OUTSOURCING TO INDIA - TRANSFORMING VALUE AND SHIFTING EXPECTATIONS
India offers significant improvements in quality and productivity for overseas companies, higher than the facilities in the parent location.
The NASSCOM-McKinsey Study 2002, highlights the advantages that an India-based ITES-BPO center offers over its counterpart in the US or UK markets. Taking the example of the banking and financial services vertical, the NASSCOM-McKinsey report shows that an India facility performs better than a UK or US based facility on key parameters such as number of correct transactions/number of total transactions; total satisfaction factor; number of transactions/hour and average speed of answer.

India’s quality initiatives: achieving maturity

The following factors define the quality environment existing across the ITES-BPO sector:

Indian ITES-BPO companies are on a ascending curve when it comes to quality.
While organizations that have certified to the ISE 9000 family are migrating to the new ISO 9000:2000 standards,organizations assessed on the CMM framework are aligning their QMS to the new CMMI framework.
Organizations working “end-to-end” quality are continuing to invest and upgrade their CRM and ERP initiatives.
Many leading Indian ITES-BPO companies have received recognized quality certifications such as the COPC.

India’s quality edge
The ITES-BPO sector’s focused attention on quality has enabled it to offer the following advantages to outsourcing customer organizations:

Access to highly skilled personnel, who are even more qualified than personnel working for shared services centers in the existing parent location
Access to service facilities by all divisions of a company (in the case of in-house providers) and across different companies (in the case of third party providers), facilitating the transfer of best practices across all of them
Dramatic improvements in process quality and productivity compared to those in the parent location
Continuous quality and productivity improvements—a year-on-year improvement in the process metrics

Quality preparedness of the Indian ITES-BPO industry

NASSCOM under its charter of activities for the ITES-BPO forum conducted a preliminary survey to assess the Quality preparedness of the Indian ITES-BPO players. The sample size of 50 corporates was composed of third party players with minimum revenues of Rs. 20 crore.

The study checked out Indian ITES-BPO players on parameters such as level of awareness and understanding on various quality standards applicable in the ITES-BPO sector; extent of business dependence on Quality processes; different quality standards practiced by the players; current policies and new ventures for quality initiatives.

India’s Value Proposition
With IT budgets facing a major squeeze in these tough economic times, global companies are focusing on reducing costs, cutting IT investments and outsourcing certain processes that allow them to concentrate on their core competencies.
In such an environment, where outsourcing by overseas companies is becoming the need of the hour, India’s prospects in this emerging opportunity segment are getting brighter.

The country’s unmatched value proposition for customers—based on the factors such as cost savings, productivity gains and quality improvements have given India an edge in the global ITES-BPO marketplace. India is taking the lead in this environment on account of the following factors:

Abundant, skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is being harnessed even by ITES hubs such as Singapore and Ireland
Improving telecom and other infrastructure which is matching global standards
Strong quality orientation among players and their focus on measuring and monitoring quality targets
Fast turnaround times and the ability to offer 24x7 services based on the country’s unique geographic location that allows for leveraging time zone differences
Proactive and positive policy environment which encourages ITES-BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures
A friendly income tax structure, which places the ITES-BPO industry on par with IT services companies.