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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

KPO Anticipate Growth in The Indian Market

The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has seen unambiguous growth in the Indian soil. Now the entire world is looking at India as the most sought after place for Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). Many overseas companies have been eyeing Indian market for outsourcing their high tech knowledge based jobs. Same as in the case of BPO, benefits like operational cost saving, pool of talented workforce, infrastructure improvement and favorable government policies have been responsible for KPO to flourish in India. 

Today’s economy being knowledge economy, KPO is a continuous procedure of creation and dissemination of information by bringing together the information industry leaders to create knowledge and see meaning in information and its context. This information driven outsourcing is known as KPO. 

Experts suggest that the global KPO industry is expected to reach USD 17 billion of which almost 70% would be outsourced to India alone. Keeping this in mind, Indian KPO sector has already taken steps in employing highly educated and talented people and number of KPO professionals are expected to cross more than 2 lakh by next year compared to the current statistics. In fact the growth in the KPO segment would be higher than the BPO segment, reveals research. 

India has a large pool of knowledge workers in various sectors ranging from pharmacy, medicine, law, biotechnology, education and training and even intelligence services. This proves that not only Indian companies can handle software services but capable of almost anything. However, long term success of KPO in India largely depends on a holistic approach to the issue.

How India shines in BPO industry?

When it comes to a combination of wage levels, education, fluency in English and sheer numbers, India stands first in BPO industry around the globe. This is the reason why Indian BPO sector is always in demand even when it faces competition from other countries. 

Take the case of Philippines, which has been evolving as a strong competitor is good in English language and has a strong American accent and hence captures much of the voice based services. But coming to the IT skills, they are backward. On the other hand, countries like China, Russia and Eastern Europe have good IT skills, but they are very strong in English. Here India exceeds in language fluency as well as IT skills. 

Report suggests that India’s work pool consist of 200 people who are now 15 years or younger poised to enter its workforce in five years. By then the working age population will drop significantly in the US, Europe, Japan and China. Hence India is sure to shine in the field even in the years to come. Moreover India produces about half a million engineers every year. Even though South America and South Africa have BPO skills and time zone advantage, the Indian companies have set their delivery centers there even. In the current downturn, there are many midsized technology services in US and Europe that can be acquired at relatively low prices.