CIOL: What is the strategic road map of Infosys BPO to creating transformational value to customers?

GD: A key differentiator is that we do not approach outsourcing as merely a cost cutting initiative. We have a proven roadmap for creating transformational value to our clients through process harmonization, continuous process improvement via Six Sigma initiatives, introduction of Industry best practices and use of Business Process Re-engineering to reduce/eliminate manual work.

In the initial phase, we focus on ‘cost saving’, where we leverage on our ‘Global Delivery Model’ and domain and technological capabilities to offer substantial savings to the client. In the second stage, we focus on improving the efficiency of client processes through process back boning, bench marking, adoption of industry best practices, Six Sigma initiatives etc. Finally we move to the ‘transformational value’ phase where we focus on the client business metrics and aim at providing business value to the client.

CIOL: Can you tell us more about the the churn analytics solution?

GD: Customer churn is a big issue for telcos, specifically.  So, how  do you identify the potential churn that can happen and how do you prevent it is the big area? With our analytics expertise and the technology expertise, we combine both of them and offer what is called the 'online churn'.

The scope of analytics spans across the entire telecom customer life cycle. However, customer churn being a major pain point, we have focused on creating a robust customer churn solution. Our solution leverages on our domain expertise and analytics capabilities to identify and quantifying those drivers with the greatest impact on churn for a specific telecom client. This helps us to identify early warning signals of ‘intention to churn’, enabling us to advise clients on undertaking measurable market programs to understand how effectively churn can be reduced for a given driver.

CIOL: Elaborate on your specific telecom offerings (pre-built solutions)?

GD: Since our expertise spans across traditional product lines including the land line, old PSTN and the latest mobile and converged offerings, we have been working on specific telecom offerings, pre-built solutions, for the last several months.

We believe that some of the service providers obviously need to cut costs to survive in this recession. They will have to outsource quite a bit and invest in certain areas to beat  competition, especially in the converged areas. We are able to provide value to our customers though these solutions.

CIOL: Tell us about your new initiatives, if any?

GD: Our focus continues to be on churn analytics. There is a big opportunity to impact revenues and on how do you prevent revenue leakage?

In difficult times like this, telecom clients would be looking at not only reducing costs but increase revenues.  There has been no change in the behavior in the telecom sector. However, they are concerned about falling volumes as the sales have come down.

The market itself is big because the US companies have not outsourced much beyond call centres. We are looking at opportunities in this area and are talking with them to work on short-term projects. When databases are not talking to each other you need to clean them up, this is one area of focus. And, to increase the revenues, we can come up with new offerings.