Regulatory issues are preventing us from providing integrated solutions

A prominent player in delivering a variety of
outsourcing services, Tech Mahindra BPO has brought about significant business
benefits for its customers in terms of achieving cost optimization, reduced
cycle time, and improved quality which eventually resulted in better customer
experience. Sriram Sevellimedu Veeravali, senior VP of Tech Mahindra BPO
services, who has more than twenty-five years experience in various areas
including IT services and IT infrastructure delivery, is responsible for
business service vertical of the company for the last three years. In an
interview with VOICE&DATA, he talks about the company's ICT infrastructure,
scope of 3G and WiMax, technology evolution and connectivity challenges.
Excerpts

How will you describe the ICT infrastructure at Tech Mahindra?

Tech Mahindra has a robust ICT infrastructure. Our core infrastructure lies
in Noida; and multi variants in Pune, Chennai, and other places. We've got
overall 5,450 BPO seats across the globe, which means that having an ICT
infrastructure is critical to our operations. It enables a central user profile
to be created for an employee, that can be accessed by him/ her across various
locations. This centralization helps in various ways-that is ease of movement
across various places without shifting technology from one place to the other,
no migration pains during shifting, etc.

How has technology evolved over the past few years in the BPO industry?

Technology is constantly evolving. -BPO technology is more customer request
based, as compared to IT services. Today technology enables an agent to work
from home (remote working is agreed beforehand with the client. If they have
security concerns, our policies may or may not allow it), which probably wasn't
the case sometime back. Currently, we have technologies like TDM and Aviva.

How are technologies like 3G and WiMax helping your business? If 3G and
WiMax are rolled out in India, how will you use these technologies initially?

Communication technologies such as 3G and WiMax are enabling customers to
defeat challenges that are normally a part of an 'only voice' platform. We are
fast moving into a world with 'no connectivity' challenges.

This will specially be beneficial for high-end customer support processes or
offshore knowledge workers, wherein video support is important, and must work
with other communication vehicles. The question is how many customers will adopt
it, as price still remains a barrier.

How do you cope with connectivity challenges at Tech Mahindra's
centers/branches in remote areas?

Currently, we are present in cities like Noida, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata,
Chandigarh, and Pune, which is a mix of tier-1 and tier-2 cities. In India,
today nothing is really 'inaccessible'. Besides, we work with a panel of service
providers to serve one network circle, which ensures that glitches of any kind
don't affect our connectivity at all.

What according to you are the major technological trends in the
outsourcing industry?

The latest technology is 'cloud computing', that is virtualization of
services. However, a lot of clients have security concerns in the BPO context.
Thus, we at Tech Mahindra, have created our own 'cloud', which allows us to have
the flexibility of cloud computing, without any security concerns.

How do you think the role of CTO has changed over the years?

By definition, a CTO should partake in key business decisions of the
company. He must be part of all the decision making. However, in reality, very
few are able to follow this. The role, therefore, has not changed; whether it
gets practiced or not in all organizations is another question.

For a business like ours, which is heavily dependent on technology to deliver
services across various geographical locations, IT infrastructure decisions are
critical to our business. Thus, CTOs are not 'geeks' in ivory towers; they are
actually the business decision makers.

What are the main technological challenges that you are facing today?

We feel the regulatory issues are still holding us from providing integrated
voice and data solutions to our clients, especially in the BPO space. Issues
such as interconnectivity with PSTN is not yet permitted, or the lead time
involved in getting CUG approval is so long, that these become barriers for us.

Correct technology deployments, and implementing IT best practices go a long
way in implementing the operating efficiencies. Tech Mahindra BPO, in addition
to deploying enterprise applications, gives a very high emphasis to networks
(data and voice both). Managing a private network with diverse network
connectivity, PoP is a big challenge in maintaining a high uptime.

Tech Mahindra is fully in to managed services, for both voice and data. Data
connectivity and voice connectivity (to a great extent between delivery centers)
are managed through an MPLS network, and also voice access is through managed
services with end-to-end service level commitments. This helps in managing
customer SLA expectations, which are mapped to the service providers SLA
commitments.

99.99% uptime is indeed a challenge, and is the key goal of BPO companies.
This network backbone is the one that makes the entire mission critical
processes in the BPO to function on a 24x7 basis.

What technological upgradations and investment plans are you considering?

Today, investment is largely driven by business requirement. However, we
have invested substantial capex over the past three years in technologies such
as VoIP in some of the new Tech Mahindra sites. We are evaluating and working on
adaptive open source technologies and cloud computing.

How do you see technologies like unified communication adding to your
business?

Given the sophistication of unified communications technology, its uses are
myriad for businesses. It enables users to know where their colleagues are
physically located. They also have the ability to see which mode of
communication the recipient prefers to use at any given time. Users could
seamlessly set up a real-time collaboration on a document they are producing.
Moreover, in a retail setup a user might track a fault-for example, telecom
products such as broadband, landline, etc,-by using a hand-held device, and
consult a customer help desk for the same. With unified communications and
instant messaging, presence can be built in the application, and the problem can
be resolved fast.

How are modern communication solutions, like videoconferencing helping
you?

It's a whole new way of doing business. Today, videoconferencing transcends
the simple 'talking heads' on a screen. The ability to easily share any type of
information has further enhanced video communications (data sharing), previously
not possible in a local meeting. The result: decisions are made faster; bringing
products or services to market quickly; and enabling us to stay ahead of our
competitors. Besides it saves substantial amount of money and time, due to
reduced travel.

Arpita Prem

arpitap@cybermedia.co.in