BANGALORE, INDIA: NASSCOM, the premier trade body and voice of the Indian IT-BPO industry, on the second day of its 10th annual "Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit 2008," also echoed on similar lines.

VK Raman, head, BPO Services, Tata Consultancy Services, said that the Indian BPO industry is in an exciting phase of growth today and also put forth the question how capable is the industry to outsource itself in the global economy. He was speaking during the second day of the summit on, "Best Practices: Technology and Operation Delivery for Service Excellence."

"Variabilizing cost structure, virtualizing and effective management is the way to go. But at the same time we have to keep things simple and balanced. Having a flexible roadmap and a strategic view to reduce cost structure is very essential. But on the whole, one has to keep a balance between long and short term plans," he added.

Sanjeev Dalal, chief technology officer, Firstsource Solutions Ltd, added: "The first thing to be done is to develop a transformation mindset between the service provider and the client. Today, we have a larger milieu where the BPO industry is talking in terms of outsourcing itself, but first we need a huge investment for training purpose. If not, we would be outsourcing labour and not products."

"Today we have to keep an eye on clients' needs, with an eye on global delivery. The industry is witnessing a transformation from being customer specific to industry specific services. So, we have to start thinking on the lines of innovating improved facilities to increase productivity, but at the same time bring down the cost of production. It is very important to create a target operation model to suit business reality and also an effective collaborative working tool. This seeks for a judicious selection of technology that puts a check on the cost structure," he added.

Neeraj Khanna, head, outsource operations, BT Operate, pointed out: "BT Operate has an objective of becoming the world's number one service provider, build a global open platform and provide state-of-the-art customer service. Ours is a large telecom company with about 5,000 systems, 8,000 buildings, and 15,000 engineers. Around 20,000 people are outsourcing for us from across the world. Managing such a large organization is a difficult process. In order to transform this complex process into a simpler one, a hands-on operation management system is necessary. Not all partners are capable of understanding the needs of the clients and delivering it on time."