Ray For Hope For BPO Employees In Kenya !

The government of Kenya has assured BPO job seekers to provide outsourcing jobs, after there were rising number of job cuts by business process outsourcing industry.

Safaricom, one of the most profitable companies in East and Central Africa, demonstrated that, private sector is not about to outsource its non core services when it opened its Jambo Contact Center incurring a cost of 800 million Kenya shillings( US$10.6 million)

Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board, the agency charged with marketing Kenya's BPO industry said that, the government is ready to outsource its non core, non sensitive services to the local BPO service provider. This is because Safaricom still does not understands the benefits of outsourcing of outsourcing.

The subscribers of Safaricom were happy with the customer services provided by a local BPO company but still the BPO industry was in loss. The local contact center has currently employed 1,500 staff and can handle 100,000 calls from the 13 million Safaricom subscribers.

Gilda Odera, the managing director of Skyweb-Evans and chairperson of the Kenya BPO Society said that, it was a matter of time before Safaricom will be forced to outsource work as a part of the contact. Safaricom should play a part of their corporate responsibility by outsourcing their non core functions to one or two local BPO companies.

The CEO of Safaricom Michael Joseph said that in the launching of the contact center, the company will effectively allow to handle customer queries and be a medium between the company and the subscribers.

According to the managing director of the outsourcing company Cascade Global,Peres Were, the government is not doing much to promote local outsourcing;the digitalization process is going too slow. The BPO industry has been trained on various aspects of the government services and the companies are waiting for the results.

The government of Kenya is still not ready to digitize the business processes even before the present fibre-optic cables became operational. The process has been slowed down due to lack of fund for the local and international BPO marketing strategies.

Regarding the era of digitization at the Ministry of Lands,the ICT Board's Kukubo argued that, the board had sent a proposal to the cabinet, paving the way for a public-private partnership, and the document is yet to be approved.

Kukubo said that digitizing records is only one such aspect at the Ministry of Lands, they need to periodically maintain the overall manual system and introduce a system from the most basic to the most complex at the ministry.

The Ministry of Land is one of the busiest government agency and has been considered to be one of the most corrupt areas due to sky rocketing prices of the land. The process of ownership is quite prolonged and tedious. It requires people to travel from upcountry to Nairobi even for simple tasks finding the owner of the property.

Telecom Services In BPO Is Expected to Rise High !

The outsourcing revenues from the telecom sector in India are expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate(CAGR) of 31% to nearly $ 2 billion by year 2012. This study made by Ernst & Young, is first of its kind on the potential of the domestic BPO.

Bharti Telecom has been growing at a CAGR of 41% in the past two years. The telecom industry has been adding around 10 million subscribers every month with a subscribers base of 375 million from the year 20008-2009.

Bharti Airtel is one of the largest mobile service provider. It played a major role by outsourcing many of its non core functions in the year 2005. It has set an example for other Indian companies and is changing the way that these companies used to function putting pressure on employees to follow the suit, the consultancy said in study. Telecom revenues made up 50% of the domestic BPO revenues which was $661 million in the year 2008.

The telecom domain has already witnessed a couple of large outsourcing deals in the recent months and the trend is expected to continue as said by Ernst & Young partner Milan Sheth. The trend started in the year 2005 when Bharti telecom signed a deal of $272.2-million with four global companies which were IBM Daksh, Teletech, Mphasis and HTMT to outsource its call centers.

According to report the telecom sector in BPO is of great demand for customer care, sales and marketing. Customer services is one of the key needs in telecom industry because this can help in increasing sales and lead generation.

The telecom services in BPO is also a job creator. Last year it generated employment for nearly 1,22,440 in BPO firms- a number that is set to double to 2,94,444 in 2012. After telecom, banking is the biggest employment generator for domestic BPO firms.

According to reports, the banking sector employed around 70,100 people in the year 2008. These figures are expected to go up to 2,25,900 by the year 2012. The two sectors combined together constituted 80% of the domestic BPO revenues and the revenue is expected to reach to $6 billion in the year 2012.

Reputed Californian Company To Open New Call Center in Indiana !

A reputed company in California is planning to open a new customer service center in Indiana that will employ nearly 600 employees.

Alorica Inc. announced on Wednesday that, it would open the new call center in Lafayette at an area of 49,900 square feet. The area was formerly occupied by Silent Thunder , an indoor go-kart track. The Chino-California based company already employs more than 750 employees at an another call center in Terre Haute.

The CEO of Alorica Andy Lee said that the new center in Lafayette speaks volumes about their feelings in the state of California. The company said that it will run a new call center for a telecommunication client which the officials did not disclose.

Alorica has more than 7500 employees across 16 locations and expects to hire more employees for the Lafayette center by this June.

Infosys Forecasts Outsourcing Prospects In the Middle East !

Bangalore: As the economy of the developed market shrinks, Infosys Technologies, India's second largest software company is seeing good outsourcing prospects in the Middle East, as said by a senior officials on Wednesday .

Nasdaq-listed Infosys, has acquired three deals in the global markets over a span of five months as told by Infosys senior vice president Subhash Dhar in press meet. Last month, Infosys forecast its first decline in annual revenue as the global demand for outsourcing slowed down due to economic meltdown. This was halting stage for India's Burgeoning BPO service providers.

India's $60 billion IT outsourcing sector which provides outsourcing solutions from software coding to managing computer networks and call center services faces a threat to the rising competition from the global rivals such as IBM and Accenture.

On the contrary the extreme panic from the R-word is slowing down. The Indian BPO market is striving to overcome the present economic crisis. The Indian market is already showing some signs of recovery and starting from the next quarter of June to July, the investment will be back on track.

The spending on technology is happening and will continue to grow. Investments will continue to grow at a slower pace than a year ago. Today, the companies have become cautious regarding the business cases and investment pertaining to it. Unlike before, Infosys is spending quality time in terms of calculations and realizations of ROI.

The Big Gaint Indian Companies Plan To Outsource

India, one of the most preferred BPO service providers in the world, is now outsourcing software and back office projects Egypt as its vendors. Wipro technologies, a corporation based in India has planned to outsource their domestic work to more populous state in Arab country to leverage lower costs and availability of skilled labor.

Wipro has some top customers like Bharti Airtel,Dena Bank, and Unitech Wireless said that, Egypt is emerging as one of the most attractive location for offshoring due to 10 to 15 percent lower costs , availability of technical skills across different programming language including Windows and Unix.

Anand Sankaran, senior VP and business head, India and Middle East Business, Wipro said that ,the company wants to outsource 20 percent of their work to Egypt. Presently,the company is offshoring jobs from middle east and India to Egypt.

The attractive subsidies of Egypt that create local employment that includes incentives like waiver on training costs and salaries for new recruitment is compelling companies like Wipro to offshore work to the country.

The government is providing different subsidies towards the training programmes of new hires. Wipro is planning to hire 400 new professionals in Egypt within a span of two years. Wipro presently hires 100 professionals at its Cairo centre. Every year almost 30,000 out of 3,30,000 students graduating from Egyptian universities are from computing and engineering background.

For businesses, lower corporate tax rates along with other facilities make Egypt one of the thriving destination to invest. Last year, Egypt attracted FDI worth USD13.2 billion, and by 2010, the country aims to have FDI of around USD10 billion. Hazem Abdulazim, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency ITIDA, Egypt said that, country has already reduced taxes from 40 percent to 20 percent and ITIDA does help multinationals with incentives like subsidizing the training of professionals.

At a time when vendors and customers are seeking alternatives to rising costs, outsourcing policies in Egypt will help many companies who want to outsource work. The low wage inflation of Egypt which is 5 percent compared to 10 to 15 percent in other emerging locations and the low currency fluctuation of Egyptian pound compared to US dollar will help to keep the operation costs in the region stable.

Wipro is one of the largest companies in India which has its presence in Egypt, other companies like TCS are also planning to start their operations in Egypt.

According to a research firm Gartner, Indian customers need to look beyond the limits of their geographical boundaries much like their western counterparts.

Gartner predicts that Indian companies will increasingly offshore work and it will a priority on their outsourcing strategies. This will result in outsourcing deals offered by some Indian companies that include high end services like design,architecture and business consultancy.

However, Egypt does not pose as threat to India for being a global service provider. When it comes to IT/ ITes sector, India and Egypt complement each other and utilize their strengths to open new avanues. This will help India to build partnership with the Egyptian companies.

BPO's Thrives To expand Admist Financial Crisis

Dagupan City: Admist the shrinking economy and growing financial turmoil, the business process outsourcing(BPO) industry in Philippines continues to grows since its inception in the year 2001.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroya said that, the benefits attained in the country's economy due to BPO service providers have reached the grassroots. She said that, they have created the BPO industry from almost nothing in the year 2001. At the start of administration, there were only 4000 employees but today there are 400,000 BPO employees.

The Philippine BPO industry has grown by leaps and bounds. According to the records of BPO industry in the country, there were 101,000 employees. This number rose to 163,000 in the year 2005 and again in the year 20006 this number rose to 236,000. During the year 2007, the number of BPO employees had reached 300,000 then again it increased to 372,000 in the year 2008. Currently there are 400,000 employees in the BPO industry.

The Philippine BPO industry has received great support from president Arroya in terms of wider access to communication and information technology. There has been provision of broadband services in cities and other developed areas. Accredited companies like Ecozone information technology are entitled to a holiday from the revenue generated and local taxes for four and eight years.

Arroya said that,they worked to speed up the telecommunication network infrastructure by bringing down the cost of connectivity. The president added that, their role is to provide an environment for growth. Now, the third area of development is the human capital to provide world class service.

In the year 2008. a total of 26,454 students graduated from Pangulong Gloria Scholarship Program, out of which 17,650 have already been employed in call centers.

Speaking about the common people, Mic Cruz, a cyber agent was happy to get a job in a reputed call center because she is able to support her family well. Alejandra Manabat, a canteen owner said that, her canteen sales grew up because of the BPO service providers. A jeepney driver, Homini Intendencia is quite excited about his growing number of passengers even at night. Efren Borja, a real estate agent is able to provide a better lifestyle to his family due to the growing number of call centers in the nearby vicinity.

Salt Lake River Plans To Outsource Work

The Salt Lake River officials are planning to outsource 40 to 50 information technology workers job after there was job cut for nearly 100 employees this year. The utility officials had to reconsider their decisions to cut costs amidst the sluggish economic growth. They had to pursue a reasonable option to keep the utility rates low.

Regulators who are in charge of the other utilities in the state are concerned about this outsourcing, because SRP is a wing of political subdivision in the state. They said that outsourcing of jobs to other states or countries would not be allowed at other utility companies.


The officials at SRP have been meeting many BPO service providers to discuss how they would handle the utilities of the computer services. They would be requesting for proposals from the different companies to perform the work as said Kevin Nielsen, the information-technology services manager of SRP.

Some of the employees who do not deal with customer service will be replaced so that, SRP or the outsourcing company rehires them.

Nielsen said that, it is a mixed bag. Some companies have their data center in Tempe, one in Colorado, while others have their data center in India, Philippines or Brazil.

According to an analysis by EquaTerra, an international outsourcing consultancy, SRP spends more than the industry cost on its computer services. Of late, it has been considering to cut down costs for its information- technology division.

Mr. Nielson was not willing to disclose what SRP spends on the division as that would reveal the companies data and hamper their process of bidding on the outsourcing work.

The spokesperson for SRP, Scott Harelson said that, the shrinking economy is to be blamed. The revenue of the company has gone down tremendously but their expenses have relatively remained high. Therefore the company is looking at opportunities to save money and keep their rates relatively low.

SRP does not fall under the management of Corporation Commission such as other utilities such as Arizona Public Service Co. or Tucson Electric Power. Instead, a 14-member board of directors governs SRP.
Nielsen said that, it is still to be decided if the board will be asked to approve outsourcing. Some board members have approved of outsourcing their non core functions to global service providers.
Mr. William Arnett a board member said that “If it comes up, we'll look very hard at it and find out if it is really worth the savings”. He added that in this day and age, one has to look at everything that comes down the road. While others said they trusted SRP management.
Mario Herrera another board member said that "I'm not there to micromanage because that is not my job, I feel very confident in the people that run these different departments."
SRP directors will not consider outsourcing 40 to 50 jobs but other aspects too, as it too has been affected by the weak economy. The company was hit hard during recession. According to a report by Chief Financial Executive Mark Bonsall, during the month of March, SRP had nearly 40,000 fewer customers than projected.
SRP had reported a loss of $24 million in March alone, and hence had reduced its planned capital expenses for the month by $22 million. Before offering severance packages to 99 employees this year, 83 had accepted, while the downsized the contract workers, temps and unfilled positions.

Legal Process Outsourcing Needs To Be Developed In India

Maharashtra, India: The legal process outsourcing had garnered a lot of media attention in India, but still there is sizeable proportion of legal community that still needs to consider the legal services to low cost destinations.

The offshoring of legal process outsourcing services to India goes to way back in 1995 when law firm Bickel & Brewer initiated its captive process in India. The legal process outsourcing began to gain popularity around 2005. Within few years in business, the industry has made a profit of $225 million in revenues in the year 2008. However, this is only very small portion for the entire legal processing outsourcing industry. According to a recent survey results, the legal experts are not aware of the benefit of legal process outsourcing services. If it is addressed properly, the legal outsourcing in India is expected to grow by leap and bounds.

Most of the law firms are relatively new in terms of outsourcing and have not incorporated offshoring in their overall business strategy. A large number of law firms, irrespective of the size of their business are apprehensive about offshoring their legal work to BPO service providers in India. They have also expressed concerns regarding data security,client confidentiality and the quality of work being delivered.

The reduction in cost is one of the primary factor for offshoring legal services to India. The other significant drivers include client pressure to reduce costs by offshoring, increasing work pressure, time zone and competitors decision to offshore work. According to Neeraj Kandala the lead analyst of legal services, there is some awareness regarding the benefits of offshoring work. However majority of the benefits are not that substantial to overcome their concerns.

Data security and quality of work are some of the major concerns for the law firms. Most of the legal documents have confidential data and it is quite understandable that the law firms might have apprehensions with respect to security.

There are reputed and experienced offshore legal service providers that do take adequate precautions to ensure that there is no security breach. Therefore, the legal firms needs to be convinced regarding this. Further, the global BPO service providers need to win the confidence of the legal firms by providing quality work. This should be taken as a challenge for the provider community as the gap between the quality providers and not-so- good providers will remain a consistent problem until sufficient maturity is earned both by the legal firms and the service providers.

Recession Has No Affect On Sitel !

Sitel, one of the leading Business process outsourcing ( BPO) company in Philippines, expects its $1.8 billion business to grow by 30 percent this year. This is the same rate of growth which, it had in the last financial year and aims to find more opportunities in times of global recession.

This Tennessee-based company has 6 contact centers in the Philippines. According to Steve Barker the Chief Operating Officer of Asia Pacific Region, the country accounts for 10 percent of company revenue. He stressed that, despite the economic crisis in US their objectives for 2009 will not change if not better.

Mr. Barker also added that, this year being the most challenging time for the company but growth can come from anywhere. Their new clients might want some cost saving factor and will outsource work having some confidence in Philippines.

On Wednesday,Sitel formally launched its site in the country at One Julia Vargas, Pasig City. The company has an area of 3,000-square meter and has capacity for over 2,000 agent seat and is in the outskirts of Ortigas Business Center. The company is looking forward to expand in North and South Luzon. Sitel opened another center in Pasig at the Wynsum corporate Center with over 2,000 seats. The third facility is in Cyber One,Quezon City, with over 1,000 seats plus a fourth in Cybergate, Mandaluyong City, which has more than 780 seats.

In addition to all these, the BPO firm has two sites in Baguio City with more than 1,800 seats. The other site is in Baguio with 500 work stations. It is now being built and will be operational by end of July or August this year. The company is also utilizing 95 to 96 per cent of our capacity for this project.

The 6 local facilities service center of the BPO firm has an average of 58,000 customers and Filipino agents carry out some 1.5 million customer conversations per day. The company, in its 10 years of operations in Philippines has never lost a client due to performance issues.
Sitel, is among the top 50 BPO firms in the world. It carries out clients customer care and transaction processing needs via 6000 associates in 27 countries and has more than 155 facilities throughout North Europe, North America, South America, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Sitel began operations in the Philippines as a cost-effective contact center model for English language clients around the world. The country has evolved as a leading hub for global call centers owing to the Filipinos’ who have proficiency in English, which is the primary language of business.
These are some of the key benefits that attracted Sitel to the Philippines and making it a great market for offshore contact center support include:
• Availability of highly-motivated and skilled workforce
• A well developed country, with a stable economic and political situation
• Easier of access for visitors from around the world as no travel visa is required
• Reliable and high end redundant infrastructure
• Reduced operational costs.

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Common BPO terminologies

A: Abandoned Call: It is also known as lost call. This is call in which the call hungs up before it reaches an agent.

Adherence to schedule: It is general term which is used for an agent to refer that how well he/she has taken a call during a shift, time spent on handling calls, time spent on waiting for calls to arrive i.e availability of calls and the specific time the agent was available to take calls.

After Call Work: This is also known as wrap-up or post call processing(PCP).It is followed by an inbound transaction, this often includes data entry work, completion of forms, making outbound calls if necessary for completion of transaction. During this mode the agent is unavailable to take calls.

Agent: This is the person who handles inbound and outbound calls. He/ she is also known as customer service representative (CSR), telephone sales or service representative (TSR) or customer service professional.

Agent Group: It is also known as skills, queue or split group. It refers to the group of agents that share a common set of skills such as able to handle calls for customer support services.

Agent Call Out: This is an outbound call placed by an agent.

Agent Status: This refers to the status of an agent he or she is into like unavailable, after call work, talk time.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): It is one of the underlying factors for any call center distribution. ACD is a method for distributing incoming calls efficiently and equally among all call center agents. With the help of ACD the calls can be directed to the idlest agent within the group of agents. The agents in the ACD environment are assigned to a hunt group. In a hunt group the agents are trained to take calls on a specific topic. This is useful when high amount of calls is expected.


Answer Supervision: This is the signal sent by ACD or other device to the local or long distance carrier to accept a call. If the long distance charges apply then the billing starts for either for the agent or for the call center.

Audiotex: It is voice process facility that enables callers to automatically access the pre-recorded calls.

Auto Wrap-up: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically puts the agents into After Call Work (ACW) after they finish taking calls or disconnect the calls.

Automated Attendant: It is a voice processing capability that automates the function of the attendant It is kind of system that prompts the callers to respond to different choices like press one for sales,two for support etc. This is a automated program then coordinates with ACD and send the callers to the specified location.
Automatic Number Identification (ANI): This is one of the features of telephonic network that passes the number of the phone the caller is using in the call center. It is actually North American term and an alternative term for Calling Identification Number (CIN).

Auxiliary Work State: It is state when the agent is not taking calls, typically not associated with handling of calls.

Average Delay of Delayed Calls: This is the total delay for all calls divided by the number of calls that had to wait in queue.

Average Handling Time (AHT): The sum of average talk time and average after call work for a specified time period:


Average Speed of Answer (ASA): It is the total delay divided by total number of calls. It is also known as average delay.

Average Time to Abandonment: This is the average time the callers wait in queue before disposing a call.


B:

Base Staff: This is also called seated agents. This is the minimum number of agents required to achieve the required level of services and response time objectives for a given period of time. Seated agent calculations assume that the agents will be in their seats for the given time frame. There will fixed schedules which will add in extra agents to make up during the break time, absenteeism and other factors that can hamper the taking of calls.


Beep Tone: It is an audible notification that a call has arrived. It is also known as zip tone.

Blockage: These are the calls blocked from entering the queue.

Blocked calls: It is the call that cannot be connected immediately because no circuit is available at the time calls arrive.

Call Blending: This combines the total inbound and outbound agent group into one group of agents who are responsible for handling calls. It is system which is capable of blending the calls automatically; it puts the agents who are making outbound calls into inbound mode and vice versa.

Call by Call Routing: This is the process of routing each call to the desirable destination according to real time conditions.

Call Forcing: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically delivers calls to the agent who are available and ready to take calls. The notification is through a beep tone but do not have to press the button to hear the call.

Call Vectoring: It is versatile method for routing incoming calls that can be combined with automatic call distribution to improve the efficiency. A call vector is series of call processing steps like providing ring tones, busy tones, music, announcements and queuing calls that define how calls can handled and routed. These steps are vector commands as it determines the type of processing those calls will undergo. The vector commands can direct the calls on the premises and off the premises to any skill group or hunt group. With the combination of different vector commands, the incoming callers can be treated differently depending on the time/date, importance of the call, the expected wait time or some other criteria.

Calls in queue: It is real time report that refers to number of calls received by the ACD system but is not yet connected to the agent.

Centum Call Seconds (CSS): It is a unit of telephone traffic measurement. The first C is the Roman numeral for 100. Here, 1 hour=1 Erlang= 60 minutes=36 CCS

Collateral Duties: This refers to the non phone tasks like data entry and is flexible in nature. This can scheduled for periods when the call load is slow.

Conditioning Routing: This is the capability of the ACD to route calls depending on the current situations. It works on “If then” programming statements.

D:

Data base call handling: It is an application, whereby the ACD works in sync with the database computer to process calls based on the information in the database.

Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS): It is the string of digits that the telephone network passes to the ACD to indicate the number the caller has dialed. The ACD can then process and report on that type of call according to the user defined criteria. One trunk group can have many DNIS number.

Dual -Tone Multifrequency (DTMF): It is a signaling system that sends pair of audio frequencies to represent digits on a telephone keypad. It is also used for the term touchstone (an AT&T trademark).

Dynamic Answer: This is a feature of ACD that automatically reconfigures the number of rings before the system answer calls based on the real time queue information. This feature helps in saving money for call centers.

E:

Envelope Strategy: A strategy where enough agents are scheduled to handle inbound call load and other types of work. Here the priorities are based on inbound call load. When the inbound call load is more, all agents handle calls but when the call flow is less, some agents are reassigned some work which do not have a fixed time frame.

Erlang: An Erlang is a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how busy a telephone facility over a period of time. An erlang of 1 applied to a particular telephone circuit indicates that the phone is 100% busy of the time. An erlang can be applied to the group of lines in a telephone trunk line.


Erlang B: It is a formula developed by A. K Erlang which is widely used to determine the number of trunks required to handle the known calling load over a period of one hour. The formula assumes that if callers get busy signals, those calls go forever. This formula is generally accurate in situation where there is few busy signals.

Erlang C : This formula calculates predicted waiting times which are based on three things, these are number of servers, the number of people waiting to be served and the average amount of time it takes to serve each person. It can also predict the resources which are required to keep the waiting times within the target. Erlang C assumes that no call has been lost so that it can overestimate the staff required.


Error Rate: This refers to the number of defective transactions or defective steps during a transaction.

Escalation Plan: A plan that specifies actions to be taken when the queue begins to build beyond acceptable levels.

F:

Fax on demand: A system that enables agent to request for document using the keypads of their telephone. The selected documents are delivered to the fax number they specify.

Full- Time Equivalent (FTE): This is term used in scheduling and budgeting, in which the numbers of scheduled hours are divided.

G:

Grade of Service: The probability that a call will not be connected to system because all trunks are busy. The grade of service is represented by "p.01" which meand that 1% of calls will be "blocked."

H:

Handled Calls: It is the number of calls received and handled by the agent or by the peripheral equipment. It does not include the calls that receive busy signals or are abandoned.

Handling Time: This is the time spend by an agent in talk time after call work like handling a transaction. It can also refer to the time it takes for a machine to proess one transaction.

Help Desk: It refers to a call center which is set up to handle queries regarding the product installation, usage or problems. The term is used in the context of computer hardware and software support centers.

S:

Screen Monitoring: The capability of system that enables a supervisor or manager to remotely monitor the activities of an agent.


Service Level: It is also known telephone service factor. This is actually the percentage of incoming calls that are answered within a specific time i.e “A% of calls in B seconds”.

Speech Recognition: The capability of voice processing system to decipher the spoken words and phrases.


T1 Circuit: It is high speed digital circuit used for video, data, and voice with a band width of 1.544 megabits per second. It is the equivalent of twenty four (24) analog voice trunks.


Talk Time: The time an agent spends with a caller during a transaction.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) : It is protocol that governs the exchange of sequential data. This protocol was developed by US department of defense to link dissimilar computers across other kinds of network. It has since become a common standard for all commercial equipment and applications.

Trunk: This is a telephone circuit linking two switching systems. It is also called a line, circuit or exchange line.

Trunk Group: It is a collection of trunks associated with single periphery and used for common purpose.


Virtual Call Centre: It is a distributed call center that acts as a single site to handle calls and reporting purposes.

Voice Processing: It is a blanket term that refers to the combination of voice processing technologies. These include Voice Mail, Automated Attendant, Voice Response Unit (VRU), Audiotex and Faxback

Voice Response Unit (VRU): This is also known as Interactive Voice Response Unit (IVR) or Audi Response Unit (ARU). A VRU responds to the digits entered by the caller or the speech recognition. This is in the same way as that of a conventional computer which responds to keystrokes or clicks of mouse. When VRU is integrated with database computers, the callers can interact with the database to check the current information that is account balance and complete the transaction that is to make transfers between accounts.

BPO Services In India

The BPO services in India are categorized under two main heads which are outbound and inbound call center services. Call center is hub where larger volume of calls are received and made to prospective customers.

Inbound call center: An inbound call center facilitates inbound calls, where the customers can call up a help desk service for their queries like order,malfunctioning of product or for any kind of help. This is commonly known as customer support or customer service.

Outbound call center: An outbound call center is where the agents call up customer for promotional activities, market research or with the sole purpose of selling a product or services.

There are various types of inbound or outbound call centers based on their operations and functions, some of them are listed below:

Outbound call center services:

Telemarketing: This is also known as telesales in UK and Ireland. It is method of direct marketing in which the agent calls up prospective customers to sell their product or services. It can also include recorded sales pitch which are programmed and played over the phone via automatic dialing. In telemarketing, agents are trained in their conversational skills to enhance sales, promote new products and update customers with their current available services. Telemarketing services can increase the profits in a business.

Lead generation: It is one of the common marketing term that refers to the creation of leads of prospective customers. Lead generation can be used for various purpose which are list building,e-newsletter or for winning customers. Sales lead are generally on the based on demographic criteria such as FICO score, income,age or other criteria. The sales leads are generally followed by phone calls. Sales lead are a part of mortgage,credit, insurance and finance markets.

Debt collection: It is collection agency that pursues payment of debt from individuals or businesses. Most of debt collection agencies operate as agents of creditors and collect debt from defaulters for a certain payment or fees of the total amount recovered. There are certain rules and regulation which every debt collection agency has to follow.

Surveys: Surveys are also known market research as they are performed on demographic basis. It is basically carried out to understand the present market situation pertaining to product or services. These surveys benefit the companies so that they can improve the quality of their product according to the customers feedback. These surveys help the companies to understand a customer's requirement, enhance their offerings and for building up different advertising and marketing campaigns.

Inbound call center services:

Customer Service: It is service provided to the customers to satisfy their needs. A good customer service is the life blood of any business. A good customer service is all about retaining your existing customers. It is more than just keeping your customer's happy. An effective customer service deals with knowing your customer's needs, identifying your key activities,delivering best services and follow up. Most of the call centers agents are trained about the ethics of good customer service. An agent should be proficient enough to handle the queries of the customers over phone. The essence of a good customer service is building relationship with your customers.

Help desk: It is also a part of customer service in which an agent assist,guides,trouble shoots and offers solutions to the customers. This can related to any services like IT help support or any issue related to a product or service. A help desk support service supply the user with vital information on their queries and escalate it to an expert if needed. The help desk in call center not only answer to the queries but also identify the root issue.

Technical trouble shooting: It is kind of help offered to the customers for their IT- related issues. Today the role of tech support has increased which includes telesales,post sales technical queries, product support, network tech support,technical applications and support, on site tech support, remote support,remote IT management services. The main purpose is to provide 24 hours technical assistance to the customer. The tech support can be for range of products like mobile phones, television,computer or other electronic or mechanical goods. Most of the companies offer technical support for the products they sell. Technical support may be delivered over phone,via email or through website.

Order taking: The order taking services helps customers to place order via telephone. The agents process the order and answer to the customer's queries. Order taking services has become a major part of inbound call center services as it helps in increase of sales. It plays a supporting role in supporting and delivering important messages that make a business run. Telephone order taking is key part of operating a retail or any service industry.

These are some of the BPO services in India. With a professional and competent call center provider , a company can maximize its productivity and reduce its administrative tasks.

Are You aware Of The Present Security Standards For Outsourcing?

It is common conception that companies are caretakers of confidential information,trade secrets, valuable corporate assets,employee facilities,equipments and intellectual properties. Some of the companies also process personal details of their customer and employees, which are often subject to various laws regarding unauthorized disclosure, use and access. Most of the business process outsourcing companies develop, implement and maintain a customized set of security measures to protect or mitigate risk to these assets. The companies also take into account the value of the assets, confidential profile of the company which might be at risk and threat for any kind of misuse.

When a company outsources its function to a third party service provider, it should enter into a contract for various security measures. The service provider needs to maintain certain security standards that are restrictive as its own security standards. Most of the outsourced company need to comply with certain security measures which are as follows.

• Customer security standards

• Security standards of the service provider

• Additional security measures to bridge the gap between the standards of the service provider and customer.

There are certain tools through which companies can implement security measures in their company. These are SAS 70,the payment card industry standard,data security standard,27001 standard . These are some of the standard tools which used by the companies from a security perspective.

SAS 70: It is standard developed by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to audit the objectives of an outsourced company.

PCI: The PCI data security standard was developed by a major credit card company to protect the details of a credit card from fraudulent use. It has 12 mandatory requirements and more than 200 security measures like firewall configuration,anti-virus facilities,encryption,system password and system scanning.

ISO 27001: It is an international security management system developed by the international organization for standardization. ISO 27001 contains a list of 11 risk domains and over 100 controls. It also applies to entire business unit.

Nowadays, it is necessary that a company enters into a contract with the service provider to comply with the security measures. This is to ensure that there is no security breach on the part of the service provider. The SAS 70, PCI,and ISO standards are not just mere tools to ensure the security standards of the service provider. These tools can be used by the customer to evaluate the effectiveness of the security program provider by the outsourced company. These tools also play vital role for call centers in India to evaluate their security measures. These tools can also be used to assist the gap analysis process and provide some assurance to the companies that their service provider meets the minimum security standard measures.

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Is Outsourcing Feasible for You?

Of late, have you thought about outsourcing your business to a third part vendor. Today, outsourcing is one of the most preferred way, that large business houses adopt to outsource their non-core business functions. Before, outsourcing your work, you need to understand the concept well.

Outsourcing is nothing but hiring a company on a sub-contractual basis which will take care of your back office functions. This enables you to concentrate on your core business like venturing into new business or other important aspects. Most of these companies do not work at your place but from their place of convenience. Now, what are the services that you can outsource?

These are some of the common services that you can outsource:

• Customer support services

• Telemarketing services

• IT- help desk services

• Order taking services

• Technical support services

• Email support services

• Insurance processing

• Data entry services

• Data conversion services

• Book keeping and accounting services

• Business transcription services

The outsourcing market is expected to grow by leaps and bounds over the next years to come. More and more companies are planning to outsource their high end as well as low end jobs to offshore destinations. Most of the countries in the west prefer to outsource their work to India, Philippines, China, Mexico, Ireland due to availability of cheap labor,cost effectiveness, more number of English speaking professionals, time zone factor, latest technologies and reduced operational costs.

The offshore companies have realized that most of their back office work is tedious and needs special attention. Most of back office function are critical and time consuming. Therefore, by outsourcing their back office operations business houses can concentrate more on other priorities.

Advantages of outsourcing:

Gives you time to concentrate on your core business: As most of your back office functions are taken care by the outsourced company, you have more time to concentrate on your core business.

You get skilled manpower at lower rates: You get the facility of having a set of skilled workforce which contribute towards the efficiency of your company. This also increases productivity and save costs in a major way.

Facility of advanced technology at lower rates: Most of the offshore destination have advanced technology at an affordable rate. This helps the companies to progress at a rapid pace.

Tax benefits: Most of the offshore destination have flexible outsourcing policies which allows the companies to save big and also on your taxes.

Increased productivity: There is an increase in productivity as the company has skilled labor which results in better customer services.

Gives a cutting edge to the business: In this fast pace economy, a company needs to provide best of the services to its customers in order to retain them. Outsourcing helps a company to give better services and keep themselves abreast with their counterparts.

Wipro BPO services To Implement “ Best- Of-Breed HR Solutions”

Bangalore : Wipro technologies said on Monday that, its BPO division has tied up with Oracle which is one of the fortune 500 companies in India. It has partnered with Oracle to inculcate high-end HR solutions in the company.

Wipro has also said in press conference that ,it has asked “The Hackett”,a global strategic advisory firm, to help in empirical data, inputs on world class performance for its growth and development. The latter is known for its innovative bundled HR solutions.

This HR solution is known as “SimPlify”, as it allows the employers to reduce and control costs for the company. It also provides an opportunity to standardize and centralize solutions by eliminating any duplicate management structures. The solution has the ability to lessen the cumbersome work load of human resource department. By implementing this tailor made solution which has many-to-one technology capability, it will help to maximize the service quality and provide HR customer satisfaction.

Tech – Mahindra Acquires Satyam Computers

Kolkata: Tech Mahindra, the new owner of tainted Satyam Computer Services, is planning to start a brand new 1000-seater BPO unit at the plush DLP towers in Kolkata. It will complete its two stage acquisition of 50,000 square feet of prime floor space at DLF towers on a long term lease.

According to sources, a senior executive of Tech Mahindra confirmed that, they have plans to acquire the 50,000 sqft of area on a long term lease. Presently, they have just acquired 25,000 sqft and will acquire the rest in few days to come. He also added that, Tech Mahindra had plans to launch a BPO unit in the eastern fringes of Kolkata. The location proposed is the Rajarhat IT zone by mid of July. Initially, the BPO unit will have 500 seaters and later it will be increased to 1000-seater facility within a time period of nine months.

Presently, Tech Mahindra runs its BPO units at Gurgoan, Pune, Chennai and Noida. Its offshore BPO units are at Belfast and Newcastle. It has some 4000 employees in India and some 500-odd employees in Northern Ireland and the UK.

The company plans to recruit about 1000 employees for its Kolkata center. The company's executives were not available for comments but the information trickling out from the property circles suggest that, the company is trying to negotiate the deal for RS 60 per sq ft as the lease charges to the DLF group.

Most of the big giants are looking for commercial office space in Rajarhat area in Kolkata, simply because of the quality of infrastructure and attractive real estate prices. Currently, the city's real estate market seems to be improving according to the associate director and head of Jones Lang La Salle Meghraj (JLLM) (Kolkata), Mr. Mayank Saksena.

The commercial office space in Salt Lake is being leased out for Rs 40-45 per sqft per month, but that in Rajarhat has been leased out at Rs 30-35 per sq ft per month excluding the maintenance cost, property tax and other miscellaneous charges.

Most of the builders who are developing projects in Rajarhat are focusing on support services like additional transport facilities connecting the main city and Rajarhat area and lower real estate prices to lure more number of prospective buyers. Mr . Saksena added that, the new unit of Tech Mahindra will essentially work for the BPO services outsourced by some of the top telecom companies operating in the Asia-pacific region.

BPO - Business Process outsourcing

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