Pace of change is accelerating in IT-BPO industry

Bangalore: “The industry is on the precipice of a great change where the breadth of opportunities and scale of potential is increasing by leaps and bounds,” said Pramod Bhasin, president & CEO, Genpact, as he opened the session on next phase of growth for the knowledge service industry during the conference on India: Knowledge and Professional Services Hub to the World — The Decade.
Bhasin explained that the Indian knowledge and professional services industry can leap to the next generation of growth if they move with the trends that will drive the industry. He said that access to data and information will drive the business.

"There is massive data that is being generated that needs to be sorted out, analysed and made into sensible information. That is where the opportunity lies for the Indian players.

Analytics, and business intelligence will be where the revenues will come from," he said at the conference organized by AIMA.
When creating business plans, BPOs and ITOs also need to take into account newer technologies that are changing the way that organisations are doing business.

Bhasin said that BPOs and ITOs need to work on processes that can leverage the growth of cloud computing as a business tool.

To grow to the next level, India also needs to move away from per-hour dollar billing mindset to process and project-related costing. Otherwise, Indian companies will become commoditised and not see the expected growth rate of 20 per cent annually.

Ramesh Vangal, who heads the Katra Group, said it is time that the knowledge industry also got in touch with the consumer to understand the actual need. "BPO players need to think beyond the box and use soft power and software to create solutions for the new generation. We should also look for new opportunities in the domestic market," he said.

P Anandan, MD, India Research Lab, Microsoft, took this point further by saying that Indian businesses rely too heavily on people to run things at low cost, while the focus should be on R&D and innovation so that the human resource can be leveraged. He stressed upon the need for public-private partnerships to create a well-trained human resource.

That is when the innovation will happen.