When one thinks of outsourcing stereotypical images come to mind. The Indian “call center” (so called voice services), outsourced manufacturing, and the Indian engineer or medical technician “stealing jobs from the West”. India is rapidly coming away from these stereotypes. A recent conference in Bangalore on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), a term that encapsulates the different activities related to outsourcing, reported that BPOs were moving away from voice services, enjoying high growth (30% growth in revenues of which 57% came from non-voice services), despite the recent global recession.
Rural BPOs
“India’s BPO sector is rapidly scaling the value chain.. getting into complex analytical and transformational work that brings enterprise-wide efficiency.” (Times of India, June 10). For example GenPact, a business leader in analytics and research tells companies where their products are weak using research tools we learn in business schools and our economics classes. They can also tell credit card companies which customers are more likely to default. The fact that BPOs can provide such tailored answers to the operational needs of companies means that there will be increased competition for consulting services and knowledge management solutions. This is a a good thing in my opinion as clients will now be able to search for such knowledge based solutions globally and prices should fall.
Two trends towards new ways of doing business have promise for economic development and the social sector. The first is rural-shoring and the second is social enterprise BPOs.
Rural BPOs or Rural shoring
According to Sridahr Mitta of NextWealth Entreprenerus, of all the engineering graduates produced in India, 50% are from villages. Of these, 50% are women. These women engineers want to stay close to their hometowns and do not want to move to the city. Hence the scope for (higher value) rural BPOs is huge! (Quoted in Times of India, Thursday June 10th, 2010). NextWealth runs a rural BPO in Tamil Nadu where local women tutor US children in math. Mr. Mitta says that they have measured the quality of tutoring and it is just as good as anyone in the US. Another example of rural shoring is Piramal Foundation that has trained village women to accommodate the vast data entry needs of the western world. Speaking of data entry, it turns out the Enable India places visually impaired clients in the same data entry sector within the context of its medical transcription-training program. As more and more disabled persons and BPO companies get to know about Enable’s work, I am sure more differently-abled people will be able to find the dignity of work.
Social Enterprise BPOs
SE BPOs work with marginalized or underserved populations. They come up with tailored solutions that satisfy both the client’s needs (such as data entry or manufacturing) while also empowering the marginalized group though employment and other services. Exciting examples are Radiant Info Systems a BPO that works in Hyderabad’s Cherlapally Central Jail and Vindhya e-infomedia a Banaglore based BPO where 94% of its employees are differently-abled.
BPOs are moving rapidly up the value chain to knowledge process outsourcing, moving into rural areas, positively effecting the economic development of people outside cities, as well as working to help marginalized groups. The BPO sector is increasingly complex and benefits more folks in more ways than the stereotypical call center. It is time we recognize that in the US.
It’s odd how people relate jobs with nationalist sentiments. I personally think that the notion of a job should be attached to the task and the capabilities of person who is doing it. Jobs do not belong to a country; they belong to the individual who can do it best. But this is a topic for another day.
