Mumbai-based BPO company Aegis has more employees overseas (27,000) than in India (20,000). Its operations are spread across ten countries, from the US and Argentina through Kenya and South Africa to Australia.
24/7 Customer has 3,000 employees in India, and 6,000 overseas, in countries like the Philippines, China, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
And many other BPO companies are headed in the same direction3—setting up a combination of onshore, nearshore and offshore centres.
In BPO parlance, onshore refers to a location very close to the customer location, nearshore may be in a neighbouring country, and offshore at a distant location.
The traditional offshoring model of BPO is changing fast as customers look for global delivery platforms.
Previously, it was often called a “lift and shift” model. You lift a certain process and shift it to a low-cost destination like India or the Philippines.
Now, BPO firms say they are under pressure to set up part of the operations close to customer locations to work closer together and also to avoid charges about job losses in the home country.
Keshav Murugesh, group CEO of BPO major WNS , says customers today are focused on working with partners who are knowledgeable about their business.
“They want providers to interact with them closely. So it is about knowing the clients’ business better, understanding the domain better and actually helping them with their topline and bottomline.
We can’t just say we are going to take the work and move it to some developing country; it has to be a combination of onshore and offshore,” he says.
Raman Roy, MD of Quatrro BPO Solutions , echoes that: “Customers today want to outsource 100% of their processes, over 60% done onshore or nearshore and the rest done offshore.”
Rohit Kapoor, CEO of EXL Services , points out that Indian IT firms have been following this integrated onshoreoffshore model very successfully for decades. “That’s the way to go. It shows maturity.”
Companies are also setting up centres in multiple geographies to access the best talent available for particular processes. “If you want to handle high-end processes like mortgages, brokerages, underwritings, litigation, etc you need to move where domain experts with practising licences are available,” says Roy.
But going global, to higher cost locations, means margins get squeezed. But companies say their absolute profits are still growing since the size of the pie, and hence the revenues, are growing.
“If my margins drop from 15% on $200 million to 12% on $500 million, I’m still earning more dollars,” Murugesh says.
Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/outsourcing/Desi-BPOs-hiring-more-abroad/articleshow/6959725.cms
