Exult sees captive centre scoring over IT services
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 24 September 2003, 19:30 IST
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MUMBAI: The Nasdaq-listed human resource business process outsourcing firm, Exult, expects more growth from the captive centre in Mumbai, its fifth globally, when compared to its IT services business equally outsourced between Indian vendors HCL Technologies and Hexaware. Exult’s captive centre in Mumbai does processing activities such as managing payroll, accounts payable, data collection, data capturing and employee care. “These activities are closer to Exult’s core business and for competitive reasons they have been restricted to a captive centre,” Exult, president and COO, Kevin Campbell told ET. The captive centre with 250 people now, is expected to grow to 300 people by December ’03 and is capable of employing between 1,500-3,000 people in three years time, Campbell said. The firm said that it will invest $10-$20m towards growing operations in India. Exult provides HR services such as benefits administration, recruiting and staffing, relocation and expatriate support, learning, employee contact centre, employee self service internet tools, and accounting. Exult has been outsourcing IT services and maintenance activities to Indian vendors for some time now. The company’s relationship with domestic vendors will continue despite its growing BPO presence in India. “We expect our captive outfit to be as competitive as any other third-party BPO firm operating in India,” Campbell said. The Irvine, California-based Exult provides HR BPO services through its three centres in the US and one in the UK. Some of Exult’s customers include BP, Bank of America, International Paper, Prudential Financial, Unisys Bank of Montreal, Safeway and Pactiv. Exult, recently acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers international BPO operations for $17m adding about 550 PwC BPO employees, and a number of multi-lingual professionals with cross-border finance and accounting skills.

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