Social media work steps into BPO sector

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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.

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 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.

Change is Inevitable and BPO industry is no Exception

The Outsourcing business in India still leads the global IT outsourcing market and its advantages over other regions are distinct. Rising from the periphery to emerge as a viable, high-potential opportunity for the country's IT-BPO services sector, the Indian domestic market has undergone a transformation over the past decade. 

According to the government statistics, India continues to dominate global outsourcing market with market size estimated to be worth about $52 billion. Banking and financial services contribute nearly 40 percent to India's outsourcing industry. Even though the offshore outsourcing industry has been facing bottlenecks like cut-throat competition, severe shortages of trained and skilled manpower, more investment needed in infrastructure, need of higher level of control, maintenance of higher quality standards, the BPO service sector has slowly gone past the hurricanes smoothly. 

However, experts suggest that India's outsourcing industry is on the cusp of a significant change, shifting to knowledge-intensive and value-added services that call for a new way of functioning. In the global outsourcing market labour or cost arbitrage has been the constant concerns. But when it comes to outsourcing business in India, need to scale rapidly, greater focus on core competencies, enhanced productivity, heightened competition and reduced time to market that is driving domestic demand.

There now seems to be shift in the services that are outsourced. Earlier the not-so-important and tedious back office works were outsourced while now the outsourced services are now the areas that require experts. What has triggered the companies to search for experts to offload functions beyond their know-how is essentially the growing competition and market needs. This is not only helping organizations save time and gain value for money but also helping them scale up by capitalizing on their proficiency, says reports. To be precise, the Offshore BPO industry is standing at an interesting focus-shift point. BPO service providers are now adding the knowledge component into the mix in an attempt to deliver greater value.

Scope of BPO industry in India

There has been a common misconception among the people in India that career opportunities in the BPO sector is limited. Even though there are numerous job opportunities, not many look forward for long term future in BPO industry. But in fact there are boundless career opportunities in BPO in India. This is evident from the fact that over the years the scope of services has grown from providing just voice based marketing and customer relationship management services to transaction processing in finance and accounting, human resources, insurance, retailing etc. 

India has been evolved as a popular offshore location for outsourcing many sensitive functions due largely to cost benefits and the availability of an appropriate skilled talent pool. Today many BPO companies in India are creating comprehensive roles for employees by expanding globally and providing them the opportunity to work on multiple industry verticals. The industry nurtures challenging entrepreneurial environment as it is fast growing and provides ample opportunity for growth. Since there has been a role shift for BPO from telemarketing to providing high end specialized services, skilled employees are much in demand. This has followed a demand in capability development in the industry as well. 

Professionals have opportunities to work in domain specific back office processes in analytical, advisory and consulting arena. Thus a clear relationship between the BPO industry and the academia can be established. This in fact trains the future workforce to make them industry ready.