12. THE SUTHERLAND GROUP: On the Fast Track

FACT FILE CEO Dilip R Vellodi POSITIONING A customer management company STARTED IN 2001 NO. OF PEOPLE 1500 (bpOrbit estimate) CORPORATE ADDRESS 1160 Pittsford-Victor Rd, Pittsford, New York 14534, USA WEBSITE www.suth.com   NO. OF CLIENTS 30+ (8 major)

Ongoing Six Sigma initiative

LOCATION

FACILITIES: 3 (Chennai—3)

Sutherland declined to share information and figures with bpOrbit. The information and figures here have been collected from different sources in the industry.

The Sutherland Group is the only bpOrbit Top 15 company based in Chennai. In
2002-03, it grew from an under-100-people company to employ 1064 people by 31
March, 2003. That is one of the fastest first phase growths. By 31 Oct 2003, it
had an estimated 1500 employees.

The company did not share any information with us for this industry survey.
It is the only company featuring in the bpOrbit Top 15 list that did not even
respond to our survey questionnaire. Much of the information has been collected
from company’s press releases, secondary sources, and informal inputs from
both within the company and peer groups.

This reluctance to share information was also reflected in a recent DQ-IDC
India survey on employee satisfaction, where it scored low in company policies,
internal communication, and transparency in appraisals and training. A pity
because it had high scores in employee satisfaction.

Sutherland has about 5000 people globally and has been moving the jobs
offshore in phases. In the first 18 months or so, it has already moved about
1500 jobs for one-fourth of its clients.

The company expects that one-third of its client base would move work to
India by the end of 2002-03 (March 2003). To accommodate that, the company has
taken up a new facility spanning 100,000 square feet in Velachery, Chennai that
can accommodate a further 1500 people. The company expects to fill this new
space by March 2004.

The Sutherland Group has entered into a strategic alliance with Dallas-based
ISANI Group, a management consultancy focussed on maximizing the value of
offshore initiatives. This alliance will enable Sutherland to offer new clients
help to mitigating potential risks and avoid costly mistakes in the transition
of business to the offshore model.

Most of the processes of Sutherland are technical support and customer
management ones. The company plans to be a center of excellence in technical
support. Apart from L1-L3 tech support, the company also provides enterprise IT
help desk services.

Apart from tech support and customer care, the Sutherland Professional
Services (SPS) provides process consulting, optimization, and technology
solutions for call center applications.

Sutherland also delivers account management services covering demand
generation, sales support and customer acquisition for communications companies
for penetrating market segments, cross-sell and up-sell their products and
services to existing customers. It draws its revenues from two verticals–technology
and telecom.

In October 2003, Sutherland announced a contract from Avaya for managing the
latter’s customer interaction. Sutherland has been carrying out telemarketing
activities for lead generation purpose for the enterprise voice equipment major.
Some of the company’s other global clients are AT&T, Sony, Gateway, Xerox,
Pitney Bowes, ADP and General Electric. It has more than 30 Fortune 1000
clients.

Sutherland is probably the only big third-party customer service company in
Chennai which is known for its other non-voice services as far as BPO is
considered. That means Sutherland would not have to spend mindless time, energy,
and money on promoting itself.

However, running voice services from Chennai could be a challenge beyond a
point. Sutherland, which once had plans to expand to Kerala–about which
nothing has been heard of late–then may have to look at other locations

within India.