EXL eyes new revenue streams

Shubhendu Parth and Shweta Khanna

NEW DELHI: Not satisfied with its 47 percent growth in 2002-03, the BPO major EXLservice Inc wants to open up new, strategic revenue streams to augment its growth.

The company CFO and President Rohit Kapoor disclosed that the company has identified three new revenue streams that would yield highly profitable and scalable revenues. “Strategically these three streams would enhance our positioning as a BPO center and also as a corporate house that implements best of the breed processes,” he said.

While the company has already licensed its Performance Management and Process Tracking (PROMPT) tool to one of its clients, the company has also created an exclusive ‘Desktop Process Writing’ team capable of documenting, writing and updating business processes.

Beside, the company has also decided to don the consultant role and help global companies decide on what processes they need to outsource through one of its proprietary Opportunity Identification Process framework. “Identification of outsourcing opportunities is core to any BPO company, but our unique framework has given us the capability to extend this service as an independent business line,” Kapoor said. In its new avatar as a consultant, EXL also hopes to help companies develop their outsourcing roadmap and plans and thereby command rates comparable to the best in the industry–around $100 per hour for this service.

According to Kapoor, all tools and frameworks for the three services have been developed in house by EXL. “We wanted to monitor our performance for each engagement across all grids of our associates and PROMPT is what we came out with. It’s an invaluable tool that helps us track performance of every employee, thus enabling us to track the performance of any particular process,” he explained. While Kapoor claims that the tool has greatly helped it maintain high quality standards, he also hinted that COPC was planning to use PROMPT as the benchmark.

No wonder, the company and Kapoor are hopeful that more and more of its clients and also others would want to use the product not only to map performance for processes that have been outsourced to EXL, but also for processes being managed by the companies themselves or that have been outsourced to any other third party BPO company. “The only client who has taken license for PROMPT is using it to map one of its processes that they have not even outsourced to us,” Kapoor said adding that the software can easily compete with similar commercial products existing in the market and hence can command similar price.

Similarly, the Desktop Procedure Writing is a tool that not only helps in documentation of various processes, but also enables the 30-member team of desktop process writers constantly monitor and update these processes in standard formats. “The service that has so far been used to map business processes of companies outsourcing work to us can now be extended as a separate line of service–that of mapping business processes–irrespective of the outsourcing deal,” Kapoor said.

According to Kapoor, while the company is focusing on completing the first phase of its Rs 45-crore Pune facility by end 2003 and the second phase by May 2004, the three new opportunities are also top on the EXL agenda–the company expects the three new operations to contribute approximately five to 10 percent of its total annual revenues.

With the new facility coming up and profitable revenue streams in making, EXL might just redefine the rule of the game for BPO companies in India.

(CNS)