Parting is such Sweet Sorrow

Juliet:
Sweet, so would I,
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow. [Exit above]

Romeo And Juliet Act 2, scene 2, 176–185


And thus wrote Shakespeare.

This quote came to my mind when Padmaja Sonawane came to me today and sought my blessings for the future life that she is going into. A life of wedded bliss, which naturally will come with mixed aprehensions.

Padmaja story is one of the many typical ones at Vital Link Outsourcing. Padmaja joined us in the first batch of Data Entry Associates whom we recruited when we first set shop in Pune. That was 9 years ago as she reminded me.

Over the years Padmaja rose from the entry level position to head the Process team of girls in the morning shift. Heading the most productive group, she ensured that over close to a decade our deliveries to our clients were faultless and on time. The processes that she handled includes some of the leading corporate names of USA.

It is dedicated employees such as Padmaja that keep the core of thousands of organisations humming smoothly. They are the unsung heroes of the battle trenches while the business leader get to take all the credit :-)

Padmaja would have continued merrily into the future but for the fact that the husband she chose works in Mumbai. She will thus have no choice but to leave us. And with mixed emotions on both sides.

Best captured by the bard in the above quote.

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Importance of Systems and Processes

Hello,
As many of you know, Vital Link has been faultlessly delivering to clients over past 7-8 years.
On any given day we process more than  100,000 images and files. Since we deliver them correctly and on time, our clients keep on giving us regular business.

We used to be ISO certified, but gave up getting ourselves certified some years back, when we found that the process of certification did not add any value to us.

Why am I telling you all this?

This is because, without a faultess system process design and operations team in place, none of this could happen. I see so many businesses struggling to deliver every day and failing.

Last week I was given an opportunity to present the important of  "System design and processes " to a group of about 30 Entreprenuers at the platform provided by TiE - Mumbai Chapter, of which I am a Charter Member

https://mumbai.tie.org/event/3/tie-institute-knowledge-series-managing-operations

I believe the presentation was well received. After the talk on the lunch table many start ups could come over and discuss their individual issues which I had the pleasure of offering suggestions to.

A good time was had by all...and here is the ppt that I used

http://slidesha.re/NblS6N

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Location, Location and Location

They say in the Realty business that what matters is Location, Location and Location.

This point was driven home to us last week in a rather emphathetic manner.

To go back a little, our earlier Delivery Center in Pune was on a main bus route and within walking distance from a Railway station. In a country where the dominant mode of access is Public transport, these things matter.

When we decided to move to a  new Delivery Center, we definitely wanted it to be in the center of town. The new premises now shares a common compound wall with the Pune Public Bus terminus and is within walking distance from the Pune Main railway station.

One of our clients who left us a few years back to move operations to China is now coming back to us ( but that is another story )...so we needed to hire about 40 transaction associates for their process. We put out an Job advertisement and the response was overwhelming....we got all the good team members that we wanted.

Nothing else has changed..so it can mean only one thing that has changed. The new location.

Driving the point home...location, location and location :-)

     

Barefoot Ted visits us

Barefoot Ted is a leading figure in the world of Barefoot / Minimalist running. Those of you who have read the bestseller book "Born to Run" by Chris Mcdougall know that he is extensively featured in that book. He is also the Founder / CEO of http://www.lunasandals.com

He was in Pune recently at the invitation of our CEO P. Venkatraman, who is himself an avid runner. He visited our facilities and studied our Content Aggregation process with considerable interest.

At the end of his visit this is what he had to say. We couldn't have put it better ourselves.












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A serious 'disconnect'

At Vital Link Outsourcing we are happy to be NOT in the call center business.  We have often felt that there is a serious 'disconnect' between what the ultimate customer wants ( satisfactory service, a soft factor ) and what the immediate customer ( Ops manager ) wants ( productivity based on numbers, a hard factor ).

This kind of a business only results in unpleasantness all around. To the ultimate customer making the call, to the Company whose customer it is and to the service provider who is constantly pounded by clients who are barking up the wrong tree.

This cartoon from Dilbert puts it so succintly.

http://www.dilbert.com/2012-02-12/

Long term client visits us from USA.avi

Bhairavi, Project Manager with long term client of ours came visiting from Sunnyvale CA. We already provide them services centered around Data Capture and Data Validation. She learnt of our offerings in areas of Internet Research and Content Aggregation etc...
We hope to work with each other in an increased range of service offerings.
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UK Visit

Two weeks back, I was in UK for about 4 days. I used the opportunity to visit some of our existing UK Accountant clients ( CA / ACCA ) from whom we regularly outsource Accounting and Book Keeping work. I also visited couple of new prospects who are seeking to outsource their Book Keeping / back office function.

My meetings were very interesting with each one  of them. Almost all of them wanted to give work to us. Besides the cost factor, which was obvious they realised that they were getting more value for money since we employ career accountants who are dedicated to their work, whereas they were using work at home moms, or entry level employees to get their work done, who were lacking in a certain resolve to do their best.

But one of the things that is foxing me is that even though they accept the benefits of changing their approach to client delivery, there is the human resistance to change that makes them drag their feet, so to speak.

     

A rural BPO - 2

The rural BPO being set up by Wipro in Manjakudi is fully complete. Two Team Leaders have been deputed from elsewhere to kick start the location. The physical infra is all in place and I was told that the first batch of 300+ associates have already been recruited and training is going on. This photo could have been taken in any of our locations.  I was informed that the process was a voice process from US. Given the strong challenges in accent nuetralisation, I would have thought that it might have been a domestic process. Achieving client satisfaction metrics is going to be an issue, unless it is a  B2B process and client expectations have been appropriately set :-)

A Rural BPO

I was recently traveling in  Tanjore district, close to my ancestral village of Sedanipuram, when I had occasion to go to Manjakudi and visit the Veda Patashala ( Vedic School ) there and meet with the head of that institution, whom I know well.

The Veda Patashala is run by Swami Dayananda Saraswathi, a forward looking religious leader. At Manjakudi, which is his birthplace he has set up many educational institutions to cater to various academic disciplines.

During my visit, I came to know that they have tied up with WIPRO to set up  a rural BPO. I seized the opportunity to visit the place since such developments are of keen interest to me.

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The US crisis SnP downgrading AAA+

The US is headed for a crisis, that no one can deny.  There is nothing like a free lunch and unpaid bills do have a habit of catching up sometime or the other. It may be 2 months from now or 2 years from now.

No one is sure how this will pan out. How will it affect us at a business level? How will it affect us at a personal level.

Here are Vital Link Outsourcing, we are searching for answers and I am sure that we are scratching our heads as much as you are probably scratching yours.

One thing we know for sure from a BPO perspective. Some of our clients will have an imperative to outsource more, in order to cut costs further and survive. Many others may see their own business volumes shrink and thus the aggregate number of transactions to outsource may fall. Some may see both.

It would be an interesting study to see which factors influence either of the above two scenarios.

Any ideas?

NZ seems to be picking up

When it came to outsourcing, NZ always seemed to be quite laid back in its approach. Not much traction was seen in NZ companies trying to outsource to India. Vital Link Outsourcing had formed a subsidiary quite a few years back there but things went cold due to lack of interest.

Suddenly things seem to be picking up on the NZ front.  First we heard back from our old contact seeking to revive the relationship. And then this article in the news.

http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/fairfax-outsource-kiwi-jobs-india-union-4256353

P. Venkatraman
CEO
Vital Link Outsourcing - A India based BPO catering to the SME segment in Internet Research, Content Aggregation, UK Accounting and Dcoument management. In two engagement models. Shared Business Services and Delivery based.
www.vitallinkcorp.com

Hello,

Continuing with my list of reasons as to why costs in Pune are coming on par with that of Bangalore and Chennai..

3. You sow and I will reap:

Most of the BPOs always want to staff in a hurry. In Tamil there is a saying that goes something like..If I see the dog I do not have the stone to throw at it..and when I have the stone..the dog is not to be seen. Lest my US readers who love their dogs more than we do here, take umbrage, the saying refers to a street mongrel with rabid tendencies and not that darling you dote upon at home. But I digress.

Coming back…when a BPO is set up, it is a chicken and egg story. Which comes first? Customers or employees. You should have one to have the other. In case my US readers are still bristling, this is where the dog and stone analogy kicks in. If you have customers…and you know their needs…you know whom to hire. But if you hire ahead of the sales then you add to the monthly burn. And you can never be sure of the length of the sales cycle and the customer commitment. So Sales, being the magicians that they are, indulge in some poetic license when it comes to stating delivery capabilities.

But once the sale is closed and the initial pilot has gone through successfully, customers get greedy. The clients’ manager who has P & L responsibility wants to cut costs by sending more work to India. He has tasted success and wants to reap it all in. A quarter coming to an end adds a tremendous sense of urgency to stone that dog. The term ’scaling up’ gets bandied about a lot in the late night / early morning conference calls.

Sales has till then, knowing how to do its job well, given an impression that in Pune / Bangalore / Chennai you can get the required skill-sets freely roaming on the streets in numbers greater than the snakes and tigers combined. In case some of my Indian readers take umbrage at using ‘tigers’ and ‘poaching’ in the same mail please excuse me. But I tigress.

The clients’ manager, taking huge gulps of his Kool-aid, wants to see head count go up starting yesterday. Sales starts telling Head of Delivery to now start delivering. They have got the customer and their job is now over. The Delivery Head sees prospects of egg ( or chicken, or whatever ) all over his face. He yanks the HR guy who in turn spoils the sleep of the head hunters. The word is out on the streets…300 new hires in one week. Bonuses if targets are met.

The head hunters have until then also done a good job of their own Sales to the HR Manager. Led him to believe that required skill-sets in abundant numbers are all practically jostling for space in his rolodex and databases. Why..just last week he had to remove all the snakes, tigers, chicken, egg and dogs combined to create more space.

The Head Hunters have to now do what they have to do. Get the head count. But where to get ready made skilled trained staff from. Go up to the competition down the street and offer something more. Something more..like may be…double the salary.

But what about delivery costs, the CA ( CPA ) in me might ask. But the Head of Delivery and the HR Manager will themselves be offered double salary at some point of time before the bean counters roll in.

More in next…

India Outsourcing BPO Costs – 3/?

Pramod Haque has been going around the country side and spreading the same message.

Why is this happening? Why are costs in Pune coming to that of Bangalore or Chennai?

1. Lifestyle costs: I remember a time when salaries in different cities even for the same company was different for the same grade. It simply reflected a cost of living of that city as well as a lifestyle of that city. With media and mass advertising, lifestyle across all urban locations are the same. The Bangaloreans drink as much beer as the Punjab da munda and do not retire home for a meal of thair saddam ( curd rice ) any longer. How eager is the Pune youngster to stick to his sol kaddi? Not much I guess.

2. Demand outstripping supply: At the BPO forum of the MCCIA here in Pune we have been trying to do a study of the annual labor being supplied by various educational institutions. There is also an initiative to scope the existing pool of manpower. But such studies are easier conceptualized than actually carried out and delivered. In short no one knows what is the supply and the demand just keeps getting upped.

More in next….

India Outsourcing BPO Costs – 2/?

I was yesterday at the dinner of the CEO forum of the MCCIA, here at Pune. The speaker of the evening was Mr Pramod Haque, Managing Partner of the VC firm of Norwest Venture Partners. He talked of his two investee companies and why they had chosen Pune as the preferred location over many other cities which they had closely examined.

But hidden in his message was the topic which is the subject matter on hand. His coverage in the Pune Newsline carries the full story. But his warning note is ‘‘India (and Pune’s) biggest advantage is its cost advantage. But if salaries don’t settle down, it will become uncompetitive versus China and Eastern Europe.’’

To regular readers of my blog this should sound familiar.

I had wanted to ask him some questions during the Q and A, but held myself back.
1. If his investee companies needed talent ( and that was the main message of the evening ) would he hire them without offering more to employees with experience. Does he expect them to switch from existing employers without a good jump?

2. If his employees were being offered a 50% hike by the competition down the street what would he do? Match the offer and hold them back? Let them go?

I have said before in many forums and I am saying this again. Unless we take collective action as a joint forum we will not be able to achieve cost control. This is so because many factors of costs are influenced by the environment external to the enterprise.

India Outsourcing BPO Costs – 1/?

The key driver of why BPO is moving to India is costs. Get this right. It is cheaper to do things here than it is wherever it was getting done before. Labor cannot move but with IT, work can. So we have work coming to India.
Having got the basics down how are BPOs looking at costs? And that horrible thing called cost control?
IMHO very badly. Right now the spending pattern would put a drunken sailor on shore leave to shame. To get a glimpse of it…see my earlier posts on the Party psyche.
Think about it. How does an average office in Mumbai pay a telephone operator? What does the telephone operator in Hotel Taj, a five star hotel, get? Or Karsandas Khimji and Co, a typical trading firm in Masjid Bunder pay its telephone operator. Do they have free lunches? Or weekly parties?
So why should call center agents be any different?
” There is an acute scarcity and hence prices of agents and perks are much higher.” Logic accepted…but does the customer care about it. When you become too costly…guess what he will do? He will base his decision on exactly the same reasons that bought him here in the first place.

BPO Hiring issues

So now we have a call center in Pune that is enticing candidates with most luxurious SUVs to drop and pick up.

And they also expect call center agents to switch or jump jobs because of that.

Whatever happened to good old fashioned things like career, job enrichment, HR policies etc etc.
It only reflects the desperation of an Recruitment Manager who is extremely desirous of making the numbers, come what may.

In the short term approach, the long term desire of building a dedicated corp of team players is forgotten.
Clutching at straws is the expression that comes to mind.

BPO Hype Cycle – 2/?

Last week my friend M from Bangalore called up and told me that a certain UK investor was looking to invest and would I be interested in meeting with him. I said sure since it helps to meet external folks for industry level perspepctive. He replied that his friend A from Bombay would call me up. A called up and put his friend S in touch with me. S was all of 30 and had done two stints in two BPOs in Bombay. I considered him a BPO guru  I was reminded of the Java Guru’s we saw some time back. S then talked about a Bombay Stock Exchange member and an Ambassador of a small country wanting to see our facilities etc.

At this point I lost my shirt. There was not clue of the UK investor and now some folks who had no previous background in the Industry thought they could just saunter into our floor. We deal with confidential client data and we therefore have strict data security norms and do not normally permit anyone who shows up at the door into the floor without a strong reason.

And here was someone whom I had hardly met suggesting that they be permitted to access our facilities.

Data Security concerns aside, when folks who know nothing about the business start getting interested, to my simple mind, it means we are in the thick of the Hype Cycle.

BPO Hype Cycle – 1/?

As far as India is concerned the BPO industry is in the thick of the Hype cycle. From a US standpoint also it grabs media attention like hell.
For those of us with grey hair we have seen many such cycles. In India we know of the stock market booms of earlier era. The granite hype, the plantation hype and the last one…the dot com hype. American readers will easily understand the dot com hype since it affected both sides.
The BPO industry in India and the US has all the makings of being caught in the hype cycle.
My own opinion in all such situations is that there is a core business in any sector which is not hype. And built on all this possibility is a superstructure of expectations that can never be met. Granite for example is mined, excavated and used for various reasons. In my house as well as in many homes thorough out the world. Same with teak wood. Same goes for the dot com industry. I books my tickets and do all my hotel bookings for my travels using the Internet.
But the Investment bankers and other specie of the financial jungle soon start grabbing media attention from the actual players, create the hype, siphon off the cream and then skate over to where the next happening party is.
So here is a question to ask yourself, “Are you in the Hype segment of BPO or are you in the Real segment of the BPO industry.”

The BPO India Party psyche – 3/?

About two weeks back S a lady of about 40 years of age, wife of a friend of mine, mother of two girls including one appearing for her 10th standard exams was returning home from a party at Madh Island in Mumbai, India. The party went on till about the wee hours and it was about 6 am when she was riding on a two wheeler of one of her colleagues.

S was a process trainer in one of the leading call center BPOs. And it was the norm to throw a party by the BPO every quarter and all employees were expected to attend and ‘bond’ with each other.
While coming back…after probably one too many by the youngster who was ferrying her home, they had a fall and she injured her skull with a deep fracture. Bottom line is that she is in coma for the last 3 weeks. And no one know when she will come out of it.

Her daughter appearing for her 10th had to do so under such trying circumstances. The lack of medical facilities has left the family facing financial difficulties. When she will come out of coma is anybody’s guess.

Sorry for the sad part.

But the issue really is….what is the employer’s responsibility? If this were the US the employer would be sued for organizing a party and serving alcohol till the wee hours, to probably youngster who did not have the official permit to drink, and sending them home in two wheelers without helmets.
But it is Party time folks in BPO land. And such small incidences be damned.

The BPO India Party psyche – 2/?

In any situation when there is money to be made quickly, all kinds of folks rush in. VCs and other financial folks are the first to zoom in. They come in with OPM ( Other People’s Money , pronounced as opium ) and it can be as heady as the real thing and make folks do and think weirdly.

OPM props up new entrants who can indulge in the right rhetoric with little execution savvy and experience in the industry get into the business. Top level executives join them hoping to get a career break together with stock options piled in. They see financial freedom. Employees join in based on the antecedents of the top team. OPM makes the folks all around have a ball all the time. HR policies go out of sync with industry practices.

Clients get to them for want of a better due diligence process. VCs once invested are all interested in making their investments look good and bring work to their door. But ultimately, IMHO lack of experience shows. It separates the men from the boys.

Customers come for the sell speil but stay for the execution and delivery execellence.

Slowly a kind of burndown starts occurring. Bad news starts hitting the press. Folks say, ‘Oh…the BPO was another fad and died away’. What happened was that bad investments started showing their true colors. The good ones pick the remains, if desirable, consolidate and grow.

What remains for the folks who were part of the OPM group are the fond memories of the parties that they enjoyed in the ‘good old days’.

Venkat