Call Centre, Data Centers and BPO

SEEKING TO CUT costs in today's sluggish economy, U.S. and European companies are capitalizing on the latest buzzword in India: BPO (business process outsourcing). Starting with call centers and other CRM services, companies are either setting up their own BPO centers or outsourcing to a growing number of Indian BPO companies a wide variety of internal processes, ranging from finance and accounting to human resources functions such as payroll management, and transaction processing.

Similar to India's software services business, BPO opportunities are predicated on the availability of low-cost, English-speaking manpower in India.

"To the extent that software services are about 50 percent cheaper [than in the United States], it is likely that business process outsourcing would benefit at around the same order of cost savings," said Roland Wee, a fund manager at ING Investment Management, based in The Hague, Netherlands.

BPO services are less expensive to carry out in India. "We estimate the current capital cost per seat in India to be between $7,000 and $17,000 depending on the nature of the BPO services offered," said Prasad Baji, assistant vice president at Edelweiss Capital, a Mumbai, India-based investment bank. "The cost of a similar facility in the U.S. can be about two to three times this amount."
In the last couple of years, India has emerged as one of the preferred countries for setting up of call centers. Many companies including GE, iDLX, Bechtel, British Airways, Dell Computers, Bharti Telecom have already chosen India as the base for their new global call centers. These are choices made for solid, practical reasons which guarantee them competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Many banks - ICICI, HDFC, Standard Chartered, Citicorp, American Express to name a few- telecom service providers and infotech companies - Lotus, Hewlett Packard, 3Com etc. have deployed call centers for better customer support and care.

Summary

Call Centers have clearly emerged as one of the most favored of all IT enabled services. On one hand, this is due to the success and prominence achieved by call centers already operating in India. On the other hand, global call centre industry has proven to be amongst the most stable revenue growth centers amongst all related services. The enthusiasms of global corporations as well as domestic entrepreneurs are validated by some of the inherent advantages enjoyed by India. Further encouragement through proactive encouragement by Government of India to promote this industry augurs well for India emerging as the preferred choice for setting up call centers in India.