A Beautiful Mind

Is this hype or its right........??

If you follow Indian financial press, there is no doubt that the Indian BPO industry has firmly and unequivocally, arrived. But is this really the case? I was somehow trying hard to restrain myself from not writing this article but every day newspapers are littered with proud press releases of companies adding seats, adding people, adding infrastructure, opening new centers and expanding……so I simply can’t control to question it…….
** THE FACTS** Even though the entire BPO industry in India employs just 170,000 people (Citigroup alone employs 1.5 times that number); even though the largest company in the industry is way under $ 100 million in revenues; even though General Motors alone generates greater revenue in 3 working days than total Indian BPO revenues in a year; even though there are no industry benchmarks for performance; there is a unshakeable belief that BPO is here to stay and what we are doing is right.
**THE PROBLEM** The problem, simply put, is this – there is insufficient emphasis and quality managerial thought being applied to strategy and direction. Every BPO company in India wants to grow as fast as possible and as a result, there is a mad scramble for size.
Imagine a child who goes through the education system with no specific thought to what he wants to be when he grows up – he is largely influenced by parents or peer groups and has a no more than average chance of maximising his potential in life. There are enough of us who have done that and while it is not disastrous, it does not create exceptional individuals. Real winners are fired by passion. They know what they want to do; they go after it with focus and energy and they will stay with it for a long time regardless of what people say.
**LACK OF STRATEGY** In very much the same way, as long as the Indian BPO companies do not have a clear vision around what they want to be when they “grow up”, they will always be influenced by what everyone else is doing and run with the herd.
There is very clearly a lack of strategy. Strategy is as much about deciding what NOT to do than about deciding what to do. If this be the case, you would expect a BPO company with a powerful strategy to actually turn down deals – something that is close to heresy in the BPO industry.
There are 3 kinds of BPO companies in India – the captives, the VC funded companies and the IT subsidiaries. The captives have no ability to choose the type of work they do (they are a cost centre working at the whim of the parent and only need to manage themselves as efficiently as possible); the independent companies are driven towards as rapid value creation as possible which makes slow, deliberate growth an unattractive choice.
This only leaves the BPO subsidiaries of IT companies. Their positioning is a longer term play which gives them a greater ability to take a strategic approach to the market. If the Indian BPO industry does not have non standard thinking, non standard business models and the courage to experiment, the daring to be different, we will lose the initial lead we have over our competitors. The real battle is not between one Indian BPO company and another but between India and China.
We need our BPO workforce to see the industry as a place which can give them long term and fulfilling career opportunities and not as a place where they come to get their accents neutralised and move on. We need the customers to see us as a strategic, viable and low risk alternative to “doing it themselves” rather than as a tactical answer to next quarter’s earnings problem.
If we get it right, we will dominate; if not, we will follow. If we have the foresight, the staying power and the strategic vision, we will do it. If not, the world is not a forgiving place. It is once in many lifetimes opportunity … and it is ours to lose.

Excogitated by a_beautifulmind @ 12:52 PM