BPO Summit 2007: The Confident BPO

The
panel discussions were divided into three sessions: differentiating through
technology, securing through technology, and managing through technology

Session I: Panel

Devesh Bahl, senior VP, Data & Analytics, Zenta: We need to improve the
people dependency and improve process efficiency through better application of
technology, in which we Indians are so good at.

Srinivas Rao, director, Perot Systems: We are evolving into
a strong nation. We have multiple products that have been developed out of
India. At a point in time, one of our leading application developed at Chennai,
was being marketed across the globe.

SESSION II: Industry
Presentation

Dheeraj Kaul, product manager, TIEBU: Twenty to thirty percent of all new
contacts would be on a hosted model. By hosted model I mean that centers will
not be paying on a capex model, or deploying these technologies in their offices
or in their premises. Rather, service providers or an outside vendor will manage
the technology for them.

Panel

T Jagannathan, CTO, Ajuba Solutions: Security architecture for each company
differs. There is no universal blueprint for any security architecture. Your IT
architecture should be based on the security blueprint.

Venugopala Natarajan, director, Xansa: I would say security
certification is a combination of all the three: process driven in the sense
that it needs to be a part of the discipline; buy-in from all the stakeholders,
and is people driven; and process and technology driven because various tools
and techniques being used for getting the certification is key to the
organization.

Vaibhav Tiwari, CEO, e4e: I think there are quite a few
solutions one can use to take away the ignorance. We have seen this in many of
our projects and people. What happens often is that you can apply policies and
put restrictions, but with the kind of attrition we are seeing it becomes
complicated.

MS Kannan, VP, Technology, Lason India: We no more belong to
the community called CIO or CTO. We have to now correlate than conquer. Conceive
ideas, correlate those ideas, and then work in congruence.

Gautam Dua, business manager, Checkpoint Software Technology: The
three critical success factors I would say are improving service levels, cost
control, and improved information security. If any of these are not met, the
business goes for a toss.

S Vijay, senior manager, KPMG: Vendors that you work with,
those who supply cable and wireless, are no longer just suppliers or outsourced
vendors but are business partners. They are partners in the way we do business.
And I think that is the way we treat them also.

Session III: Panel

Soumitra Banerjee, VP, IT, Standard Chartered: There are some dissimilar
aspects which I think are very intrinsic to a captive-running operation. We are
depending on a single customer, which is our parent organization. The essence is
more to ensure that what we provide as a service to our customer along with the
growth aspect, are absolutely optimized operations: Lower cost of delivery,
continuous improvement, and a disaster-recovery plan, which can ensure that in
case of a disaster, the banking production environment, which is our parent
organization, runs smoothly.

S Bala, head, India Service Delivery, Sutherland Global Service:
When outsourcing takes place, typically, the low-end is where they first
start. As you go on, the distance get more and more commoditized. You need to
bring in technology systems and automation systems which will commoditize, so
that you can go on to high value business, which will help you to scale the
organization. Technology is an absolute key ingredient for us to be successful.

Ravi Jaganathan, head-Global BPO Services, 3i Infotech: There
are agent-based tools available that you can install in your agent/client
machine and it will track the operation, and then it will give you a report that
will help in terms of improving your processes and securing that activity.

Mumbai

Session-I

Chris Stewart, EVP, Zenta: We have been seeing challenges
particularly in voice, and using technology is going to differentiate us from
our competitors. For us to deliver high levels of performance, I need to
understand exactly what is happening with my agents. How do we manage that? We
need business intelligence to drive us. For instance, when is the best time to
call? Forecasting is another important tool.

Paresh Shah, MD, Convergys: Technology certainly is
exploited in all dimensions. We take advantage of it as well, be it in process
optimization, standardization to increase the bottomline or to improve workforce
productivity to benefit customers or clients. This essentially creates a
significant differentiation for a company.

Mohit Jain, chief innovation officer, 24/7 Customer: At
innovations lab, we are essentially creating new products and new services for
our clients as well as prospects, using three core competencies. One is
technology, the second is business intelligence, and the third is process
engineering. If you have a good mix of these three core competencies, you also
have the ability to create new services, which currently don't exist anywhere
in the market.

Rahul Kanodia, VC & MD, Datamatics Technologies: Today,
what is happening is that customers are increasingly seeing you as a third-party
vendor who services several global companies. Somebody who will introduce their
organization to best practices. They are expecting you to transform their
businesses and to give them a platform on which they can compete and, therefore,
the expectation from a third party vendor is increasing.

Rajeev Shroff, head, Avaya Global Support Center: There is a
lot of focus on infusing technology for improving productivity. There is a
balance required in terms of using technology and what the experience is for the
end-user.

Industry Presentation

Gautam Roy, business manager, Checkpoint: Security being one of the
problem areas for all BPOs, clients are actually going to give you much more
critical information and more critical processes if they see that their
information is secure.

Confidentiality, integration, and availability are key issues
that we typically look at when we talk about information security. Information
security is actually a combination of three P's (people, process technology,
and product). So, all of them put together give you a true sense of security.

Session II: Industry
Presentation

Prakash Iyer, group product manager, Tata Indicom
Enterprise Business Unit: Some challenges faced by contact centers everyday
are: high tariff costs, the large initial tax outlay that went into it, and the
very high maintenance cost of premises-based technology. Hosted contact center
solutions answer some of these issues.

Panel

Rajiv Gerela, VP-IT, Deutche Bank: Security is needed for products
right from laptop/desktop to the end server-everything has to become secure.
The second aspect which technology really can't address is the people. And
that is where internal discipline, a little bit of education, will actually help
us.

Vaibhav Patkar, CSO, Zenta: So the challenge of being a
security officer has gone much bigger as compared to what it was earlier. I give
the most priority to securing the data of my clients. The security awareness
session really helps bring out the culture in the system but if the senior
management is not following that it is of no use.

Rajnish Sarna, director, Effort BPO: Now that data has
become of great value it has become very important that companies secure their
organization, so there is no doubt about the fact that companies are doing
business in the BPO space have to secure their organizations.

Gautam Dua, business manager, Checkpoint: Security's
biggest concern is on the network front. Second, is the physical aspect.
Security is like a chain, you know even if you have strengthened one area, the
weakest link is still there. This is probably at the desktop level. Your IT
administrator is like a police, is he doing the right job?

SESSION III:Panel

Anwer Bagdadi, CIO, CFC International: The biggest and most important
challenge always remains technology. And from a technology perspective, we have
to keep on plugging in new capital equipment like servers and connectivity. The
key to this is that you must have a framework that cannot be replicated, is
scalable, and provides security to your business to work because your business
can only grow if it can build trust with the customer. Secondly, it must be IT
enabled and integrated. Third, the infrastructure should be available because
all of us work on a global scale.

Sunil Kankal, CTO, Silgate Solutions: As far as the
challenges are concerned, we are going to credit the growth with reference to
technology. What we have seen is that the business demands too many things and
that is at the click of a key-plug-and-play. We also must have SLAs signed
with our internal customers and ensure that they understand the terms of the
SLAs.

Prakash Iyer, group product manager, TIEBU: From a
technology angle, I would just like to say that today there are two key factors
in the technology space which service providers have adopted, which enables them
to scale in a much easier fashion. The first one is the arrival of what we call
'Managed or Hosted Services' and the second one is the concept of
virtualization.

Bangalore

SESSION I

Aman Mustafa, senior VP, Global Services, ACS: "We'll do your
mess for less" really doesn't work in licensing. You take over their
entire system-hardware, software, people, and technology-everything as part
of the transition, and then you go back and start to work with the SAPs, Beatle
Softs and Oracles of the world. So you can go back and say-okay, the current
licensing doesn't change, but when the renewal comes, we will give a look at
the licensing partnership.

Vaibhav Tiwari, president, India Operations, e4e: So, in
many ways, you should look at technology in training as an investment rather
than an expense and we have seen benefits of that both from technology as well
as the process perspective.

Avinash Vashistha, CEO, Tholons: A good HR system is a
technology which makes people's life very easy and in a way that will help you
in retention. I think desk procedures and the non-dependency on people, is one
thing that we are trying to address as far attrition is concerned.

Nimish Soni, MD, Cambridge Solutions India: I believe we
need to focus strongly. It is more about culture than anything else. We have a
tendency to know everything, but do we have a tendency to do everything? I think
there are specialists for each and I think we need to understand that.

SESSION II

Dheeraj Kaul, product manager, TIEBU: I am a strong believer that there is
nothing called the residual risk being zero, there cannot be one. And there are
practical problems that we face once in a while with exacting customers who come
in and say that everything has to be 100% secure.

Srikiran Raghavan, regional sales head, RSA: The world is
changing, so when you speak about security and security implementation, you will
have a stable network, stable design but the environment is changing, the nature
of data you handle is changing, and the nature of your business is changing. So,
as a technology man, you are expected to understand business.

Panel

Rahul Biswari, head of BCP and Info Security, HP BPO: One of the good things
that happened with ISO-27001, post BS7799 is that it brought matrices to measure
security parameters. Self-assessments, audits are also good indicators of how
healthy we are in terms of our control chamber, both internal and external.

Gautam Dua, business manager, Checkpoint Software Technology: Implementing
technology for the sake of technology is not going to help. Sometimes, in many
cases, we also go speak to the customers and tell them that there is a certain
level of residual risk that would be there.

M Karuppaswamy, CTO, 24/7 Customer: With good memory,
reading something ten times, I could remember a ten or twelve digit number for a
period of more than an hour. So where is the security coming there? How do we
prevent this? Basically it is purely a human phenomenon that we are dealing with
and that is why it's complicated.

KK Raman, executive director, KPMG: I think technology
shouldn't be checked in the first place. We need to keep it going but at the
same time I don't think we need to overdo it unless it provides you the
day-to-day business or livelihood benefits.

Delhi

SESSION I

Sanjay Mehta, CEO, Teleperformance India: The important thing is our
running out of this whole exercise, and it's not about commodity or
specialization. Whatever you choose to do and what we choose to do; we have to
be good at it-the best at it. There is tremendous opportunity at the every
level.

John Harkin, MD, Insurance Software Business, Xchanging: We
are retaining and attracting staff because they are beginning to understand the
importance of technology in a business services company.

Avinash Vashistha, CEO, Tholons: I guess without technology,
BPO would not have happened. Essentially, technology is at the heart of the
entire BPO revolution.

Information Security in BPO, Gautam Dua, business manager, Check
Point Software Technologies: Technology is a key part in the delivery of
processes and that goes without saying. It does play the underlying
architecture. What is becoming more and more relevant in today's time is the
end result. Customer's experience is also critical. And we can bring
technology anywhere to help elevate the level of experience. This is going to
add value to our business.

SESSION II

Prakash Iyer, group product manager, Tata Indicom Enterprise Business
Unit: The initial capex, maintenance cost of infrastructure, and support
services, which vendors require for regular AMC, needs to be maintained both on
hardware and software. Call centers today are best operated if they focus on the
core business. Hosted contact center services help you do that.

Srikiran Raghavan, regional sales head, RSA: We can make a
difference by looking at how to change the landscape by applying information
security principles in an enabling fashion rather than a restrictive fashion.
People, whether your customer, your partner or own employees, have all become
increasingly virtual and mobile.

Industry Presentation

Vineet Kalucha, director sales (Apac), Talisma: Today, the alternate channel-non-voice-are
seeing much higher growth because they are based in the US or other such places
while customers are in places like India. The adoption of the Internet is
increasing. emailing for services, chat, and self-service has become popular.
Voice is also moving from the traditional PSTN to VoIP, increasing the
dependence on the Internet. BPOs also need to look out more towards emerging
technologies and be ready with the offering and knowledge.

Panel

Ravi Jaganathan, head, Global BPO Services, 3i Infotech: Clients are
expecting a lot. We are talking about so many value-added services and it's
not just volume anymore. When you talk about value, there is need for an
integrated approach. Only technology fills that gap, and then security is the
next critical area where technology is inevitable.

Dhananjay Prasad, VP, IT/MIS, Keane Worldzen: We are
actually into the infrastructure block and we wanted to migrate. Initially, we
were just looking at a cost play kind of a game, which was a lift-and-shift
operation for the BPO. But, subsequently, when we came to generation BPO Version
2 or second generation products, it was cost and value play wherein process
improvements were happening across. Technology was playing an initial role in
the improvement of processes, moving toward quality and other aspects.

Rajnish Sarna, director, Effort BPO: There is a need to keep
looking at newer technologies. What people really miss out during panel
discussions is the physical security. There was a mention of a beta version of
physical security but it is limited largely to network and data security. So,
even in things like media surveillance, technology will become an important
part.

Gautam Dua, business manager, Checkpoint Software: But
security is actually an inhibitor in a way. .

Akhilesh Tuteja, executive director, KPMG: You need to have
different network segments for different clients. At the same time you need to
have at least the basic level of security in every segment.

Nilabh Jha


nilabhj@cybermedia.co.in