trust. |
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