Priya Padmanabhan
BANGALORE: Despite nations like China and Philippines competing with India for a share of the BPO pie, Nasscom feels that India is still on topsin terms of cost-competitiveness and labor pool.
“We have found that cost differential of BPO is anywhere between 4-185 per cent lower in India than popularly cited alternatives like China, Philippines, Czech Republic and other countries,” said Sunil Mehta, vice-president, Nasscom.
He was speaking at a session on maintaining cost competitiveness and setting benchmarks in global outsourcing.
According to Nasscom, entry-level salaries in India have risen by 4-7 per cent and other countries are grappling with the problem of short supply of middle level managers.
Raman Roy, regarded as the father of the BPO industry and founder and CEO, Access Intellect BPO Services, said,” The BPO industry in India was created based on substitution and cost arbitrage. What is happening now is expansion and moving to the next level and in delivering unfulfilled needs in certain segments.”
The use of disruptive technologies to increase productivity and innovation is what matters, opined Karthik Krishnaswamy, director-IBSG India, Cisco Systems.
Milind Kamat, global director-BPO services, TCS, said that Indian BPO firms should consider countries in Eastern Europe and Philippines as augmentation tools for language skills and to meet regulatory mandates.
Mehta also feared that the offshoring debate could return with issue of privacy cropping up in the US.
“Due to outsourcing of personally sensitive information and critical operations, privacy issues could come up. There are around 20 Bills pending in the US senate to regulate offshoring based on privacy issue.”
On benchmarks in the BPO sector, Mehta said that Nasscom is focused on setting standards on data security and HR.
“We want to raise the bar significantly. There is no uniformity of standards among companies. So we are looking at regulating ourselves through initiatives such as Self Regulatory Organizations (SRO), and code of ethics around data security, HR and data management.”
The panelists also spoke on what has emerged as the constant refrain across panels this year: Use of technology platforms to deliver services to customers.
“Standardizing platforms will help accelerate innovation curves,” said Krishnamurthy.
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