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Global services - the India advantage

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CIOL Bureau
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Sarv SaravananBANGALORE, INDIA: The Indian software and IT industry landscape has evolved from outsourced product design services to core product engineering work. The support services industry which forms the backbone of this sunshine industry has clearly created a niche for India. From support services to application services, from reactive support to proactive support, the IT support services industry has come a long way.

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With increasing deployments of such developments as service-oriented architecture (SOA), unified communications, cloud architecture and virtualization, IT has become increasingly integrated and complex. The IT support services industry has evolved, particularly in its business model, to acquire a global dimension leading to the development of the concept of global services.

While most major players in the global IT industry have been part of this evolution, a few have been able to leverage the developments and create highly effective global services models.

Global services are changing the game for a total customer experience by innovating the way of customer support. Support services have long been an integral part of overall customer experience, providing a vital interactive link between a company and its customers. This is particularly critical for technology product companies. Now, across the market place, companies are seeking new ways to increase customer value and strengthen customer relationships.

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Today’s highly challenging and intensely competitive business and technology environment requires every market leader to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction in order to sustain them. Product purchase decisions of customers across the globe are increasingly becoming dependent on the quality and reliability of their technology vendors’ support functions.

Quality technical support has therefore become the key differentiator that sets a company apart from its competitors to achieve business excellence.

High-end support services provide customers with resolution and advice to better leverage their technology investments for better business. This need creates an unprecedented opportunity for product organizations to go beyond their traditional reactive function, and become proactive leaders in customer value creation.

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Global services deliver profitable revenue growth by providing the people, methodologies, expertise, and best practices to help clients. Companies help customers attain their business objectives through high-end support services. Services like consulting, implementation, integration, solution, education, management, and support services that help customers get the maximum value out of their information strategies.

The global services portfolio includes professional and support services, solutions, and training to help customers in every stage of the implementation lifecycle – plan, build, manage, and support.

Usually the global services spectrum comprises the broad categories of Problem Resolution and Escalation Management (PREM) and Remote management Services (RMS). The way the services framework is organized may vary in specifics but broadly it follows a standard structure.

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At the very heart of support delivery model are the global support centers. These centers are the entry point for both remote "phone homes" and customer calls. In each center, the resources, structures, processes and technologies tend to be duplicated to ensure knowledge redundancy and speedy response and resolution.

A wealth of knowledge and expertise exists within these centers and in the global services organization. In order to share that knowledge with other parts of the organization, and more importantly with customers, organizations typically have various competency centers and solution centers around the world.

Organizations today invest heavily on training their support personnel. Various training centers today exist across the globe ensuring skills development and intelligence building towards enhanced service satisfaction.

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Most of such support centers work together, using the “follow-the-sun” methodology and a formal call-handling and escalation procedure. This approach guarantees that service delivery is always consistent, top-quality, and available across the globe.

India Advantage

Despite the recent slowdown due to the global economic downturn, the Indian information technology sector continues to show strong growth prospects. India is slowly emerging as a preferred destination for global enterprise product support services due to the many advantages that it offers.

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In the last decade, India has grown to be the desired destination for global IT outsourcing thanks to the government policies and support that made this possible. The strong tertiary education, skilled workforce with expertise in new technologies and the huge English proficient workforce with process quality focus and entrepreneurial skills, get India the comparative advantages over other countries like China.

Moreover, the growth of the Indian Market has created a reverse brain drain of sorts by opening up a lot of opportunities for growth domestically. The operational cost effectiveness of India continues to appeal. The technical climate of India fosters innovation and gives way to core product engineering and R&D work thereby creating the India advantage that the global companies seek to leverage.

With the business of enterprise product support services evolving as a strong part of the Indian IT space, companies are seeking new ways to increase customer value and strengthen customer relationships. This need has led to the formation of the Global Enterprise Product Support Forum by the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) Mission on Knowledge and Skills (CII-GEPS).

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This is a body formed to spearhead and accelerate India's transition as a preferred destination for global enterprise-level product support services. The Forum will work towards enabling enterprise product support service providers to optimally leverage the potential of talent in India to service customers globally.

As per earlier IDC estimates, worldwide software support and maintenance business currently stands at USD 145 billion (2007), growing at a CAGR of 7.8 percent (2007-2012) and is poised to reach USD 212 billion by 2012.

The enterprise product support services industry in India will witness a significant momentum in future with total revenue from the industry increasing to USD 10.7 billion by 2012, from 1.4 billion last year, a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 49 per cent, an IDC study said.

There is a significant growth momentum and IDC forecasts that the global enterprise product support services industry in India will grow to accommodate 15 per cent of the global enterprise product support workforce by 2012, requiring 60,000 employees in comparison to approximately 9,800 employees in 2007. All in all, the future looks bright for global services in India.

(Sarv Sarvanan is the VP and MD, EMC India Center of Excellence. The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of CIOL)

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