BPO

The Indian publishing BPO industry is expected to grow at an estimated rate of 35 per cent per annum and become a $1.46 billion industry by 2010, Puducherry CII Vice Chairman Sriram Subramanya said on Thursday. Addressing a conference on Publishing BPO Services, organized by CII in Chennai, Subramanya said Chennai had emerged as a global hub for publishing BPO services and the Indian publishing BPO services industry had grown phenomenally over the years. Several global publishers are off shoring their publishing services to India, making the country a publishing BPO services hub of the world, hesaid.''There is an accelerated trend of acquisitions, which is likely to intensify as more players look to acquire new capabilities, clients, market presence, offshore capacity and onshore capability,” he said
Subramanya said the industry was facing challenges due to recession in the global economy, the rupee
Appreciation and emergence of new media.''The publishers' expectations are increasing in terms of speed to market, consistent quality, end-to-end services, reduced pricing, multiple and complex deliverables, need to deal with fewer suppliers,'' he said adding ''there is an increasing demand supply gap on the manpower side combined with high attrition and increasing cost.’ Service providers should, therefore, consider bundled service offerings (BPO with AO/ITO) or business-process-unit-type arrangements, to improve 'client stickiness' in a BPO engagement, -Gartner. Another reason for BPO firms to go for integrated IT-BPO deals is the absence of the labor arbitrage opportunity in the Indian BPO market. North American market still has a component of labor arbitrage while outsourcing that is not present in India. So, service providers catering to the domestic market have to offer greater efficiency at lower price points and convergence is one way to do it.Gartner said the Indian BPO market, which stood at $437 million in 2006, is growing at a CAGR of 29.3% and would reach $1.58-billion by 2011 and offers a huge opportunity for service providers to tap into. The IT research and advisory firm also found that in India, the preferred payment scheme is payment-per-transaction and shared-risk-and-reward model. Slightly more than three in five users in India prefer the per-transaction model, and one in five prefers the fixed-fee model, as against the preferred BPO contract .Payment scheme of fixed fee in Singapore and china. Gartner also asked BPO service providers to keep contracts with buyers flexible. "Keep contracts with Indian buyers flexible. As most buyer companies grow rapidly, it will be difficult for them to plan two years ahead for key performance indicators (KPIs) in contracts, let alone three to five years out, which is the typical contract duration of most BPO deals in more-mature regional BPO markets," Mr. Singh added