KPO Experts India

 

Forrester Research, a Technology and market research firm has predicted that the growth in outsourcing and offshore activity has seen the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry entering its third phase of evolutionary process.

 

Sharing the highlights of a published report, John McCarthy, vice-president (Asia Pacific Research), Forrester Research Inc said, that In the past five years, the BPO services industry has matured and have shown performing in skilled, more complex and domain specific areas.

 

Referring to the increase in the number of customers for IT companies and increasing complex nature of services being offshored, McCarthy stressed, “Companies will now have to change to cater to the specific needs of each verticals and sub verticals. They can no longer have a generalized marketing strategy.”

 

He outlined the new offshore success mantra for IT companies as, “product marketing, real account management (an increase in client servicing and marketing executives handling a particular account), making strategic choices (focusing upon 3-4 verticals) and becoming specialized service providers.”

 

It is being Noticed that consolidation, mergers and acquisitions would continue across the industry.The scenario would help only those to survive and grow which adopt key differentiation strategies, specialized working in domain specific fields and adopting continuous process of development. The rest would either be at the bottom or would vanish.

 

The research has also brought to the fore a few disturbing facts. Citing key trends in the offshore services space based on a survey carried out on 227 IT executives on several parameters like overall satisfaction, industry expertise, perception of communication and professionalism, McCarthy said, “As offshoring companies are growing, the satisfaction levels have dropped almost 50 per cent for quality advantage and communication and professionalism. In 2003 communication and professionalism was 27 per cent and its reduced to 18 per cent in 2005, whereas the quality advantage has diminished from 27 per cent in 2003 to 19 per cent in 2005.”

 

The next differentiating factor in my opinion will lie in the ability of offshoring companies to attract and retain quality talent.

"Excerpts are taken from report of Forrester Research Inc"