BPOs turn outsourcers to cut infrastructure costs
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 01 June 2009, 15:58 IST
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BPOs turn outsourcers to cut infrastructure costs
Mumbai: In a bid to cut costs without compromising on seat capacity, some of the India's outsourcing firms have tied up with telecom companies for outsourcing their own communications infrastructure, a model now known as "hosting services". Typically, BPOs have to incur a significant cost upfront in procuring technical requirements like automated call distribution system, dialers, dialer license and customer relationship management software to help connect its centre in India to clients across the world. Now, hosting services ease the burden on BPOs in both installation of these technologies, and more importantly, their maintenance. Telcos, such as Verizon, Qwest and Genesys, are tapping BPOs with these "on-premise" services. According to Shrikant Parab, Director for global BPO operations at CDC Global Services, a U.S.-based company with call centers in Mumbai and Pune, the hosting services model helps a typical call center with 25-100 seats in saving Rs 35-40 lakh. Raman Roy, who's Quatrro, a BPO that provides mortgage and legal solutions among others, too, has jumped into the hosting bandwagon and he thinks this new strategy will change the way the BPO industry has been working. With hosting services, BPO players say, all that a call centre will need to go on-stream are switches, routers, headsets and computers. "If we have to put in place the infrastructure, we will also need to hire those who have experience in operating hardware and call centre software. This will cost us about Rs 10-15 lakh per annum," said Vikas Gupta, VP operations , Salient Business Solutions, the BPO arm of the Avantha Group. "The customer pays only a fixed sum of money for the number of seats they contract with us. As the number goes up, the price per seat comes down," said Yazad Boga, Head of Hosted Contact Center Services of Tata Communications, one of the telcos that offers such solutions to BPOs. India's IT outsourcing industry is valued at $47 billion.

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