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Outsourcing enters legal sector

Outsourcing is nothing but contracting out a company's non-core, non-revenue producing activities to third party companies. And recently there has been a big shift to outsource intellectually-based service activities like research, product development, logistics, human relations, accounting, legal work, marketing, logistics, market research.

 Offshore outsourcing has entered to the legal profession as well. However it had not entered the complex agreements but more fundamental labor. BPO companies lifts the burden so that the firm can focus on the aspects that provide maximum value to its clients such as strategy, negotiations, fact development, drafting, depositions and court appearances. Outsourcing legal work, ranging from legal research to proofreading to organizing and indexing documents for trial has emerged as a hot issue in the legal community.

Any talks or discussions on the offshore outsourcing sector leads to Indian BPO companies. India is at the forefront of outsourcing. This is due to technical maturity, cost advantages and the productivity gains firms receive.Today, India is one of the most exciting emerging markets in the world. Skilled managerial and technical manpower that match the best available in the world and a middle class whose size exceeds the population of the USA or the European Union, provide India with a distinct cutting edge in global competition.

 Law firms, legal departments of major corporations and state and federal government are increasingly following the BPO route to reduce cost and increase efficiency. Outsourcing allows them to remain competitive and serve more clients. It has become an indispensable asset to legal community. Moreover Indian BPO companies are more productive because they work six days a week, not five, and they start work 5.5 hours before the UK.

Outsourcing: the meaning within

Entrepreneurship is the back bone of any economy and with the current shrinking of the entire system there has been a lack of it prominently. Even though there are many businesses that are the foundation of what makes our country work, but it's the small business owner that keeps the economy growing. Back office Outsourcing is one of the answers to many economic growth problems but no one wants to hear about it.

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and make up a majority of the country's income. Mostly due to lack of skilled work or not enough work to support a larger staff, small companies can't handle all of the work that needs doing. Many businesses that need work can't sustain long contracts with other companies so they use them on a case-by-case basis. Back office outsourcing companies come into the picture when the small companies can't handle large salaries for many employees and also they become unsure of a consistent clientele. For attaining success, the best choices should be made in the company model and business analytics. And offshore outsourcing services are just a means to that end. 

People are usually sceptical about the BPO jobs that they believe that outsourcing jobs to other countries means job loss in their country. But that is completely false. Usually the small businesses can’t afford what it takes to support many workers in the first world countries with a higher standard of living. If you can't get the job done with local workers, then look towards outsourcing to get five times of the original work done for almost half the price. Sometimes BPO services simply mean that a business is expanding their services through outsourcing, which will mean greater opportunity for the host country and its economy.

Outsourcing is not synonym to loss of job opportunities. It often means that the work is being contracted out to an agency or service provider. It's a way for a business to get the job done without having to create entire departments, which ends up saving a company millions and keeps them in operation.

Overcoming the outsourcing woes in India

There has been lots of speculation revolving around the BPO industry across the world. Pouring oil onto fire, a section of media and other organisations have launched a contemptuous attack on the call centre employees, which may prove detrimental for the growth of BPO Industry. Take the case alleged corruption at the call centres and BPOs. If we analyse both the past and present scenario, corruption is rampant everywhere in the world. So there is no use in pointing the finger towards the outsourcing industry alone. 

The basic fact is that all the BPO employees are well educated and they are well aware of their responsibilities. The persons, who work with the BPO companies, understand the importance of security. They never breach the rules defined for them by their employers. Now the offshore outsourcing companies are taking strong security measures to prevent any misuse of the details of the customers and all the employees adhere to the rules. 

Most BPO companies have certifications and undergo third-party audits at regular intervals. So there is no question of authenticity while hiring the best among the many Indian BPO companies. Moreover outsourcing industry offers job opportunities like no other. It has been noticed that BPO is the best place for women empowerment. Women are given ample opportunities to prove themselves in the BPO sector. This is the only industry, which has witnessed high growth for women and helped them move to the higher positions in large numbers.

Despite all the odds, offshore outsourcing is booming. People abroad understand the importance of outsourcing their business to India since BPO s in the country have displayed their skilfulness and efficiency in handling the works assigned to them. They should be encouraged and motivated to work more diligently.

Outsourcing content management work

What is the use of good, clean and relevant content in your website? With good website content you get the benefit of clearly depicting what it is you want to share with people. Also, good content and articles will lead people to your site. With more traffic, you get to earn more from your site making it profitable. A sites success, be it for profit or not, is the number of the flow of traffic to your site. The best part with good articles is that they get you lots of traffic since search engines entirely depend on keyword phrases and single keywords to determine the relevancy and based on that information the article is placed in the search results. Hence it become necessary to have well written articles that has the keywords properly placed.

Many companies depend on BPO who serving the content writing sector as they don’t have the time to write their own content.  There are many outsourcing companies doing the content writing task and the writers are experts in this style of writing and can greatly help your website to get that coveted spot in the search engine rankings. There are many BPO services in India that offer you their writing services with their team of well trained and experienced writers. They offer writing services for almost every niche possible in order to cover any writing needs.

The offshore outsourcing services companies in India would probably be the best since they have done a good job of keeping their content at a high quality to get them high rankings. But it is also good to search for as many companies as possible and read some of their sample work to get an idea of how much it will cost you.

Social media work steps into BPO sector

Add caption

There is some happy news at the non voice BPO front. Emerging technologies such as social media is not only changing the way people communicate, but are influencing the services offered by business process outsourcing (BPO) firms as well. With this emerging trend at the offshore outsourcing scenario, the non-voice service offerings are slowly seeing growth. Most of the outsourcing companies indulge themselves with a fair amount of non-voice BPO [such as] back-office email management, chat processing, coupons processing and claims processing, along with voice processes. The social media work is also considered back-office by helping clients in inserting experts into blogs and forums on the web, so that when there's an issue in the social media realm, the BPO insert an expert there to resolve the issue. 

Non-voice BPO services are beginning to push the local BPO market to growth, as voice-based BPO services in the country near saturation. The companies that have started doing the social media work in a year or so already have seen green lands and added clientele. Consumers today are becoming pretty demanding and expect a high degree of satisfaction says an expert adding that consumers now expect the same level of service rendered in different kinds of channels—be it through the phone, email or social media. Hence some of the companies are putting some attention into the technology business sector. 

This shift towards multi-channel customer service demands a new set of skills from agents but fortunately, the current crop of workers are immersed enough in these new technologies. The best part of this shift in the focus is that the younger generation of employees have familiarity with texting, chat and social media. They have wonderful multi-tasking skills and that's important when you're going to serve clients. Moreover, BPO clients dealing with new technologies such as smartphones and tablets call for more advanced troubleshooting skills.

BPO services surpass IT services

  Acquisitions by Indian outsourcing companies are continuing unabated, driven by an increasing need to both deepen and broaden their capabilities in their search for growth and scale. A key driver of this activity is a little noticed long-term trend that should become more obvious as the years roll by that of the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector growing faster than information technology (IT) services outsourcing. Acquisitions are happening rapidly and mostly finance and accounting sector is on the move. Also BPO firms are joining hands with telecom service providers as well. Most of the experts opine that unlike IT services, the BPO sector was not hit as hard by the downturn of 2008-09. IT services has now bounced back strongly and is growing much faster than BPO as a short-term trend. In the long-term, however, especially given that the IT services market is very well penetrated, it is BPO which will outpace growth, they points out.

According to some reliable data point the worldwide IT outsourcing expense is growing at 4% while BPO is growing or will grow at 6-8%. When you analyse the actual IT spend of companies, you can see that is growing at only around 2%, reflecting their actual growth. On an average, for every $1 billion spent on IT, a company would spend $4-5 billion on BPO.  Outsourcing is a much larger market and it is not that well-penetrated. So the long-term road ahead is clear. As with IT services, BPO clients are becoming more demanding and looking as much to solve business problems as to reduce costs. This calls for a deeper industry domain knowledge as well as global capability—the other key factors driving acquisition activity in the space.

Offshore legal outsourcing versus onshore outsourcing

Outsourcing companies that in recent years added to the financial woes of the American legal profession by sending work to low-cost countries like India are now creating jobs for lawyers in the United States. The American salaries for outsourced work may look meagre compared with the six figures that new associates might still hope to draw at a big firm. But outsourcing jobs typically pay better than temp work — and certainly better than no work at all.

And at that salary range, American lawyers start to look a bit more competitive with their offshore counterparts — and more attractive to potential American clients that might not be comfortable sending legal work overseas. Legal outsourcing companies with offshore office are looking forward to deliver a fantastic client experience by setting up onshore facility. This has been seen as the latest trend by legal BPO s in USA. Some of the leading BPO companies have already set up offices in most part of the state and has lawyers working during United States business hours, on tasks that, because of logistics or American law, can be difficult to perform outside the country like writing and vetting export control documents, military contracts and some patent reviews. Most of the BPO companies have set onshore sites and have been hiring steadily in recent months. And though the industry’s total number of employees in the United States is still estimated to be only in the hundreds, analysts predict fast growth for the field. In the United States, outsourcing companies are hiring lawyers from temporary legal services firms or recruiting them directly out of law school. The pay is often comparable to lawyers’ salaries in smaller cities. And the jobs can come with other benefits, like equity stakes in the company and management opportunities that might not be widely available at conventional law firms. Even though it will put a stake over the offshore outsourcing companies, it will enhance the business globally.

Companies return to growth after the high tides

According to IT research firm the return of growth has been accompanied by a strong appetite to increase spending on BPO projects. A survey of 600 mid-to-large companies in 14 countries found 54% of the respondents looking to increase their BPO spending this year by 5% or more.Out of this, 20% (of the total surveyed companies) were planning to increase their BPO budgets by 10% or more this year, reflecting at the return of growth. Most companies had put big projects, whether in BPO or IT outsourcing, on hold during the recession."Many of these budget increases are driven by the fact that BPM is focused on improving business outcomes and explicitly meets the objectives of many organisations' return-to-growth strategies,” says the expert.

The results are good news for  BPO companies in India and Filipino -- the two strongest players in the international BPO market. offshore outsourcing services refers to the handing over of activities such as handing customer queries and even making sales calls to specialist companies.BPO companies in India is arguably one of the biggest sources of employment for India's millions of graduates.The "return to growth" trend was stronger in Asia Pacific, where 25 percent of respondents were planning to hike their BPO outlay by more than 10%, compared to the 20% for the World as a whole.The numbers are more aggressive than corresponding figures for the IT outsourcing market, partly because companies see outsourced service providers as more crucial to their business expansion than IT.

"BPM project funding comes not from an IT budget but from the line of business budget in 66 percent of cases, and because BPM is focused on business outcomes, many business units are funding it more readily than they are IT-specific projects," expert pointed out.

BPO favours Telecom industry

Most of the businesses have now started depending on the outsourcing phenomenon in order to succeed in their business. And hence back office outsourcing has become the new key in the present world to expand your business. This trend is reflecting in almost all sectors like banking, insurance, retail etc. Amongst all the businesses profiting from the services provided by outsourcing, telecom industry is one. According to estimates, almost 75% of the telecom business companies have already taken to outsourcing.

In the process of making any major financial or technological policy, outsourcing is a major player. This fact has been unanimously accepted by the telecom executives worldwide. Apart from the fact that outsourcing certain business processes is convenient to the company, it is also true that telecom companies save a lot of money by following this suit. This is very relevant on the network management where half of the finances within a telecom industry are spent. Other segments that require a lot of time and finances include customer care, billing, recruitments etc. With the advent of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) though, the telecom industries can easily outsource the above mentioned services and processes.

With the major processes outsourced, the telecom companies are then better able to utilize their time and management by focusing into expansion and other company policies aiming at expanding their customer base. This is particularly applicable to telecom industries based in the first world nations or developed nations, where work force is extremely costly. Hence outsourcing their business processes to BPO service providers ensure that all their customers get complete and proper attention, hence assuring a loyal customer base. Then again, outsourcing also ensures that these companies get the latest of technological aid, which would have come extremely costly if the company had decided to do it themselves.

BPO entering retail Industry

Shifting demographics, well-informed consumers, new channel formats have made the global retail industry to be more complex and changing at an ever increasing speed. Retailers are always under the gun to perform regardless of the economic cycle. Even when the retailing industry is changing with the changing world, it needs to adjust and modify existent models, approaches and processes for satisfying the needs of future customers. Retailing industry essentially needs to modify the offerings to select the customers, win over them and foster greater customer loyalty. 

Retailers are constantly facing in-store, customer, technological and environmental challenges. They are often hurdled by stock outs, shrinkages and lower productivity. As a result decentralized operations like non standard processes and lack of property control occur. Also the retail enterprises need to handle ever changing customer preferences and there has been continuous pressure to deliver the value through customization. Moreover environmental challenges like change in demographics, seasonality in business, customer localization and suppliers pressure on margins. 

Offshore BPO providers enable retailers to come more close to customer while focusing on emerging market cultures and trends. Be it merchandizing, store operations or customer relationship management, Indian BPO Service providers provide customized solutions covering every aspects. Through excellence in technology, process, industry insights and outsourcing modules, BPO Company in India support retail organizations globally.

BPO- Insurance

The life Insurance segment is facing various areas of concern like growing claims, increasing litigation, rising labor attrition and nontraditional competitions like brokerages and banks. In this situation, the Insurance companies particularly the ones dealing with Life Insurance need to implement remedial measures. Most of the life insurance companies rely upon Back Office service Provider for reducing administrative and labor costs through automation and outsourcing. The insurance outsourcing market is enormous with India being one of the most preferred destinations. There are nearly 3,000 insurance companies in the US alone and around 63 percent of India’s outsourcing revenue comes from United States, says Global Insurance Outsourcing report.

Also by outsourcing property and casualty insurance works, the insurers have focal determination of high severity claims management with accurate claim processing, faster business cycle, reimbursements and turnaround times. With the internet playing a major role in expanding insurance segment, majority of the population go for online insurance products than relying on the traditional methods. Consequently, the insurance companies particularly in the Property and Casualty insurance vertical are no longer relying only on Back Office Outsourcing but rectification and strengthening of crucial business processes. 

Shriram Value Services, an associate of the multi-billion dollar Shriram Group, headquartered in Chennai, India efficiently delivers insurance industry specific as well as cross industry BPO solutions for clients across the globe. We provide a list of comprehensive solutions to our trusted clientele reaching places far away from just being offshore BPO providers. With our deep domain expertise in insurance processing and diligence, Shriram Value strives to deliver maximum productivity, increased operational efficiency and profitably to our clients.

Relying on BPO in credit card processing

Customer attrition, ever increasing and complex fraud patterns, increased competition and regulation are some of the hurdles faced in the Credit Card processing sectors. Along with this there are complexities involved with the legacy processing systems due to the inflexibility and inability to adapt quickly to changing market place demands. Also the banking sector has been under constant pressure to reduce transaction costs. Furthermore there has been business and technology convergence, expensive and inefficient distributed card centers affecting the sectors.

The banking companies should control the capital expenditure and become more alert in the credit card offering sector to overcome the hitches. The companies are in need of a business model that is capable of handling a wide range of card processing, operations to define processes specific to market needs, market and regulatory changes, products and services to be customized to the specified needs of the market segments.

Shriram Value has the expertise in processing system that can provide the control needed to optimize approvals in an environment where non face-to-face transactions and consumer controlled delivery manipulate the profitable growth. Our services include Credit card application processing, Credit card servicing, Credit card settlement.

Insurance BPO sector in India

The Property and Casualty Insurance sector has been experiencing vibes of strong competition. This has been substantiated by the acquisitions and mergers happening in the segment due to the dominant position of large market leaders, ever growing technology and competitive pricing environment. However market conditions remain supportive for underwriting profitability and rates have increases in market segments particularly in Property and Casualty Insurance following catastrophes. All these have resulted in tight competition within the Insurance space. 

By outsourcing property and casualty insurance works, the insurers have focal determination of high severity claims management with accurate claim processing, faster business cycle, reimbursements and turnaround times. With the internet playing a major role in expanding insurance segment, majority of the population go for online insurance products than relying on the traditional methods. Consequently, the insurance companies particularly in the Property and Casualty insurance vertical are no longer outsourcing just back office support work but rectification and strengthening of crucial business processes.  

Shriram Value understands the segments of Property and Casualty insurance that requires enhancement and renders help in attaining proficiency.  We are equipped with knowledge as well as technological competence for delivering comprehensive off shoring solutions.

BPO sector ensues economic growth in India

When the demand for outsourcing work to India became significant among western companies, it led to the tremendous growth of BPO sector in the country. And this eventually led to the economic growth despite the global recession. The role played by BPOs in boosting India’s economy shows that the IT and ITES sector have been contributing largely to the economic growth of India. Studies prove that the growth in the contribution of BPOs to Gross Domestic Product has shown a steady rise from 1.2% to 5.4%. It is hence evident that the BPO industry is making an impact on the Indian economy.

BPOs in India are focused on the domestic segments and off-shoring. The benefit to the local economy is subject to well-judged utilization of resources existing in these areas. At the same time, BPOs are aiming at contributing towards bringing in more earnings to the country and IP creation. Emphasis on quality services, skilled sets and workers, cost effectiveness, quality product and English speaking manpower are some of the driving forces that account for the increase in foreign investments. However the role played by BPO in economic growth of the country is set towards making a significant impact in the time as well. The setting up of more BPOs is also bringing in more job opportunities for the Indian youth. BPO role in India's economic growth will even facilitate great manoeuvring in the country’s balance of payments.

Finishing schools for BPO training

A plethora of allied careers on the forefront has been brought out by the BPO boom in India. One of the latest in this ever-growing list of professions is voice and accent training. Log on to any job site and one is struck by the demand. With the Businees Process Outsourcing industry penetrating into smaller cities across India, the demand for the trainers are on the rise. Voice and accent training involves equipping professionals with communication skills required to survive in the globalised world.

Many voice trainers claim that voice and accent training is in fact more about speaking English clearly and neutralising native accents. This is to clarify the common misconception that voal training is all about putting on a British or an American accent. Basically no accent is right if it is not accent neutral. In a globalised world it is not possible to work without a neutral accent. Even Britain has 32 dialects which they do not recognise among themselves, opines the trainers. Some of the courses for the trainers cost as much as Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000 for a 60-hour programme. Many organisations also employ in-house voice and accent trainers. 

 

The scope for trainers is definitely higher in cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai but with the number of BPOs on the raise and company’s planning to open in cities like Thiruvananthapuram, the prospects are looking good in the future. A beginner can make anywhere between Rs 250-300 per hour. This can go up to Rs 1000-2000 per hour or around Rs 60,000 a month.

Low cost in BPO sector appeals globally

India has been a subject for study in almost all industries and sectors across the world. And when it comes to BPO industry, the country has always ruled the roost. It has shown a strong withstand against the rising tide of global recession and surpassed the whirlwinds efficiently. According to a recent study, India's prowess as a low-cost business process outsourcing (BPO) hub continues to attract investors across the globe despite the regulatory issues in the country. The survey has thrown light at the current scenario in India and clearly establishes the country as one of the leading economies where foreign capital will flow into in the coming years. In addition to the overall strong macro-economic fundamentals, India's navigation of the economic downturn over the last couple of years has been strong and steady.

According to Nasscom, India's IT and BPO exports jumped 18.7 per cent during fiscal 2011 to $59 billion. It now accounts for 26 per cent of India's overall exports and 11 per cent of services revenue. Within the high-tech export basket, IT services grew faster (22.7 per cent) than BPO (14 per cent). The software and services export revenue is slated to grow 16-18 per cent during the current financial year to $68-70 billion. The decline in capital intensity of inward investment resulted from strong competition for investment projects and investment pattern diversification, the report said.

Mergers and acquisitons take its toll in BPO industry

The Indian BPO industry is seeing a spurt of merger and acquisition activities and this shows immense growth of the setcor in the coming years. The BPO veterans are to add more capabilities and are looking at acquisitions to widen their scope of offerings. The cleint base is really strong in most of the BPO companies and with the presence of the mother company across the world, the BPO clients are only a small percentage of that. The business process outsourcing companies continue to have huge headroom in growing with those customers and at the same time they are looking for opportunities. More and more companies are looking for acquisitions and of course the price has to be right.

There has been drastic benefit and oppotunity with the mergers and acquisitons. The companies are definitely looking into all those options. Their argusing point is that when they get so much enamour with the idea with going off with inorganic, they might not take a look at how much they are paying for it. Industry experts also say that several PE firms are looking to exit their investments in BPO companies which means more M&A activity in the coming months. Also analysts expect the BFSI space to witness the maximum deals as clients are now looking to outsource core functions like mortagage processing and core banking. Despite growing by 14 per cent last fiscal, the BPO industry in India grew much slower than IT services as delayed decision making and deal restructuring took its toll. Currently over 70 per cent of the outsourced work to Indian BPOs are basic services like customer interaction and support and this will change as firms move up the value chain.

BPO among youngsters

The BPO industry has definietly got projects in their pipe line and this can be adjudged by the way in which the sector has generated employment. Business process outsourcing firms have been hiring employees and expanding their manpower resource. Earlier youngsters in the country did not look at call center jobs as a stable career choice. Only college-goers or those who didn't find employment elsewhere worked at the call center. Customer service agents were largely undergraduates, more so in the third world countries. Hence the value for man power became less in the initial stage. However the scenraio has drastcially changed now. 

 

When the economy became lean and companies were expected to shed weight, the call centers were the only units that were hiring. The youth joining the telemarketing sector looks at the BPO industry with a fresh perspective. The BPO services job had a certain stability that was not shaken up by the economic meltdown. Youngsters want job security and that is not something that the other industries like offline marketing or retail were in a position to offer. Moreover, there was a strong sense of purpose in expanding their horizons beyond set parameters. There were more opportunities for growth and the youngsters took the challenge up enthusiastically.

Understanding BPO s and Call centers

Even though BPO industry has been prominent in the Indian scenario for a long time, most of the people still confuse BPO and call centre. This is mainly because they don’t have a clear understanding of the functioning strategy of BPOs. 

 Basically a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organization is responsible for performing a process or a part of a process of another business organization. To be precise, their major function is to help the client save on costs or gain in productivity.

On the other hand, call centers are a part of the BPO service sector. A call centre, for example, might handle customer complaints coming in over a telephone. They call centre sector performs that part of a client's business which involves handling telephone calls. 

However BPO is not only about handling telephone calls. There exist BPO organizations, such as medical transcription agencies, which handle their business through websites, and do not process any telephone calls on behalf of their clients.

Scope of BPO among job seekers

BPO refers to outsourcing in all the major fields of business and it has become one of the fastest growing industries in the past scenario. Various organizations have set up call centres wherein outsourcing of business process is done throughout cities as well as suburbs in India. There are call centres for customer care services of every other organization, right from telecommunications companies to banks.

A career in the outsourcing field has become a hit among the youngsters of India, thanks to the attractive five figure salaries and incentives! Usually youngsters of the age between 18 and 30 are seen to be indulged in the BPO jobs. According to surveys, more than one million people in India are working in the BPO industry, which is expected to increase to 2.5 to 3 million in the coming years. Factors which have led to the current boom are convenient transport facilities, attractive lifestyle, flexibility in work timings and whopping salary package. 

Since the clients expect top notch outcome, training in the BPO sector have become an essential thing. Hence many institutes have started imparting training to develop special skills required for the job, such as proficiency in spoken English, speech, accent and voice modulation, negotiation with clients, marketing skills and communication skills, through short-term diploma or certificate courses. After completing their graduation, job seekers can join any BPO as specialists in Transactional BPO, Comprehensive BPO, and Niche BPO etc. Ample job opportunities are available in customer support services, telemarketing services, technical support services, employee IT help-desk services, insurance services, data entry services, data conversion services and online marketing, in this field.

Smarten up talent pool in BPO sector

Despite churning out graduates and engineers by dozens every year, the Indian BPO industry is fretting over the lack of right talent pool and quality manpower. The main problem lies in the disparity in learning of the fresh graduates at their colleges and engineering institutions and the actual skill sets required to work in the ITeS BPO industry. However the companies in the Business process outsourcing sector have taken the lead in ensuring that requisite remedial actions are undertaken well in time to avoid any form of talent crisis.

Experts from the outsourcing sector suggest that it has become necessary to enhance the Indian talent pool to maximize the industry's potential and enable the sector to further catalyst the growth rate of the industry. The educational institutions need to train the young graduates on some of the key skills needed to join the ITeS BPO industry. Only then can the fresh graduates be ready to work in the industry from day one, they opine. And the responsibility of training the manpower to be fit for joining the team currently lies on the shoulders of the BPO companies. It has been suggested that fresher’s need to be trained at least two months before they can be taken in to a project. This in turn increases the cost of employment and total turnaround time for the companies and the industry as a whole.

Scope of BPO among job seekers

BPO refers to outsourcing in all the major fields of business and it has become one of the fastest growing industries in the past scenario. Various organizations have set up call centers wherein outsourcing of business process is done throughout cities as well as suburbs in India. There are call centers for customer care services of every other organization, right from telecommunications companies to banks.

A career in the outsourcing field has become a hit among the youngsters of India, thanks to the attractive five figure salaries and incentives! Usually youngsters of the age between 18 and 30 are seen to be indulged in the BPO jobs. According to surveys, more than one million people in India are working in the BPO industry, which is expected to increase to 2.5 to 3 million in the coming years. Factors which have led to the current boom are convenient transport facilities, attractive lifestyle, flexibility in work timings and whopping salary package. 

Since the clients expect top notch outcome, training in the BPO sector have become an essential thing. Hence many institutes have started imparting training to develop special skills required for the job, such as proficiency in spoken English, speech, accent and voice modulation, negotiation with clients, marketing skills and communication skills, through short-term diploma or certificate courses. After completing their graduation, job seekers can join any BPO as specialists in Transactional BPO, Comprehensive BPO, and Niche BPO etc. Ample job opportunities are available in customer support services, telemarketing services, technical support services, employee IT help-desk services, insurance services, data entry services, data conversion services and online marketing, in this field.

It’s time for vertical shift in BPO

In order to cater to the changing demands of the outsourcing industry many large BPO firms are widening their vertical or sectoral expertise. With clients now more open to outsourcing sector specific mid- to front-end functions that require deeper domain knowledge, BPOs are enhancing their expertise in such functions. These include areas like mortgage processing, core banking, supply chain and healthcare insurance. For clients, this helps to contain costs and focus on their core business.

Earlier BPOs have been horizontal focused. They offered services like customer interaction and support, finance and accounting, and human resources that are applied across different industry verticals. With the change in the vertical, insurance clients are now outsourcing core processes in underwriting and banking clients want BPOs to analyze risks associated with loans and make decisions on loan disbursements. The BPO giants in India are now focusing on banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, and telecom, media and entertainment verticals. Plus the outsourcing sector is also scouting for acquisitions in different geographies. Some Eastern European countries are excellent for accounting, while the US is good for healthcare experts. BPOs are also appointing domain specialists to improve their verticalized offerings. For instance, banking sector executives are hired to work on actuarial (risk assessment) roles at BPOs.

BPO in India Survives Recession

The BPO sector in India has well survived the global economic meltdown. Over the last ten years, the Indian BPO industry has grown to achieve a scale of more than USD 12 billion in revenues. Presently, worth nearly USD 150 billion, the industry employs over 400,000 people. The BPO industry of India is expected to undergo many minute changes. The key challenge ahead of it now is to keep up with the competition being posed by new countries that are emerging as outsourcing hubs and at the same time remain cost competitive.

The veterans in the BPO industry affirm that the business opportunity is significantly large. Hence they are focusing on domain expertise and build really deep capabilities. They also have plans to bring IT, BPO, technology, infrastructure all completely integrated, bundles solutions is what the clients are looking for. The opportunity of the BPO industry is on a rise with the growth and opportunity in emerging economies expected to present over USD 300 billion worth of business opportunity. The future seems to be bright for BPOs. India offers capability that probably no other country in the world does. In India there is huge population that is highly educated. At the same time the industry is moving so far up the value chain that the price that has been charged for the services now is much greater than it was before.

Content Development Outsourcing Opens New Doors

There have been enough talks and debates on the advantages of outsourcing to India. Mostly companies dwell on the benfits like the time and money you can save, which could be spent more productively in building the business. Many kinds of jobs have been outsourced the last ones to join the race is content development. It is absoultely possible to confidently outsource a wide variety of content writing projects to India. India has a large number of graduates who speak English as a first language, who think in English and write fluently in English. 

India’s thriving media and entertainment industry, combined with the IT revolution, has created a large pool of highly skilled and proficient creative and technical writers, journalists, story story writers, script writers, copywriters, editors and proofreaders. Well-educated teachers in India have the experience and qualification to write textbooks in English on most subjects. India is by far the best choice for outsourcing English content development . No other country compares to the English speaking and writing capabilities found in India . Top notch kind of quality and reliability is available in India. However there are firms that can not produce the quality expected. It is always a good idea to test vendors and once a good one is discovered, be loyal and stay with them.

Significance of Infrastructure in BPO

The Indian BPO Industry has the potential to drive India's economic growth through the next few years. The strength of the BPO s in India lies in experience, language proficiency, entrepreneurial zeal, skilled workers, expertise in new technologies and a cost advantage. The services offered by the BPO companies are in HR, finance and accounting, transaction processing, content development, engineering, design, remote education, market research, data search, network consultancy, etc. Indian BPO industry is essentially still in the early stages of evolution. The Indian BPO market is in its early high growth phase and is growing at an astronomical pace.

The main attraction of BPO or business process outsourcing players came in primarily for low cost and high quality services; the second feature was the rapid ramping up of operations and a modern BPO infrastructure, which propelled India's economic growth to a new horizon. Improved infrastructure is another important factor which has helped India to achieve tremendous success in the field of IT/BPO. There has been tremendous growth and improvement in telecom, power and roads infrastructure in the last few years in India. Relevant telecom facilities are an important precondition for the success of the software and BPO industry.

Significance of training in BPO industry

Since the BPO industry is growing at a drastic phase, there is a need to maintain the standards. The outsourcing services sector exceeds expectation in many sectors. Owing to the high profile job, attractive pay scale and growth opportunity, most of the young minds in India have been shifting their focus towards BPO jobs. In order to deliver desired services to customer, who is 10,000 miles away, it is important to have good amount of business knowledge and required expertise.

The business process outsourcing industry is expected to generate more than a million jobs by 2015 and hence training is needed for ensuring the high quality performance. Moreover, there has been high attrition rate in this sector due to unsatisfied employees, monotonous work, unused talent, inadequate technical expertise etc. Also the uprising of high profile BPO jobs has triggered the need for better training. 

In order to retain the employees thereby reducing the attrition rate, most of the companies have given prior importance to training. Some of the problems faced by employees from the outsourcing sector are flexible shift timing and job stress. This in turn leads to de-motivation. Well designed training program with clear career path increases the job satisfaction among the young professionals and help them in becoming efficient and effective at the work place. So companies should handle such challenges of meeting training needs, although, the sector is taking a lot of initiatives in conducting training for new joiners. Most of the BPO s in India feature elaborate training infrastructure with computer based training sessions led by specially trained and qualified in-house trainers. The training session tries to identify the strength and weakness and emphasis more on the personality, problem solving skills and leadership skills of the employees.

BPO s coping with the recession

Business experts confirm that Business-process outsourcing is getting redefined and will expand rapidly over the next five to seven years outpacing growth in technology services. These days’ companies are looking to outsource a wide range of services including human resources and accounting. In order to meet this demand, outsourcing companies are rushing to build up their expertise. Several companies have taken the acquisition route while others are opting to develop these services internally, says one of the veterans. 

Talking about the recession, experts believe that the global economic meltdown largely depend on customer’s economic cycle. Some of the clients have been severely affected by the economy while there are hopes that they will recover very soon. Outsourcing volumes will increase gradually as customers come out of the downturn in the economic cycle. However, on the other hand, looking at the business in totality shows that the business has not shrunk, they opine. Companies continue to look forward in outsourcing services in industries like banking, financial services and insurance sectors. Also technology, telecom and manufacturing have their share in the bread as well. In addition, clients are interested in focusing on their very core businesses and they seek specialised providers. Most of the Indian BPO companies focus on existing sectors and later on expanding to adjacent areas.

Economic growth safe in BPO hands

Looking at the recent developments it can be confirmed that the Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) service industry continued to provide sound support to the economy. Based on the surveys it has been found out that total revenues estimated at US$8.3 billion, higher by 30.6 percent than the US$6.3 billion receipts reported in 2008. While the growth rate recorded may have slowdown from those of previous years, it is still robust compared with that of other industries in the country.

In addition there has been a double digit growth rates in revenues in outsourcing sub sectors like contact centre, transcription, animation, software development and others. Contact centres accounts for half or 50.9 percent of the industry's receipts. At the same time the main driver of outsourcing services contribute 21.6 percentage points to the industry's growth, says the report. Simultaneously transcription and animation services also posted dynamic growth amid the expansion of transcription companies and the production of more local animation films. 

Further the survey pointed out that IT-BPO exports have increased by 45.9 percent to reach US$7.7 billion. Export earnings comprised 93.4 percent of total industry revenues, an increase from the previous year's 83.6 percent export-to-revenue ratio. Except for the animation sub-sector, all other sub-sectors recorded higher export-to-revenue ratios, with the highest at 96.1 percent for transcription.

BPO in a nutshell

In the context of cost effective recession, outsourcing is the wisest resolution and it has been predicted as much prominent in the area of fiscal management. One of the great benefits of BPO services is that it helps companies to pay attention to core areas.

It is to reallocate accountability and control costs that companies generally outsource ways. In this manner, the management is within a much better position to pay attention to core areas, and never keep itself engrossed in the areas. In addition, outsourcing likewise helps companies to prevent capital expenditures that are particularly essential in non-core areas that could need new systems or more gradation. Basically companies always want to invest their money and time into core areas. Hence the need for outsourcing back office work arises. The Business process outsourcing service providers offer quantifiable advantages through enhanced efficiencies, lower expense, reduced payroll and gain expenses, and less capital investments. Other BPO rewards include assurance of guidelines, skills and technologies. 

Generally BPO companies provides use of proprietary work-flow techniques, process reengineering skills, and revolutionary staffing and shipping models, in conjunction with world-class technology delivered by experts. Another advantage of BPO is decrease in costs. To put it in simple words, BPO is a process of giving the less significant yet crucial work to a third party to running an amount well.

What Indian BPO s Posses?

• Skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is available in excess

• Telecom and infrastructure facilities meeting the global standards

• Strong quality orientation among resources and their ability on measuring and monitoring quality targets

• The scope of offering 24x7 services based on the country's unique geographic location that allows for adjusting time zone differences

• Hands-on and positive policy environment which encourages ITES/BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures

• An open tax structure, which places the ITES/BPO industry on par with IT services companies.

What are the scopes of BPO?

• Customer care has always been a strong basement of offshore outsourcing services and it will continue to do so in future

• With the entry of outsourcing possibilities into vale added domains like insurance claims processing, the financial services are expecting greater growth

• HR outsourcing services are already contributing its share on the BPO sector

• Administration services including back office administration are surely going to increase in the future

• Getting into creative field, content development outsourcing is something that will shine brightly in future

Some facts on back office outsourcing

For the assortment of advantages it offers, back office outsourcing has gained immense popularity over these years. Businesses outsource their back office jobs since they can save the money that they would have to spend for acquiring these tasks carried out in-house. Back office outsourcing companies in India enable business experts to concentrate on core organization activities by lessening the administrative responsibilities of business experts. To be precise outsourcing back office jobs costs much less and yields greater results. 

Leading health care facilities, insurance firms, educational institutions, government agencies, organization establishments, legal firms, banking sector, financial, accounting firms and other people take benefit of the outsourcing services. There are numerous well-recognized outsourcing companies offering outstanding back office services. The best thing with the back office outsourcing firms is that they deliver consistent and competent service. They are always equipped with innovative technologies and software. Also a team of professionals which includes information conversion professionals, accountants, auditors, editors, proofreaders, quality controllers, monetary analysts and others with profound understanding about distinct file formats, accounting, auditing rules and data conversion tools and methods compliment the work of BPO in India. They have the capability to competently manage even complex back office projects and deliver good results within the specified time limit.

Overview of outsourcing industry in India

The ITES sector in India has flourished over the past decade. Due to its low cost but qualified workforce, Indians’ fluency in the English language, governmental support and a stable legislative and economic framework, India has enjoyed its dominant position in the global BPO segment. What more, the 12 hour time zone difference with the primary originator of most BPO jobs, the United States, is an added bonus, as day and night shifts can be carried on as routine. Moreover enhanced competitiveness in the BPO services sector has been increased due to the governmental drive to offer subsidies and tax relief benefits to the ITES industry.

It has been estimated that more than one million people have been employed in the outsourcing companies sector and it has generated revenues beyond expectation. United States holds the most prominent clientele with United Kingdom closely following it. One of the notable features is that majority of the clients are typically engaged in either the IT, financial services or telecom industries.

Challenges faced by the offshore outsourcing industry are significant in the real estate and infrastructure costs. The worst fear being the skyrocketing of construction costs in the main cities. This escalating cost has been resulting in unsustainable going forward. Hence many BPO companies in India have been migrating to suburban cities and even rural areas. Yet another threat is the expanding outsourcing operations and cheaper services by countries like China, Mexico and Vietnam.