"India 6" VISIONARIES 2011: INDIA SOURCING THINK TANK

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The I6 panel came together in Bangladesh during SSON’s Shared Services & Outsourcing Week India, moderated by Rakesh Sangani of Proservartner. The 45-minute discussion covered a broad range of issues that are impacting changes in the Indian, as well as Global, services delivery market place.

Click here to watch the debate now.

Panelists:

Sriram V. Vice President, Head - Global Business Services, India, Hewlett-Packard
Most organizations struggle to maintain a vertical focus within their operations, particularly as business results are driven differently. Any end-to-end process, explains Sriram, will cut across multiple functions – sales, logistics, finance & accounting, etc. It’s when data moves across these towers, or silos, that problems occur; and that is where BPO providers see an opportunity. The value lies in connecting the dots between the different towers. Sriram touts "gainshare" as the optimal solution. It’s not just about providing value to the bottom line, but, crucially, to the top line, as well. Sriram’s team runs strategy sessions with its internal customers to partner to impact these customers’ top line. "We see ourselves as equal stakeholders in terms of our [internal] customers’ objectives. That creates a win-win situation," explains Sriram.
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with Sriram.

Manish Dugar, Senior Vice President & Global Head, Wipro BPO
As global head of Wipro, Manish is well-placed to comment on the market. He warns that with the economies we’ve experienced over the past years clients need to be prepared for every scenario. The most important role for a CFO, in fact, is scenario planning, Manish says He should know, as his previous role at Wipro was that of CFO. As companies are most willing to transform when they are under pressure, and as "willingness to change" is generally the greatest hurdle to transformation, the recession provides an opportunity for shared services and outsourcing to promote their agendas. "Never let a recession go to waste," is Manish’s motto.
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with Manish.

Swaminathan, CEO, Infosys
Infosys’s CEO, Swaminathan, says that "if what you provide to your clients doesn’t impact growth – it’s not transformation." The focus needs to be in delivering on promises to the customer, he says, so that your clients look better in front of their stakeholders. To do this, you need to, first, understand the business model of your clients. This evolution represents the journey from transactional to transformational – BPO providers need to be measuring the impact on their clients’ clients. So it is how you impact your clients’ gross margins that will count, going forward.
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with Swaminathan.

Arnab Chakraborty, Director – Global Analytics, Hewlett-Packard
Analytics were a key theme on the stage in Bangalore, and no-one told the story better than Arnab Chakraborty, Director of Global Analytics at HP. He explained in detail how data analysis was driving the marketing and sales functions at his firm – specifically, how the billions of pieces of transactions data were merged with democratic data to shed light on the purchasing habits of HP’s 14 million US consumers. As a direct result, HP’s online sales have doubled in the past three years. It’s a huge success story. While data itself is not new, concedes Arnab, the challenge to monetize data, and to scale it for today’s organizations – that is new!
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with Arnab.

Sakuntala Rao, Director, IBM
As the Indian BPO industry matures, there is increasing growth in Tier 2, 3, and even 4 cities, explains Sakuntala Rao. This growth is also supported by the advances of the India-to-India services delivery market, which is bringing job opportunities to very small towns – what’s termed rural sourcing. This is having a positive impact on the Indian jobs market, explains Sakuntala – a sort of giving back to the economy – but you need to be aware that it is the more transactional job that will be moving to these lower cost locations. While BPO is seen as recession-proof (helping cost efficiencies) in truth, clients are taking longer to make decisions, and the focus is on "quick wins" and cash flow. So cash is still king; some things never change.
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with Sakuntala.

Milind Godbole (MG), President – Asia Pacific, Aditya Birla Minacs
The Twitter generation – Twitteratti, to those in the know – is having an enormous impact on the marketplace, and therefore on the delivery of service quality, explains MG. As the learning potential and adaptability of this group is extremely high, BPO providers need to harness that intellectual power and keep talent engaged in the BPO industry. In recognition of the people-centric aspect of BPO, provider Aditya Birla Minacs is emphasizing career roadmaps, and developing skill sets through training academies. A key focus is to enhance industry specific skill sets.
Click here to watch a follow-up interview with MG.


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