With Kartik Jayaraman, BPO Practice Head, Infosys A/NZ

Kartik Jayaraman, knows the outsourcing industry from both sides of the fence. He has over 15 years experience in assisting global corporations choose processes to outsource and drive the performance of their outsourcing relationships. In his current role he leads business development to identify new opportunities for Infosys BPO in the Australian and New Zealand region.

Recently, Mark Atterby from the Sauce interviewed Kartik Jayaraman about the changes he has seen over the last fifteen years.

The Sauce: In your time in the industry you would have seen quite a few changes. From your experience what have you seen to be the major changes? How has the industry evolved?

KJ: BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) has seen a number of changes over the last 15 years, which we sometimes refer to as ‘BPO 1.O, BPO 2.O and BPO 3.O’. It would take a page to describe each one, but at its simplest:

• BPO 1.O Outsourcing predicated on basic “lift-and-shift” labour arbitrage.
• BPO 2.0 Process re-engineering delivers better efficiencies. Technology point solutions along with BPO enable better straight-through performance and higher effectiveness.
• BPO 3.0:  Transaction-based and outcome-based de-risked pricing models; cloud-computing driven Business Platforms to convert CAPEX to OPEX.

The Sauce: What are the key trends shaping the outsourcing industry from a global and regional perspective?

KJ: We are seeing organisations move beyond outsourcing transactional processes to outsourcing complex, high-end processes that have a higher impact and thus positively impact the bottom-line and create shareholder value faster. We are also seeing global clients adopt a ‘hub-and-spoke’ delivery model, with locations such as Eastern Europe constituting ‘spokes’ to address regional nuances of certain processes as well as non-English languages.

The Sauce: How does Australia compare to what’s happening overseas?

KJ: Finally, the bundling of IT and BPO is rapidly being adopted. Here in Australia, we have seen businesses rapidly moving up the maturity curve in outsourcing and even leap-frogging other regions in adoption of transformational business solutions such.

The Sauce: What areas of outsourcing are hot at the moment?

KJ: The sort of areas we are seeing a lot of interest is in financial and accounting outsourcing not only transactional processes such as accounts payable and receivable but also higher-end processes such as general ledger and tax. Another hot area is Payroll and HR outsourcing, with global organisations finally embarking on MCPO (multi-country payroll outsourcing) deals.

Another area is in relation to industry specific processes, including mortgage processing in banking, claims processing in insurance, and trade promotions in retail.

The Sauce: What advice do you offer potential clients in those areas?

KJ: Clients have a lot more options to consider today and can now take a educated approach and an informed decision on the way forward, as the market is maturing more rapidly.   Advice would be to look for advantages beyond basic “cost out” arbitrage – such as bundled IT/BPO solutions, availability of subject matter expertise in the service provider organisation, depth of talent pool, ability to take on more risk and creative deal structuring.

Organisations are looking way more beyond wage arbitrage and are clearly looking at a much more improved and predictable service level regime. However, the decision to outsource work onshore or nearshore has different influencing criteria – for example regulatory constraints, regional nuances (such as language), complex processes that necessitate that talent be sourced from onshore/nearshore and deals which have a significant component of employee re-badging.

Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, focuses on integrated end-to-end outsourcing and delivers transformational benefits to its clients through reduced costs, ongoing productivity improvements, and process reengineering.

The Australian BPO Association is holding its General Meeting on Thursday, 30 September at 3:30 pm.

The venue is North Sydney Bowling Club in Ridge Street, North Sydney.

The ABPOA invites members and people who are interested in Outsourcing.

The Association was formed to strengthen the brand equity of the Outsourcing sector in Australia as a professional and integral part of the business landscape.

Never before has there been a need to have an industry association to represent all of the interests as the business landscape changes. As you may have read in the media there has been some worrying developments about new legislation that the Government is considering introducing including what can only be described as a clumsy over-reaction to require mandatory recording of browser histories by Australian internet service providers. Developments like these could very well have a negative impact on businesses (additional cost and resulting lower level of international competitiveness) if left unopposed and we will need to present a united front if we are to see off these and other ill-conceived and unwanted distractions.

www.abpoa.com.au

Email info@abpoa.com.au

At the Annual Customer Contact Asia Pacific summit recently held in Manila, Frost and Sullivan indicated that The Asia Pacific Contact Center Outsourcing Market in 2010 was valued at US$13.7 billion. The majority of this revenue came from India, the Philippines, Malaysia, and China markets. These four markets contribute more than 54% of the total market revenue. Categorised as a growth market, the Philippines is a major contributor to Asia’s status as a major global outsourcing hub.

Shivanu Shukla, Associate Director for the ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan commented, “Opportunity for outsourcing services are expected to pick up as the global economy revives. BPO operators in the Philippines need to focus on going deeper into the process i.e. going beyond voice outsourcing to more data and knowledge-based processes, and expanding into new territories beyond North America. The market for outsourcing services within Asia Pacific is also picking up, and Philippines is well-positioned to capitalise on these growth opportunities. With the changing nature of customer experience, BPOs also need to revisit their service strategy to include self-service, social media and analytics as an integral part of the service delivery process.”

According to industry research, a sizeable proportion of CRM projects fail.

So, the question is why do these CRM projects fail? More importantly, how do you make sure that your project is not one of the failures? The good news is that those that are successful usually report double-digit growth in revenue, improved productivity, improved customer loyalty, and consequently increased customer satisfaction.

Every business is different, and interacts with their customers differently. For example, if you are a company that relies on relationship sales with a longer sales cycle, you will not want to implement business processes that are designed for quick sales.

Even if the CRM provider has implemented the software within the organisation previously, it is prudent to properly scope out the project to make sure that processes align with the CRM strategy.

Any technology that is worthy of the name CRM will have been designed taking into consideration the best practice processes of many companies in different industries across their marketing, sales, customer service and reporting requirements. The best benefits will accrue from the adoption of new processes that leverage the information, speed, and integration, lower operating costs and improved service resulting from new CRM tools.

It is important to ensure that you take advantage of these revenue, service and productivity enhancements rather than implementing existing processes, which may be counter-productive to what you are trying to achieve.

This is where external Business Process experts will really add value. Although your particular challenges may be unique to you, it’s likely that they will have experienced them many times before and can bring that analytical ability to bear. They will work with you to review your processes and do a lot of the heavy lifting that in turn allows your customer facing staff to focus on doing what they are best at – solving customer problems as well as allowing you to benefit from expertise gained from previous projects.

An often seen example of a misaligned process is where information is restricted to a specific account manager of the client, or to the specific person who made the call or sent the email. A small improvement on this is where the sharing of information is done by copying many people on an email (commonly called pushing information) that leads to many people just ignoring vast quantities of emails – they still do not receive the information when they need it.

The best processes are those which enable the customer to be in charge of the relationship and this means that the relevant information must be available to whoever requires it when they require it – the user should be able to quickly access the required information.

Business Process experts will be able to recommend where automation will pay for itself in time saving by allowing your staff to focus on your clients and where analytics will deliver appropriate information at the time it is required.

Conclusion

CRM projects can and do succeed. There are experts who want to help and support you, and those organisations that are the benefactors of such successes see a lot of upside in their business.

This article was written by Opsis Pty Limited www.opsis.com.au

Mechanical 3D modeling is another Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO) service.

Mechanical Modeling is the creation, manipulation and storage of arithmetical objects to represent objects that are all around us or as virtual objects.

Use of 3D modeling services is common for advertising firms that make adverts for pharmaceutical companies that want to sell their complex drugs to doctors and they need to show how drugs work inside the human body, video productions like the Hollywood movies Happy Feet and Avatar and architectural designers who want to show what their finished design will look like.

Mechanical 3D Modeling suppliers offer various types of 3D services; mechanical design, 3D modeling, 3D animation and products design services.

Making 3-dimensional models in-house is just too slow and very expensive compared to the cost of just getting customised 3D models made by experienced 3D artists. Most companies will outsource their 3D projects because it’s easy and fast and importantly cost effective.

Mechanical engineers use 3d model design services during the conceptual stages of mechanical product design. Mechanical design services are able to produce quick prototypes and provide designers with working models of the product while still in the in development stage.

The animation in the children’s movie Happy Feet invested heavily in motion capture technology, with the dance scenes acted out by human dancers. The dancers went through “Penguin School” to learn how to move like a penguin, and also wore head apparatus to mimic a penguin’s beak.

Happy Feet needed an enormous group of computers, and Animal Logic worked with IBM to build a server farm with sufficient processing potential. The film took four years to make. Ben Gunsberger, Lighting Supervisor and VFX Department Supervisor, says this was partly because they needed to build new infrastructure and tools. The server farm used IBM BladeCenter framework and BladeCenter HS20 blade servers, which are extremely dense separate computer units each with two Intel Xeon processors. Rendering took up 17 million CPU hours over a nine month period.

The Global Sourcing Council (GSC) will present its prestigious 3S (Sustainable and Socially Responsible Sourcing) Award on December 8th, 2010. The GSC is a non-profit association of businesses, trade organisations, government agencies, and academics with a mission to promote Sustainable and Socially responsible Sourcing. The organisation aims to encourage global economic growth leading to increased fair trade, investment and social good.

The GSC had initiated the GSC Leadership Awards in 2008 and taking into account the ever-growing field of the outsourcing industry and its multiple entrants the GSC has implemented 3 classes of the Outsourcing Leadership Awards for 2010. These awards will be judged by a panel of distinguished judges:

• Best in Class for Community Engagement Program – “3s Community”
• Best in Class for Employee Engagement programs – “3s Engaged Employees”
• Best in Class for Most Innovative Socially responsible Program – “Out of 3S Box”

In addition, the entire sourcing community will vote on the Best Socially Responsible Outsourcer from all submitted applications for the 2010 GSC Awards. (Remember, voting by the audience starts November 1st, 2010. The earlier you post, the greater is your vote!!!)

Potential contestants for this award include: suppliers /practitioners of responsible and sustainable sourcing, buyers dedicated to implementing best practices in socially responsible and sustainable sourcing (3S) and consultants/advisors/analysts. These 3S awards will recognise individuals, start-ups, and companies that have worked to innovate, implement and improve responsible and sustainable sourcing practices. These include solutions in the form of creating new business opportunities that bring about social and economic benefits in tandem, as well as advancement of business opportunities that demonstrate a concern for sustainability and the long-term impacts on all resources, like human, economic, and environmental.

Submissions for the 3S award will be in the form of videos or Powerpoint slides (not more than 3 minutes in length for videos and not more than 9 slides for the Powerpoint presentations) uploaded to the 3S award website (http://www.gsc3sawards.com). Last day for submission is November 14th 2010.

If you or your company follows Sustainable and Socially responsible Sourcing, submit your video today. You could be the winner of an award and a monetary grant that will be presented at the GSC annual dinner on December 8th, 2010 in New York.

For further details on the 3S award, please visit www.gsc3sawards.com

The awards represent an alliance of the Philippines and foreign business communities.  There are a total of 8 awards up for grabs.

NOMINATIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

Asia CEO Awards will present 8 awards on Thursday, November 11th.  These will highlight the management teams and individuals in any industry sector who have done the most to grow and develop The Philippines on the international economic stage.

1. KPMG Executive Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most outstanding executive management team in Philippines.

2. Entrepreneurial Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most accomplished management team of an entrepreneurial medium-sized organization.

3. Non-Profit Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most outstanding public sector department or NGO.

4. Global Filipino Executive of the Year – award for the most accomplished Filipino executive.

5. Jones Lang LaSalle Leechiu Expatriate Executive of the Year – award for the most outstanding non-Filipino business manager in the Philippines.

6. NorthgateArinso HR Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most outstanding Human Resources department.

7. Finance Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most accomplished finance department.

8. Technology Leadership Team of the Year – award for the most outstanding IT or engineering department.

The OFFICIAL NOMINATION FORM can be DOWNLOADED here, and to be submitted to the organizing office by October 22, 2010.  For detailed descriptions of each award, go to the Official Event Website.

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The Cloud and BPO

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Uncertainty in Asian BPO Markets may lead to M&A activity

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