XCHANGING - Services to Help Your Business Grow Date:   Friday , September 03, 2010 In the 1990s, when the world was jittery about the success of IT sector, which could not earn astounding profits due to ineffective business models, David Andrews, CEO of Xchanging could predict that this business would stay in a long run. At a point when, IT did not have any relevance to a profit making business, Andrews established Xchanging with a view to provide business processing services in Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, technology, procurement and customer administration across various industries in the field of manufacturing, banking, insurance, real estate and retail. Proper maintenance of non-core activities prevents interference in the flow of operations in any organization. Putting this idea into action, Xchanging was established in 1999. When the world was reeling under the Y2K turmoil, Indian IT companies gained recognition by delivering solutions to these issues for many companies at a price much lower than what was demanded in other developed nations. During this time, when India was considered as a preferred destination for outsourcing services, Xchanging came to India in 2001 to cash on the low cost benefit, easy availability of talent and the discrepancy in time zone. With this motive, they had established their units in Gurgaon, Chennai and Bangalore. The company had forecasted that organizations will outsource certain activities like HR, accounts, finance and other functions to be more cost effective. Out of the total employee count of 9,000 employees, over 300 employees have been employed by Xchanging in India, who target all the sectors and manage clients from different domains. Coming to India must have been a wise decision but that was not all to stay in a business. There were certain challenges which the company had to face. Apart from the cost factor, Xchanging wanted to maintain a global balance in its business by taking advantage of the difference in time zone. In order to train about the global culture to these 300 people employed by the company in India, Xchanging had got a team of domain experts from various countries who have successfully managed operations for its clients before. This is their step towards maintaining a global culture worldwide. The team of experts trains them to cement the gap between different cultures and provide the best of their services to suit the needs of their customers as the responsibility to maintain a global balance in their services to the clients vests on their employees in India. India has a diverse business environment with startups, small sized, mid sized and large sized industries. Xchanging eyed on these businesses through ‘Enterprise Partnership’ in which the company establishes partnership agreement with clients rather than negotiating for a service oriented fee, which according to them defines success for a short term. Through ‘Enterprise Partnership’ they engage with their customers to meet their long term and short term requirements and hold themselves responsible for the success or failure of their customers. With the desire to stay a step ahead of its competitors, they orient their activities towards ‘outcome based outsourcing’ through which they take responsibility of sharing the risk and performance related gains with their customers. “We are not just a business process outsourcing (BPO) unit. We are more oriented towards outcome based outsourcing. It is not about adopting back end jobs and taking responsibility of operations accomplished at a lower cost but to share the risk, responsibility and performance with our customers,” says Nimish Soni, Managing Director of Xchanging, India. If one has to analyse the importance of ‘Enterprise Partnership’ in all the business segments, then this strategy seems to be rewarding to any client, seeking service from Xchanging. If ‘Enterprise Partnership’ is rendered to a startup, the expertise of the established company will back up the startup, which usually holds back its plans due to unavoidable circumstances. In case of SMB industries, the strategy would strengthen the client’s business and when it comes to large sized companies, ‘Enterprise Partnership’ would ensure that the services outsourced to Xchanging would be well managed by the outsourcing company that has undertaken the responsibility to share the profit margin or mitigate for the loss, if it ever occurred. The difference in time zone helps the company to maintain a global balance and their operations in India are classified into two different segments. In the technology services segment, technological solutions are provided to the customers worldwide and the Global Processing segment provides business processing services. Xchanging is engaged with leading banks like State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, UCO Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank etc. in the area of integration, application support, DR set-up and training for the SWIFT infrastructure and AML solutions to facilitate the international and domestic financial messaging and payment processing. Some banks supported by Xchanging host their international entities into their Indian System Infrastructure environment as global hub for these entities. Xchanging also provides a hosted service to the customers in the region through its Service Bureau which enables those institutions to utilize world class business applications in a shared environment. In order to add value to their services, they act as a concentrator for their messaging processes to meet their customers’ demands. Through the lean processing method, the company provides risk mitigations services to its clients that would reward their customer both qualitatively and quantitatively. To maintain its quality in performance, the global company, measures its activities in terms of quantitative and qualitative outputs, customer satisfaction and service levels on a monthly basis. Managing back office work is quintessential for every organization. Proper maintenance of non-core activities prevents interference in the smooth functioning of an organization. While Andrews consulted one of his clients, he realized that getting back end jobs delivered on time would mean a lot to businesses handling large scale business operations. Any business unit taking this responsibility would get strong over the years. This was the whole idea behind establishing Xchanging and in a span of over a decade, the outsourcing company has expanded in 42 countries across the globe. Xchanging believes in the capability of manpower in tier II and tier III cities in India. To ensure cost effectiveness for their customers, the company is venturing into tier II and tier III cities in India. Xchanging has already set a low carbon processing centre for 1000 people in Shimoga, a tier II city in Karnataka. Quite convinced with the quality of manpower in their centre at Shimoga, the company plans to open up more outsourcing centres in such cities, where they can manage operations at a much lower cost. Xchanging has adopted this measure to deal with recessionary pressures, which compels a business to shut down its operations, leaving people jobless. Such a step would also encourage IT penetration to tier II and tier III cities.