India - Strategic Outsourcing Hub

Almost a decade ago, cost reduction became focus for some companies looking for short-term solutions from outsourcing services and received equal benefits. Now, it has become a do or die situation and outsourcing services are no longer about just cost savings but for the growth strategy and essential revenue for most of the organizations.

India is still the leading nation in providing bpo services to western countries like the US and the UK. The basic question for any company is that why should they outsource to India. One of the biggest advantages that India has is that for well over a half century it has been a stable secular democracy. Today’s India has the best of the educational institutions and infrastructure in place that makes it comparable to every developed first world economy.

Advantages:

The economic scenario

· The personnel advantage

· Cost effectiveness

· The Location advantage

Various Services offered by Indian BPO’s:

Back Office Processing – One of the specialized services offered by Indian call centers is the back office processing services. It can be in form of raw data and scanned documents sent to bpo service providers in India, which carries out data entry and reconciliation. The client gets continuous access to its data through high-speed data links between themselves and vendors. Various service categories like administration, finance, HR and payment services require Back office Processing outsourcing services.

Call Centers – Call centers provide the backbone for many other services given their infrastructure and manpower requirements multitude of services spanning transaction processing to data mining. Call centers in India are equipped with adequate telecom infrastructure, trained consultants and access to requisite database, internet and other online data infrastructure to provide enough information to international customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The call center support can be any form from customer service, technical, selling or information sharing.

Other Services:

· Medical Transcription

· Digital content development

· Geographic information services

Outsourcing BPO services to India offers benefits not only in terms of cost reduction, but also in terms of increased productivity and quality. Companies along with their customers benefit since they can access some of the best talent and expertise at lower rates.

India is a head of competitors such as China, Philippines, Ireland and Australia etc. The Indian call centers have unique capabilities and to set measure and monitor quality targets.

India is leading all the way in terms of outsourcing. The minimum qualification required for anybody to join call centers here is graduation in any field. The manpower is motivated enough to perform tasks to higher standards and professionalism is maintained throughout the operational hierarchy. The Indian BPO services have time again proved that the industry standards followed are the best in the world when it comes to effective customer service. The management is highly capable of turn things around and always strives for perfection.

Description: BPO is one of today’s key management tools. Companies across the globe have realized the importance of outsourcing their non-core functions whether to reduce cost or support expansion. India continues to be a preferred destination for outsourcing globally.

BPO's Impact on Service Quality

BPO (business process outsourcing) should not fundamentally alter the strategic quality management plan of an enterprise. BPO should be thought of, generically, as any outsourcing partner anywhere, not limited to the special case of India or other developing economies. BPO may fundamentally alter the structure of a firm and the lives of the people within it, but the strategy for delivering extraordinary quality experiences to clients should not be altered. Correlative to this, the tactics required to hold the strategy on point must be altered dramatically, in some cases. It is critical to understand this interplay of strategy and tactics around major BPO efforts to ensure that the client experience is maintained or enhanced.

Let's get on the same page by differentiating quality strategy from tactics to clarify the argument. A firm's "mission" identifies the goal or objective. For example, the mission might be "we're going to obtain a 5% share of the Chinese payment products marketplace over the next ten years." Naturally there are various business strategy statements that support this mission, but let's isolate the quality strategy component.

Broadly speaking there are only three alternative quality strategies (and hundreds of slight derivatives) that could be considered. First, "we're going to achieve the strongest client loyalty in our industry by delivering the best customer experience." Second, "we're going to achieve the highest customer satisfaction by reducing cycle times, eliminating waste, and minimizing process errors. Third, "we're going to minimize the costs of bad quality."

The first is suitable for a world-class brand appealing to the upper segments of the market. The second is appropriate for approaching a broad consumer segment with acceptable risk profiles. The third is perfect for a sub-prime lender maximizing profits by gouging high-risk segments with few alternatives.

Any of these three can achieve superior shareholder returns. The choice of quality strategy must match the company's culture and product/brand positioning, but it is primarily the match that is critical, not the approach. Many paths can be taken as long as you wear sensible shoes.
Here is the critical point relative to BPO: The BPO organization chosen must also match the quality strategy. Just as there are three broad quality strategies, there are three broad categories of BPO partners. Some BPO groups delivery extraordinary client experiences, some focus on efficient and effective processes and some crank through high volume service interactions for the lowest possible price. It is impossible for any one firm to deliver some measure of each strategy they can only do one well or all poorly. It's not a law of physics yet, but someday it will be.

You can never, never, never, raise a BPO company's quality outcomes beyond the upper limits of their current control charts within a determinant time period. Given unlimited time, of course, anything can change, but you won't have your job that long. If you need special considerations or abnormally stringent requirements then purchase from someone who is already doing it better than your own resources. Speaking from disastrous experience you cannot raise the bad to good or the good to better. Quality outcomes are impacted by the way people breathe, the way the restrooms are cleaned, the CEO's smile or frown as they walk past the desks. Nothing in your contract, no matter how lucrative, is going to alter those irreducible elements in the short term.
Once this strategic match has been established the tactical management approach must also be aligned.

Those brands and BPO partners that are targeting extraordinary customer experiences should be managed as if the BPO were an integral part of the host company. There should be no difference in the response to a customer's emergency situation at the BPO location or the host company's service center. Any differences highlight a lack of alignment on principles, values, and culture. These relationships take into account the total cost of quality but also include, albeit tacitly in most cases, the value of the brand over the long term. In many cases the BPO vendor is not chosen strictly on cost, but because of a unique capability that commands a value premium in the market.

Those companies (note the deliberate elimination of "brand" from this second tier) and their BPO vendors (note the deliberate use of vendors and not "partners"), aiming for high levels of satisfaction and efficient processes, are tightly integrated around service contracts and measured outcomes, but typically do not link at the level of principles, values, and culture. These relationships take into account the total cost of quality at the process level and attempt to optimize enterprise costs over the near term.

The low cost producers who have outsourced their service to a commodity BPO establish a tactical relationship primarily around price and complaints. The host company often manages complaints through various escalation mechanisms and the contractual relationship is the principle governing mechanism. The BPO's job is to reduce the cost of transaction processing irrespective of the total cost of quality. This is never stated explicitly because of the tacit assumption that there will not be an adverse impact on the cost of quality; however, this is rarely the case. These relationships still make good economic sense overall, but they are almost always calculated in a manner that optimizes the appearance of local savings versus considering the true enterprise-level savings.

By carefully aligning quality strategy and tactics with a BPO relationship that supports the company's market segmentation there is an attractive opportunity to gain flexibility, expansion capacity, and value-added capabilities. The risk premium associated with BPO, if done well, should be value neutral to the shareholders, worst case, and offer significant opportunities best case.Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Grant

Call Center - Delivering Delightful Customer Centric Operations

The vacuum created by capitalist economy, international trade, and globalization continuously pressurizes the corporate companies toward providing good pre/post sales support to its valuable clients. Almost every business entity functioning in IT, retail banking, insurance, travel/hospitality, automobiles, telecom, pharmacy, finance, accounts and HR is heavily dependent on good contact center for catering to the requirements of its customers. The retrospective responses developed by the companies for filling this vacuum is the new age call centers.

Call centers, as all know, functions as technically specialized contact center for receiving and transmitting the requests made by customers. The technologically advanced units are responsible for furnishing product support or handling information inquiries to the core customers.

Initially, call centers traced their history in operator services, reservation lines, but the emergence of IT technology and growing customer demand has completely transformed this field into a multimillion-dollar industry. In the last 15-20 years, the BPO industry has witnessed a lot of growth in terms of technology and working culture. The outsourcing boom can be the appropriate word to explain this particular phenomenon. It is evident that major players in this arena are countries like India, Germany, Canada and U.K…all of which are just 8 to 10 years old.

The dynamics of the call center industry can be divided into two prominent categories. The first is inbound support and the second being outbound support. In an inbound call center, the customer directly calls the trained executives for getting the information, registering complaints, whereas in an outbound call center executives directly call up the key accounts for marketing, documentation, query resolution or collections.

Many overseas bpo companies have outsourced the call center operations to India so that they can focus on other hardcore operations. The geographical shift has generated huge working opportunities for English speaking graduates of the country. The revenue of the Indian call center industry alone is estimated to be at 10.9 billion US Dollars.

The future of the BPO industry is quite bright with good perks, reimbursements and pay packages for its employees. It is also a boon for the minimum qualified candidates, thus, offering good platform and employment opportunities.
No doubt, in a very short period of time, the call centers have did an astonishing job in establishing a good platform for the upcoming entrepreneurs.

Selecting a BPO Company?

Choosing a right BPO vendor is most likely the most significant task. For most people, selecting a vendor stands much more important than fixing up a business process outsourcing destination. It is a fact that there is no dearth in the total number of organizations offering business process outsourcing services. However, it will be advisable to look at few tips that help you get started with a right service provider.

Most agencies and organizations providing business process outsourcing services all over the world bring about dedicated services in order to help buyers in making a right choice and decision. However, the fact of cheat companies still exists in full flow. There are certain precautions that buyers need to maintain.

Selecting the right BPO vendors

The main factor before you finalize on any BPO vendor is to analyze and scrutinize the strength and the expertise offered by any given firm. Look into the fact that whether the vendor is offering you similar services to the other existing clients or not.

One of the essential ways to seek for good firms will be to opt for a follow up with the existing clients of the firm and their related services. Your chosen business process-outsourcing services must be offering appropriate quality certifications. Additionally, these companies should also have the possession of the skilled workforce or must be in the position to provide training facilities.

In addition to quality certification and standards, the business process outsourcing company you are considering to choose, should include strong financial background. Moreover, the company should also be willing to share the risk in your outsourcing contract. It will be good, if you try to know about the type of services the vendors are offering you. Rather go for a comprehensive research and try to learn what are the services put on offer. Additionally, check out the relationship of the vendor with the other outsourcing suppliers.

What companies do?

Many companies decide upon to outsource all of their business processes to several BPO companies rather than just depending on a single one. By all means, this is a good practice on the part of the companies that continues with this notion. Choosing separate vendors increases the level of competition among the available vendors. This in turn will help you to gain better results from the entire competition. The company will be in the position to change the vendors as well, if they do not match up to the mark.

Things to consider in any BPO contact:

After finalizing on the business process outsourcing vendor, your next step will be to sign the contract. Below, few of the essential details are discussed that you should be looking in the contracts. These include:

o Training costs
o Work capacity
o Continuity, privacy and security terms
o Performance guarantees
o Insurance and indemnification
o Conditions, terms and the termination rules
o Fixing rates of service

If you have the exact business vision, choosing the right BPO vendor will never be a problem for you. Signing one well defined contact can ensure that all your business will be able to get the most out of business outsourcing.

To know more about BPO services and call center services you can log on to our website where you will get a wide array of necessary information on business process outsourcing and call centre services.

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Outbound Call Center Services in a BPO

Today, there are many Bpo companies offering outbound telemarketing services in the market. Most of them encompass an innovative call center setup meeting diverse needs and requirements. Many service providers come equipped with the advanced tools that enable them to create successful marketing calls for your services and products.

In any company, every outbound call gets recorded with an aim to ensure that the quality of calls made from an outbound call center does not get deteriorated. Outbound calls stand important as it generally refers to an on going conversation between one prospective customer and the agent.

The expertise and experience in handling the outbound call center services stands essential to accomplish every project successfully. Today, the BPO firms include well-trained professionals who will be undertaking every project to accomplish their tasks well. Every project that is undertaken for sales and marketing of different services and products stands crucial to bring about the right solution in all respect.

The outbound call center services include a range of well-appointed services. These include product or service promotion, appointment scheduling, market research and survey, mortgage lead generation, email follow up, sales and marketing, voice broadcast and others.

Appointment setting or scheduling:

The appointment setting activities as offered as a part of the outbound services form to be the keystone of generating the new business avenues. It forms to be the most competent business-to-business communication channel that needs a complete administrative program to make sure that the appointments are rightly scheduled, by every field representative in a resourceful way possible.

Market Research and Survey

All Bpo companies have a mission. The mission of firms offering outbound services is to offer its clients with the information that can be put into use as immediately as possible for making the organizational decisions and critical business. It is outstanding performance that matters in each campaign or project so as to ensure better customer support.

Product/ Service Promotion

Putting in use the state of art infrastructure, most outbound call center companies aim to offer its clients with the information that can be well put into use as quickly as possible. It is through the use of advanced infrastructure that companies will be assured of getting solution based approach that meets e-commerce and telephonic needs, connected to any product campaign and also the following promotion.

Sales and Marketing

Companies engaged in offered outbound call center services bring about all-inclusive sales and marketing services that ensure generation of significant revenues for clients. Several strategies are used to undertake a particular marketing or sales campaign.

Voice Broadcast:

Voice broadcasting or voice broadcast stands for the delivery of the pre recorded voice messages to any live person or answering machine or sometimes both. This is by far, one of the most economical and cost effective ways for reaching out employees, prospects, customers and groups.

Email Follow Up:

The outbound call centers are generally specialized in improving and increasing the rates of business conversion, maximizing the campaign effectiveness and also building a strong customer relationships through the direct mail follow up.

Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Outbound-Call-Center

BPO Services Different Types of Services Offered

When it comes to business operations then among all the necessary processes that every medium and large sized business should adopt, BPO services come on the top. Business Process Outsourcing services, popularly known as BPO services are simply those services through which some of the supporting business processes are served by specialized companies.

BPO culture has become worldwide popular nowadays. Presently, in the business world the BPO services have distinct value, for which almost every organization prefer going for BPO services now. But, still now there are a large number of people who are in the dark regarding the BPO operations, most of the people don't even know the services offered by the BPOs. Well, for all of them this article will be very helpful. Now, here in this article we will discuss about the versatile services offered by the BPO service providers.

• Web designing and development: these are the two most common segments outsourced by the companies worldwide. Under these domains, the BPOs serve website designing and developing services. In order to do so they adopt and utilize advanced tools and software.

• Application development: In order to run an organization in hassles-free manner, companies often face the needs different types of applications. The specialized BPOs would be the perfect destinations for developing various kinds of applications.

• Telemarketing: this is another popular service offered by most of the BPOs worldwide. As the name suggests, telemarketing is the kind of service under which the BPOs offer marketing supports with the help of telephone.

• Customer care: under this category, the BPOs take care of the customers of their clients. They also take the responsibility to resolve all sorts of problems faced by the customers and answer all their quarries and so on.

• Outbound call center services: Various BPOs offers these services, under which they call the potential customers for selling products, promoting products or providing them information about the concerned product/service.

• Inbound call center services: Under this category, the BPOs receive the calls of the customers and fulfill all their requirements.

When it comes to the most highly efficient BPO service providers of the world then among all the nations India comes on the top. The Indian BPOs offer wide range high quality services and that too at much cheaper costs than other countries' BPOs. So, what are you waiting for? In order to fulfill any of the above mentioned services go for an Indian BPO today.

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Why BPO Services Have Become Popular in Recent Years

BPO Services have risen to prominence over recent years, with many companies choosing to take advantage of such services in order to streamline their business and cut costs. One of the reasons costs can be cut is that many companies outsource to offshore locations; for example, British Telecom has outsourced a great deal of it customer service department to India and the sub-continent.

In this article we will look at some of the main reasons why companies choose BPO services in the modern business environment. Some tasks that a company has to carry out in order to maintain its bottom line are highly complex, and as such it sometimes makes sense to employ another firm to do the job for you. This can be particularly true if the task in question does not need to be done on a regular basis.

On top of this, while it can make sense to hire a company within the country of the firm doing the outsourcing (because it saves money) it can be even more financially beneficial when such BPO services are 'bought in' from abroad, as their overheads are even lower.

Of course, it is not always that simple. A lot of preparation is required before a company can hire BPO services. This preparation takes the form of meetings between the hiring company and the BPO provider - which can be time consuming and expensive, especially when translators are involved. This issue of language is one that had recurred in recent years; when a set of customer service based BPO services are outsourced to a country like, for example, India for a set of customers in, for example, the UK - this can lead to communication difficulties that are not conducive to happy customers.

Another risk or problem that needs to be taken into account is that of allowing a firm from outside Europe or the USA (for example) to access files and databases from that western country. There can be a multitude of legal issues surrounding the access of such files from the Indian sub-continent, for example. There is also a certain amount of trust required before the firm buying BPO services can work with the receiving firm.

Ultimately, many companies from the UK, Europe and the USA choose to utilize BPO services either in their own country or in a country abroad. Overwhelmingly, this can increase the profits by a substantial amount, making the provision of BPO services an industry that is likely to grow even more in coming years.

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Excellent BPO Services at Competitive Prices

Companies want the best of services at minimum possible cost. This holds true for marketing jobs as well. Marketing jobs are varying in nature and need lots of effort, time and money - if conducted by the Company itself. Companies are allocating the marketing and other jobs to BPOs India to attain excellence in their services and get the best at lowest possible cost.

BPO services are excellent yet competitive in India. This is what a client yearns for - excellent services and lowest cost. Excellent services are provided with the help of well-qualified independent marketing unit who converses in the same language as known to the caller. Young Graduates wanting to earn smart money apply for this kind of job. They take care of the needs of the customers and answer their queries patiently and satisfactorily. The customer returns fully satisfied with a promise to comeback to same client for next requirement.

Call Center services are always backed by latest advanced technology. All the best quality technologies are used for prompt delivery of services. BPO services are also hard to deliver and only the select few can take-up the task well. BPOs India is servicing their clients on large scale. Some BPO services are directed towards other activities also. These include collection call center job, procurement outsourcing, etc.

There are varying services all over the world. Companies are always demanding such services from BPO centers to avail the best possible services.

These services are enormous and molded as per customer requirement. If a client wants BPO service at that time when it is night in India, then Companies provide services in those hours only. These BPO services are affordable and add to the profit margins of the industry. Therefore, most offshore clients are referring to BPO services India for excellent services at very low prices.

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