To the UK it is still somewhat a new idea. Even though many companies have been looking at the idea for a year or two, the volume of business that has gone offfshore to India is still limited, but now starting to grow as people explore, hear about and meet references they feel are relevant to them.
The value is there and well worth exploring. Today even the political issue seems to be dying away, it is becoming accepted. Firms such as Prudential have made announcements, others such as BT, Axa, British Airways and RSA have been there a while. Most serious UK outsourcers have an Indian offering.
In the US the market has started to mature even, with the market quickly moving into phase 3 when considering outsourcing contact center operations to India.
In Phase 1 beginning in the mid-90s, pioneers such as GE started to move internal customer service operations to India to take advantage of time zone and cost differences, similar to the earlier waves to outsource IT functions to India.
In Phase 2 starting in the late '90s, other US-based companies started to outsource some of their email support to India-based start-ups such as Aumenta.
In Phase 3, which started in 2001, we are now seeing significant growth and new requirements laid on Indian operations along several exciting dimensions:
• greater amounts of voice traffic handled by Indian centers, both inbound and outbound, helped by improvements in VoIP technology and accent neutralization training
• larger, more capable outsourcers able to cover multiple applications ranging from technical support to back office processing in the same company, across several sites in India providing redundancy and scale efficiencies, all the while keeping costs low
New entrants to outsourcing to India, companies having "waited and seen" successes by others, are now satisfied that India is ready to support their needs either via outsourcing or perhaps by opening their own operations there.
One of the biggest differences, we would argue, between US and UK perceptions of this market is due to the relative client side experience of managing sourcing of any kind - whether sourcing internally to other captive business units or externally to outsourcers. UK companies, particularly in financial services do not yet match the competencies for managing outsourced delivery which global technology companies have developed.
But on the ground, the pace of expansion is not letting up. Dell in Bangalore, which MD built and ran until recently, has now expanded to 3000 people and this is not unusual in terms of the scale to which the "captive" sites aspire. Scale is important when the ratio of costs of management and expats to front line staff is much higher than in the US or UK.
The industry is also setting very high standards for staff, for management practices and for operations. Talk of six sigma and of certification standards for centers is rife. In our own experience the standards are generally higher than one might see as the norm in the UK or US.
"We use two Indian outsourcing partners, and after rapid start-ups both are near the top of our global sites in terms of quality and customer satisfaction. We are very happy" quotes one of the members of the Global Outsource Council (GOC).
"With the huge numbers of skilled English speaking college-level graduates each year, and more and more experience handling US company customer issues, India is the place to go, and must be on everyone's list for partnering or opening new contact center operations."
And people are already starting to look further afield. Where will they go when India becomes the norm? A recent discussion with our Asia alliance members recently suggested Thailand was on the up and coming list - too early yet but great culture and lots of English spoken. The Philippines are already on the map. Our Hong Kong alliance member already set up last year an English speaking tech support center in mainland China to support Hong Kong. Our French member is working on work going to the Lebanon. It seems there is no end to the large company's appetite for cost saving.
But India's real win is targeting the high levels of English speaking graduates it has, its extensive global management experience applied better than many US and UK companies can do. Then it wins at quality and cost.
Rika K has been working actively in a Call Center in India, Aumenta Services (http://www.aumenta.cc) since the past 3 years and has seen it grow from a small start-up to an industry-wide support services outsourcing hub.
