Quality Quest?

One may agree or disagree with the positioning of the BPO industry as
something aligned to the IT industry. But all will agree that a healthy craze
for quality and certification has got transmitted to the BPO industry from the
IT industry.

The nascent, fast-maturing BPO industry has taken to quality and
certification very early in the industry evolution phase. So much so that
quality evaluators like QAI India saw as much as 25 percent of their revenues
coming from this segment last year.

While the established COPC certification has been the favorite so far, the
evolving eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM) of Carnegie Mellon University has
caught the fancy of quite a few. Nipuna, the BPO subsidiary of Satyam is
reportedly trying this out. In fact, from the first four evaluators of eSCM
appointed by the University, two–Satyam Computer and STQC–are Indian
organizations.

Six Sigma, of course, has its own place. Spearheaded by GE and also
championed by Spectramind, many BPO companies are today going for Six Sigma.
Soon, India will have more Six Sigma black belts than the rest of the world, and
the industry that will make this happen will be BPO.

Spectramind has also tried an Indianized version of Japanese quality standard
Kaizen. Daksh has gone ahead and benchmarked it against the best contact centers
in the US through the help of Benchmark Portal, a company led by Jon Anton,
former head of Center for Customer Driven Quality at Purdue University. Progeon
has hired QAI to map skill sets with processes.

The COPC certification is offered across four components, namely, planning,
processes, people and performance (4Ps), with stringent quality criteria to be
met for 33 items spread across four matrices over a period of six months. In
case of 75 percent of the targets being met within two-thirds of this time
frame, the center gets Base Gold Standard certified which remains valid for 365
days. The centers can go for further upgradation to Base 6 by conforming to even
more stringent norms and standards.

Why are so many companies going for quality?

There are three reasons.

In the first place, it is one tangible proof of having achieved some standard
in quality. In fact, a few critics say cite it as the only reason behind the
craze for certification. "It adds one more impressive slide to your
PowerPoint," is how a consultant puts it. However, many others feel that
though there is some truth in this, no company will go out of its way to meet
stringent specifications just to make a marketing statement at the end of the
day. And COPC is not a one-time certification. It has to be renewed every year.

The real reason is actually improving internal processes. In India, the quest
for quality among good organizations is second to none. In fact, both GE and
HSBC India centers have achieved quality levels that have surpassed benchmark
performances at their centers in the UK and the US.

But more than anything else, what has really prompted many a company to go
for certification is the learning that it offers. It is, in fact, a short cut to
getting the accumulated knowledge of the industry. By testing against detailed
parameters, a company is ensuring that it is not just good enough to handle
existing processes, but also to run other similar processes.

The zeal for benchmarking is growing among BPO companies. Better, these
companies understand that benchmarking is just a means and not the end. Quality
is a relentless journey, and they seem to know it.

Rajneesh De