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Unified Communications is much like a vision at this point of time

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

Like other businesses, the BPO industry also has undergone drastic change

in terms of technology up-gradations. From fixed phones to Internet and now

unified communications, the BPO industry is seeing it all. Voice&Data takes a

quick walk-through on the changes, new verticals and the future of the BPO

industry with Sanjiv Dalal, CTO, Firstsource.

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Sanjiv Dalal has over twenty years of experience in the IT industry in the

areas of technology, customized technology solutions and IT infrastructure. As

the CTO of Firstsource Dalal has taken complete care of its technology

strategies. In 2007, Firstsource joined the league of a handful of global

companies that adopted the virtual infrastructure technology. Prior to joining

Firstsource, Dalal was the founder and CTO of Customer Asset, one of the early

BPO companies in India. Excerpts

Can you list some major telecom and technology usage in your organization?



We are currently operating from nearly thirty-five different countries

worldwide including India, US, Argentina and Ireland. Our network reach is

somewhere between 100 to 150 IPLCs with standard LAN and WAN infrastructure.

Some other usage comprises ACTs, voice loggers, screen loggers and dialers,

perhaps anything and everything one might find in a tier-1 BPO.

Technology and communications is considered to be the backbone of the BPO

industry. How far do you justify that?



The business of BPO-the ability to outsource and at the same time,

offshore-depends largely on stable technologies; not necessarily a bleeding edge

technology but definitely with a stable operating environment which guarantees

very high uptime. BPO revenues depend on technology. We stop making money with

small faults, whether it is a LAN switch, link, firewall, or ACD failure. There

is no store and forward in the system, as everything happens in real time.

Without a stable and robust technology the BPO business will get undermined.

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Which technology trends do you see as key drivers for the BPO industry?



In the BPO industry, like most others, we also believe in technologies that

deliver stability at the lowest possible cost and this is also the biggest

factor in selecting the technology. On top of efficiency it also depends on the

process that you are handling. Whether it is efficient dialers and efficient

platform to keep track of contacts or gateways to track clients, it all depends

on which are the most effective, stable and low-cost technologies.

The place we are looking at right now is the virtualization space because

that delivers high uptime at almost fraction of the cost. It also delivers a

high turnaround time with flexibility in business. A typical server would

commission the work in a minute and a half rather than an hour like before.

Things have become pretty standardized. Virtualization provides its own layer of

continuity in the hardware region of the business.

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Security is another major area. Virtual desktops and servers are the key

areas that allow storing the data centrally, back it up and, at the same time,

make it available at a distributed fashion. So we are looking at this very

keenly. Apart from all these, in the network area also, we are looking at better

managed network space which helps in creating variable cost structures. All the

above would be the drivers in technology adoption for the BPO industry.

How do you see 3G helping your business?



3G is a new line of business, so it will have its own share of challenges

and requirements. For the sake of argument, things have really changed from the

days of fixed lines to mobiles to broadband. The space has kept on evolving. I

see 3G and WiMax as potential revenue generating services for companies like us.

We are not looking at content like the telcos. As a consumer 3G would provide

high speed data connectivity in the network. There are certain areas where we

need high-speed mobile communications. Collection of data and moving the data

from point A to point B becomes faster so the revenue gets better. It helps in

speeding up the process.

The same flexibility is not available today. Though EDGE networks do provide

certain amount of flexibility, but the speeds are different. From the management

perspective, the whole decision-making process can be streamlined with 3G. For

people who travel frequently, it will be possible for them to store and view

data over ISB networks.

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What do you think of technologies like unified communications and NGNs?



You would be surprised to know that though a lot of BPOs talk about it, they

do not do much with it. Unified communications is much like a vision at this

point of time and it will take time to become a mainstream process.

The terminal devices handle your email, voice, etc, putting it into a common

queue. While the capabilities are great, agents who handle them have different

expertise; one has written skills and the other has oral. So it gets difficult

to handle them even if they are on the same platform. But it helps in common

reporting wherein the email and voice are put on a single queue.

Other technologies like videoconferencing are yet to become mainstream, as

capex and bandwidth required are very high. But slowly companies are adopting

VC. On the other end, NGN is coming and we use MPLS in a very big way because it

gives the flexibility of ramping up and ramping down on a monthly basis.

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How do you see the future of the BPO industry in India? Has the present

slowdown affected its growth?



We would not deny that the slowdown has definitely affected us as most of

our clients are based out of the US. And as most BPOs have gone global,

considering the present structure, it is a misnomer. A lot of people think just

to have a single delivery center in India might be a risk. Nobody wants to take

single geography risks and is going toward right-shoring strategies. This is why

tier-1 companies look at right-shoring to handle end-to-end processes. To grow

at a constant pace it has to deliver from any geography.

What major challenges are you facing?



The challenge is to ensure that the management processes work properly.

Previously we were structured around devices but today we have the ITIL

framework, where we rely more on the entire delivery process. Sometimes, it is

also server use and capacity constraints. So consistently following this

framework across the globe comes as a major challenge. It is important to change

the attitude toward adopting it.

Sunny Sen



sunnys@cybermedia.co.in

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