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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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