Bye bye BPO
The Business Standard newspaper in India reported last week that a lot of the terminology used within the IT industry for outsourcing will soon change. Expressions such as offshoring, or business process outsourcing (BPO) will all be consigned to the wastepaper basket of history as business models change and we no longer use these terms.
This is obvious to say the least. I might even remind the editor of the Business Standard that Pope Benedict is, indeed, a Catholic. In fact, it is the business media and industry analysts that propagate many of these terms. If the business press stops using the acronym BPO then it’s likely that the term would soon decline in use.
The more important point though is that industry in general is changing – particularly services at present as manufacturing went through globalisation rather earlier. The way a company is constructed is very different today to how a company looked 20 years ago. I’m in the process of forming a new company myself right now and I’m asking myself the question, “do I actually need to hire anyone at all, or can I just contract all this out to experts?”
Outsourcing, offshoring, BPO and so on, all these terms will be consumed within the general supply chain of future organisations – maybe all these terms will just be replaced by partnership?
I agree, outsourcing is so commonplace today and key to the success of many businesses, that it really doesn’t require so many expressions or even euphemisms for that matter!
Certainly, from our experience as a Managed Service Provider, we see our outsourced relationships as very much a partnership and a business enabler.
Last year, we linked with a Network Operations Centre in Hyderabad, who were looking to partner with a European operation. We wanted to provide proactive monitoring of our customers' networks 24/7 and didn’t have the people and resources to be able to devote the time to it. However, we found our team in Hyderabad to be adapt at monitoring and remote maintenance and they operated around the clock. They are so good at what they do that they are now a fully-fledged member of our operation. Right from the start, they were dedicated to learning our technologies as well as operating an Xperta only NOC, using the same Xperta locally employed staff. The customer doesn’t care that our operation is split between London and India, but ask any of them, and our service has dramatically improved thanks to our new partners.
I think outsourcing has progressed so much that it’s less (or should be less) about cost-cutting and more about forming partnerships that can be mutually beneficial to the companies involved and the end customer. There’s no need for it to be a bad word – it can be a win-win all around if it’s done for the right reasons and integrated properly so that it really is a partnership.
Xperta Technology
www.xperta.com
Posted by: Christoper Brisley | Monday, 28 July 2008 at 03:36 PM
I do not agree that BPO comanies are going from India , in a recent survey by a newspaper it was told that BPO industry is going to increase by 28% and it will only go up from here, Clearly companies like www.cleaveglobal.com hold the key to success of BPO industry in India.
Posted by: amar.rajput79 | Thursday, 31 July 2008 at 10:02 AM