BPO: Building an Agile Enterprise

A cursory look at the entire outsourcing wave shows how

outsourcers have prioritized knowledge and cost savings, and shelved cultural

differences. As a result, predominantly western-centric companies, despite the

cultural divide, have adapted themselves to Indian dynamics, and that had led

the outsourcing industry to boom. In the outsourcing world, BPO is the hottest

segment. Unlike its big brother, IT, the dynamics of the BPO industry is totally

different. If we look at the two dominant forms of BPO-voice and transaction-companies

have come a long way. But, despite that, challenges are very pronounced because

BPO is a customer facing industry. On any given day, thousands of BPO employees

interact with clients and customers. Whether it is customer queries, tech or

customer support, the majority of calls land in India.

So, if we look a little closer at BPO as an enterprise, it faces

numerous challenges. And to surmount these challenges, BPO companies need a high

degree of top management commitment. Agility comes with the seamless interplay

of key components that create an eco-system on which the enterprise runs. If we

look at the challenges faced by BPO companies, we can narrow them down to three

core challenges-managing the telecom, the IT infrastructure, and HR. If these

three components are taken care of, most of the other challenges can be managed

easily.

Technology: Challenges and Solutions



The BPO industry is all the while concentrating too much on managing the manpower churn
. But correct technology deployments and implementing IT best

practices go a long way in upping the operating efficiencies. BPOs, in addition

to deploying enterprise applications, give high emphasis to networks as

real-time remote communication is the order of the day for most BPOs. Devendra

Saharia, co-founder and president, Ajuba Solutions, says, "Managing a

private network with diverse network connectivity, PoP is a big challenge for

maintaining high uptime. We have recently moved to fully managed services for

both voice and data. Data connectivity is managed through an MPLS network and

voice access is managed through managed services with end-to-end service level

commitments. This helps in managing customer SLA expectations by mapping them to

the service providers' SLA commitments".

So, clearly, creating a network up-time backbone that secures

the much sought after five-nines (99.999%) up-time is indeed a challenge and the

key goal of BPO companies.Thisnetwork backbone is the one that makes the entire

mission critical processes in the BPO to function on a 24/7 basis. Reflecting on

this, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian, VP, Technology, Cybernet-SlashSupport (CSS)

says, "The challenge in networking is to make sure you have available

capacity at all times to enable 24x7 operations. Five nines uptime is not an

uncommon requirement. Since there are many factors in networking that are

outside of our direct control, this requires constant management of technology

and vendor solutions to provide the required level of service. One needs to use

the best technology, redundancy in network connectivity and 24x7 monitoring and

alerting."

Having realized the criticality of uptime, BPO companies are

also gearing up to meet the stringent operational requirements. Take the case of

HCL BPO, which has come out with an innovative EnsureIT initiative that

guarantees 99.99% uptime of all networks and applications. This helps HCL manage

its distributed infrastructure, comprising 9,000 plus employees across eleven

geographically spread delivery centers, working on 9,000 plus desktops and

phones, and 500 plus servers and network equipment, over a consolidated

bandwidth of 300 Mbps spread across varied service providers.

With this initiative, HCL BPO has accrued defined benefits like

automated service alerts for utilization and availability of infrastructure

components, appropriate underpinnings of organization structure, roles and

objectives needed to perform coherently, online reporting and measurement of

performance enabling quick decisions at all levels of IT operations leading

towards agile service delivery. HCL BPO has also achieved key performance

indicators based on best practices in ITIL, which are used to measure and report

performance of various levels.

On the other hand, centralized control for a gamut of

sub-systems usher in economic use of IT resources, and easier manageability.

Moreover, extensive policy-based deployment ensure standardized configuration

and reduce risk of non-compliance. Vendors like HCL BPO are trying out novel

network management techniques and deploying management models, creating an

enterprise-wide network management backbone leading to higher uptimes.

According to Ranjit Narasimhan, president and CEO, HCL

Technologies, BPO Services, "The EnsureIT program aims at business

transformation through a structured methodology, compliance to global standards

of IT service management, and a rigorous governance methodology. It involves

identifying the root cause of disruption, effective risk mitigation, managing

external factors inclusive of vendor releases, and effective anomaly

detection."

To manage the networking challenges it is wise to use services

of multiple vendors. Take the case of Scope International, the captive of

Standard Chartered Bank. Its connectivity infrastructure is made up of multiple

vendors. According to company sources, it deliberately adopted that approach to

arrive at a network configuration that gives it resilience.

This method enables enterprises not to get tied with one vendor.

The multi-vendor approach gives flexibility and heterogeneity in terms of

managing out networks effectively. Scope has defined standards in every area of

IT and network.

From an application side of things, one key technology area

which is directly related to operational efficiency is First Call Resolution (FCR)

measurements. The time spent by the agent on every call is measured in what is

called as Average Call Handling Time (ACHT). The more the agent spends on each

call, is an indication that the problem has not been resolved. When the same

customers need to call again, it means that the problem is not sorted out.

The biggest challenge for BPO companies is to deploy FCR

solutions that help the agent as well as help measure how much of FCR they were

able to achieve in any given day vis-à-vis the number of customer calls. Hence,

a good FCR solution is a must to benchmark the call center performance on the

way the calls are handled and problems resolved.

From an organizational viewpoint, given the huge manpower of

most of the big BPO companies, a robust HR automation solution is mandatory. The

creation of an HR portal also assumes significance. The biggest challenge here

is in creating a single window intranet, where right from employee appraisals to

the latest happenings should be available. The creation of a fully automated HR

system involves careful planning and right selection of HR solutions, supported

by proactive HR policies.

Managing End-points



End-point device management has become a challenging area for
enterprise CIOs. Typically, in a BPO environment this becomes a critical issue.

The typical end-points are devices like desktops, notebooks and mobile devices

like smart phones. Each device, when it connects to the corporate network, has

its set of unique security problems and it thus becomes vital for any BPO to

have a pro-active security regime in place. Of all the endpoints, managing

desktops is very problematic and challenging because every desktop has a

software license, apps and its own storage. Desktops are also one of the most

under-utilized devices, and most of the IT administrator's time goes for

installing updates, patches, and virus checkers.

The panacea for better desktop management lies in virtualization

through thin clients by way of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This is a

very significant technology concept that will help manage the fleet of desktops.

VDI is full virtualization wherein both the apps and hardware is virtualized on

servers in a data center environment. But companies can go for apps

virtualization that will help in optimizing their desktops and at the same time

give it virtual capabilities. Take the case of Siemens Information Processing

Services (SIPS), the BPO arm of Siemens in India, a leading provider of BPO

services, with operations in Bangalore and Chennai. Currently it has 2,400

desktops, which are expected to grow up to 5,000 by next year.

SIPS, before it went in for desktop virtualization, was facing a

plethora of challenges in managing its huge fleet of desktops. It was facing

challenges in terms of under-utilization of desktops and high maintenance costs.

This led to inefficient usage leading to high cost of operations. Desktops were

also not shared across processes because resources were already pre-defined to

the processes. In case of high demand, desktops, which otherwise were kept idle

in that particular shift of operation, could not be used because the

applications were not installed. This resulted in inefficiency of operation,

inability to cope with sudden rise in demand, and hence waste of money.

With high levels of attrition, security risks were also a big

challenge due to the manual/physical requirement of deleting applications and

removing user access from end-node applications. SIPS found panacea in desktop

virtualization. Says Syed Rizwan, DGM, IT at SIPS, "We decided to opt for a

virtualized desktop environment in March 2007. We chose to go with Microsoft's

offering-SoftGrid Application Virtualization, since it was the only solution

that could enable any application to co-exist with any other, while providing

the centralized management and accelerated deployment we required."

The Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization deployed at

SIPS transformed applications into virtualized, network-available services,

resulting in dynamic delivery of software that were never installed, and

minimized costly application compatibility testing. Users and their application

environments are no longer machine-specific, and the machines themselves are no

longer user-specific, enabling IT to be flexible and responsive to business

needs, and significantly reducing the cost of PC management.

Arun Sowdas, VP, Technology, Allsec technologies says,

"Updating and implementing the latest and the best-of-breed technology

needs to be an ongoing exercise for gaining competitive advantage. Specialized

equipment and technology critical to BPO operations need to be maintained for

high availability and operational efficiencies. Skill-sets to support such

infrastructure are not readily available and need to be developed

internally."

The HR Churn



Beyond technology, HR is a key challenge that most BPO companies face. Says
Dr Srinivas Kandula, global head, HR, iGATE Global Solutions: "Retaining

talent is the primary challenge that BPO companies face. Since the nature of

work in most BPO companies is often routine and repetitive, attrition tends to

peak. At iGATE, we have been able to reduce the affliction of high attrition and

low retention by providing work content extending beyond process operations to

business process and technology that motivates our employees."

According to industry experts, the BPO industry, in a short time

span, has gained importance due to its phenomenal growth. Industry bodies had

predicted that the 650,000 people currently employed in IT and BPO will triple

in the next five years and grow over to 2 mn. Given this backdrop, HR

professionals today face a whole lot of challenges. While there is a large

number of qualified manpower available in the market, the actual percentage of

people who are employable in the BPO sector is only about 5%.

Being a very young industry, and the low employability

percentage, the need for domain experts is a big need. In today's scenario,

the business processes that companies handle are very mature, but the employees

are very young and, in most cases, with high attrition, the entry level

employees do not fully understand the mission critical nature of the work they

do. Says CS Bapaiah, AVP, HR, Allsec Technologies, "As there is a wide

supply-demand gap, retaining talent becomes another big challenge for companies,

especially in this growth boom. This also leads to poaching of employees between

companies; with the frequent job hopping leading to scarcity of talent."

With attrition and skill shortage on the anvil, the BPO

companies are implementing various ways and means to retain and attract new

talent. Says Devendra Saharia, "We have adopted a dual strategy to address

this. On one hand, while we are positioning ourselves as an employer of choice

in the market. On the other we are constantly strengthening our talent

engagement and retention strategies".

What emerges at the end of the day is that as BPO companies

scale in size, they need to expand all the vital components—from technology

infrastructure to employee benefits. On the technology side, BPO companies need

to think innovatively and go for concepts like virtualization for greater

manageability. Managing networks will continue to be a challenge as technology

heads will face increasing pressure in building a robust network. End-point

security will also become a big issue and one needs a slew of security solutions

from firewalls to anti-spam.

On the HR side, while attrition will increase, BPO companies

must focus on creating domain leaders within their own companies so that a

highly skilled HR base can be created.

Shrikanth G



shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in