Interview: '40% of Infosys BPO clients are not Infosys clients'

Why did you change from Progeon to Infosys BPO?

When we started Progeon, it was a very different business for Infosys. It
was not into BPO and they saw the potential of BPO and IT coming together. But
the value proposition at that time was very vague. They wanted to attract the
management from outside. That is why Progeon got venture capital investment
because they thought that by getting someone from outside, they will be able to
create the right kind of company that attracts the right kind of management. At
that time, the drivers of a separate name, separate brand identity were quite
clear. Infosys BPO was a simple name to choose but it captures what we do.

Over a period of time, a couple of things became obvious. The clients started
asking question as to why Infosys and Progeon were separate. They felt that
Infosys can actually provide an entire suite of services, including BPO.
Everybody at Infosys has started realizing the value of IT and BPO coming
together.

Using technology innovativeness is not the realization of today. It has
been there. What has changed?

It did not change dramatically. But over a period of time, people used to
talk about it but did not understand the power of it. When we talk about
technology we were using it at a very micro level. The thinking at that time was
to make the process better by using some technology tools. But now the whole
proposition is coming at a much macro level. For example, if today I went and
offered to a client a solution that works on a platform, which was from somebody
else. You manage the infrastructure and you manage the application. It is
powerful proposition and very different from what companies have done in the
past. Earlier, a typical client used to go to different vendors for multiple
requirements.

You have piggybacked on Infosys earlier as part of your marketing
activities on the client side.

We did leverage the Infosys brand. But 40% of our clients are not Infosys
clients today. Infosys had a very important role to play. There are several
clients who worked with us first and then started working with Infosys. There
are many clients who still are not clients of Infosys. The outsourcing decisions
are taken by a different set of people not necessarily the CIO. We have our
independent sales force and wherever it makes sense we work with the Infosys
team.

Are you trying to create a platform?

Yes, we are already working on it. There are two ways to go about it. First,
develop ourselves which will take some time. The best way to actually start with
is to take platforms which are available in the market. The idea is to work with
some of these companies in alliance, as they are also willing to work with us.
It also makes more value proposition for selling better. We are looking at
procurement, F&A, data management and HR. 

What is the status of knowledge services that is being outsourced?

The problem with high-end work is that it is not scalable and they grow at a
certain pace. The reason why we went to knowledge services was that we wanted to
do high-end work. It is also very important to do high-end work to continue to
refine the general vanilla work that we do. We do a lot of financial work like
equity research, economic research, financial planning and analysis. We have
started analytics work now for retail, banking and market research firms and we
are expanding that practice rapidly.

Shyamanuja Das and Sudesh Prasad

vadmail@cybermedia.co.in