Priya Padmanabhan

BANGALORE: With the BPO industry and customers getting more mature, companies need to invest in technologies such as web services, Service Oriented Architecture and the Internet to deliver services to customers, said John McCarthy, VP, Asia-Pacific, Forrester Inc. He said that with the market getting older, there is frustration among BPO companies who are grappling to find the right strategy and business models in the face of stiff competition and consolidation in the industry.

"Indian companies must make a specific bets to improve viability and need to invest in a common tech platform for BPO. Future BPO success will require serious tech and marketing investments," he said, addressing a session on "BPO mid-life crisis: survival of the fittest, at the ninth NASSCOM ITES-BPO India Strategy summit in Bangalore.

A recent Forrester survey pointed out to fair amount of angst among customers around offshore BPOs. "They are putting in more audits, reevaluating offshore plans, and renegotiating SLAs to put in more security measures," he said.

Hubert Giraud, CEO, Capgemini Global BPO services, said that cost is not the only driver for customers. "CFOs are looking at compliance, control, SOX and improvements in operations." He added that customers who have networkd spread over various global locations are looking for dual delivery centers such as China and India or China and Poland so that there is a seamless delivery.

He said that BPOs should strive to integrate front office and back office processes. Vertex chairman, Dan Sandhu said that companies could bring in value-add in the form of new platforms and technologies. "The relationship with clients needs to evolve. Value-added services is about doing better and going deeper."

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