Leveraging resources, HR challenges for BPOs

THE GLOBAL OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING SUMMIT 2004

Human resources management and scalability of resources are the biggest challenges faced by Indian third-party vendors in their bid to retain global leadership in BPO, an Ernst & Young offshore outsourcing survey said.

"Indian third party BPO vendors face challenges in their ability to scale operations and effectively compete with leading global service providers setting up delivery centers in India," said Ranjan Biswas, managing partner, Ernst & Young.

The survey on Indian third-party BPO vendors was unveiled at the two-day Global Offshore Outsourcing Summit 2004 (GOOS) in the city on Wednesday.

Significantly, the report points out that high rates of attrition could be a serious setback for the BPO industry. With attrition rates touching 40 per cent for voice-based processes and 25 per cent for non-voice processes this has become a cause for concern among most third party vendors.

On the human resources front, absenteeism has also emerged a serious operational challenge with BPOs having to put up with absentee rates of 2-8 per cent on a daily basis.

Som Mittal, ex-chairman of NASSCOM added in the report, "On an industry level there is a challenge of making BPO a long-term career prospect and restricting attrition. It is important for companies to nurture employees with certain domain knowledge and tap the resources of the smaller towns."

While speaking about the other challenges that the BPO industry is faced with, Biswas said third-party vendors were up to the challenge in almost every sector be it business continuity or quality and security assurance.

On an overall basis, 78 per cent of the 27 BPOs surveyed by E&Y have facilities operate from multiple locations.