"The Direction Today Is Towards Being More Open. We Are Working Towards that"

height="278" alt="Pramode K Verma" align="right" hspace="6" vspace="6"> size="1">Lucent Technologies Business Communication Systems (BCS)

division is a global leader in high-end business communication systems. face="Arial" COLOR="#016077">Pramode K Verma,

managing director, business development-customer sales and

service solution, Lucent BCS, has been working with the company for about two decades.

Verma was recently in India to deliver the keynote address in the CSI ’98 conference

in New Delhi. He spoke to Shyamanuja Das COLOR="#000000" face="Arial">on the emerging call centre market and Lucent BCS’

strategic directions.

What are the major enablers for the growth of call centre

market?

There are two major enablers of the usage

of call centres. One is the availability of toll-free lines. The other is deregulation. SIZE="2">

Toll-free service obviously allows a large

number of users to access a call centre for getting whatever help they want—for

either a sale or a service.

As deregulation happens, the cost of

service itself goes down. More and more suppliers push their goods through a call centre.

We have a slogan: let your fingers do the walking. Instead of going to a bank or general

store, you get the products or services by dialling the telephone number. SIZE="2" COLOR="#016077">

Today, many users are aware of the benefits of a call

centre. But the initial cost is at a level which very few can afford ... SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000">

It should

be affordable to the biggest and the smallest alike. But there is another way. I do not

know how it is coming out here in India, but

there is a whole outsourcing market. You do not need to own your call centre. There are

people who are in the call centre business. They own the call centre. They will train the

operators for you and will charge you on the basis of the service that they provide. You

do not own any infrastructure. The call centre itself, the building that houses it, the

staff everything is owned by them.

I know of such companies in India targeting niche

industries. Particularly, the banking industry. But without much success so far. I think

banking industry is a wrong industry to start with ... COLOR="#000000">

I beg to differ. Banking is a very right

industry to pitch in here.

People take service of call centres for

two reasons—to provide better service and to woo new customers. A customer who works

late in the office, reaches home at nine in the night and would like to make some

enquiries to his bank. Imagine, how delighted he will be to have a bank that provides him

the information then and there—his home. If there is a bank with an IVR, even without

a live agent, and another without that, guess to whom the customer will go.

It is no longer a matter of luxury. It is

a matter of survival for banks today. If that facility has not come to India, it will come

soon.

Is it true that

traditional PBX vendors like Lucent BCS are losing marketshare to platform-independent

third party call centre vendors?

I know Lucent is not,

though I am talking of the US market. From the data you can get—and they are

independently compiled—we are actually gaining marketshare, which is somewhere near

30 percent right now. And we are gaining by a percentage point or two. It is

Dataquest’s data.

We provide the platform. Much of

the solutions in the future would come from others. It would move towards creating a

totally software-based solution and towards platform independence. We know that for a fact

and, certainly, we are working towards attaining that. From the future point of view, you

are absolutely right.

Today the distribution model in

call centres and CTI business is fast changing. We are seeing independent PBX

vendors/distributors, independent voice board vendors/distributors, independent

middleware/application developers who might or might not do systems integration, and some

specialist SIs. Do you think your earlier model, which was probably decided keeping in

view the PBX distribution, will be able to effectively compete with the new model?

I think both models will remain

effective.

Lucent today provides turnkey

solutions. So we can install, supply the hardware, the software, and do the complete job.

Of course, a number of SIs as you mentioned in the US—Andersen Consulting, E&Y,

Deloitte & Touche—work with our hardware. They give value to their customers. The

additional value they provide is to relate the particular customer that they are

serving—its data system—to the call centre. In particular, if there is a whole

connectivity need—the screen-pop itself you know—it is connectivity to the data

system that the corporation has. That is a job we do not get involved in and that job is

intricate and many of our upper-end customers also have the services of systems

integrators that gives a turnkey solution much beyond the call centre.

A reason why open systems are winning in a market

like India is their affordability. You start with a two-port system on an experimental

basis, and as you get convinced, you go on scaling it up. In case of a system like

Lucent’s, the minimum investment can be barrier for many. You cannot afford to

experiment ...

That is true. I think, to start

with, some degree of ambivalence is natural. But in a business when all your competitors

are using that facility, you will be hard-pressed if you do not have that. I think that

the competitive push is not there at this point of time in India.

Well, in certain industry

segments, where there is competition, like telecom for example, the cash is not there ...

I understand. But you will see

them investing, though somewhat selectively.

When we do a job with a major

customer, the maximum value we put is in the analysis for return on investment. In a call

centre, it is very easy to justify an innovation as you can keep a track of each second of

transaction time that you save through means like screen-pop. In industries like telecom,

why call centres have been so successful is that every second of the time saved can be

translated to hard dollars. The analysis is very black and white. And at that point, it is

no longer a luxury for the corporation. It becomes a necessity. In other words, the cost

of not doing would be much more than the cost of doing it.

Lucent BCS is seen as

traditional, platform dependent. Today isn’t that a liability when everything that is

open sells?

We are very platform-dependent at

this point. But certainly we recognize that at one point of time we have to be platform

independent.

But you know, you get nothing out

of free. So the more independent, the more open you are, in a certain sense, you might

compromise in the depth of functionality that a highly closed system, a self-contained

system can provide. And both have their merits and demerits.

When we started that (closed

system) was the model. We gave value in that model. The direction today is certainly

towards being more open. There’s no question about that. We are working towards that.