Concerto starts tech centre

Nasdaq listed, contact center solutions provider Concerto Software opened its technology centre in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Concerto will invest about $10 million in the centre over the next two years. Leaning on this move Concerto projects the Indian arm to contribute well over $ 10 million to global product revenues of $ 120 million next year.

The company outlining the plans for the technology centre said that from 60 engineers now, numbers will grow to 100 by year- end and 150 by mid next year.

Concerto now runs a 30 member help desk in the country. Officials said, the decision to open a tech centre in India was influenced by the fact that sourcing professional services for customised contact centre solutions was attractive from India for the whole of Asia.

This centre""Concerto's first technology centre outside the US"" is slated to turn into the company's largest development centre globally . Already the Indian operations, including the Pune centre of their acquired entity Rockwell Firstpoint, is over 100 strong. In the US, the company has 200 engineers spread across four centres.

James D Foy, chief executive officer, said that the Indian centre would also contribute towards the development of Concerto's flagship product scheduled to be launched next year. The centre will focus on full-fledged development and not just support and testing, he said.

Further, Concerto said it will transfer the knowledge generated out of the Pune centre to Bangalore to assist development here. However, the company said it is still working on ways to relocate the Pune workforce to Bangalore.

Concerto stepped into India by setting up a subsidiary at New Delhi in 2001. It later set up an office in Bangalore. Since inception, the company has invested $10 million in the Indian arm.

The Indian help desk has moved from handling Asian calls to servicing weekend calls from North America. Presently, the Indian arm is also the product hub for Sri Lanka, South Asia and Middle East.

India, one of the fastest growing BPO markets, accounts for 40 per cent of the company's Asia Pacific business, (Asia Pacific business contributes 20 per cent to Concerto's global revenues).

Officials said, while the Indian contact centre solution market in itself was growing at 19 per cent, Concerto boasts 40 per cent annual growth and has in fact been growing sequentially quarter on quarter. Foy said "Our last three quarters in Asia-Pacific and India have been records."

Concerto said it has already netted 20 new customers this year. Of these several were from the domestic segment. With firms in telecom and financial services setting up call centres, they said, the market is widening.

Concerto expects to finish the year with revenues of over $250 million. This growth, the company said, was primarily because of the three acquisitions this year, besides organic growth.

These acquisitions, not only upped it revenues but also built in synergies. For instance, the Rockwell acqusition has added inbound (automatic call distribution) IP to Concerto's strength in outbound (predictive dialling).

The combination enables Concerto to provide a complete technological solution in an age where the distinction between inbound and outbound is getting blurred. Earlier marketing calls used to be made to potential customers. Now potential customers call up, they said.