BPO and IT Stronger Together

A decade ago the BPO (or rather more appropriately now called as BPM) industry was the poster-child of the new age and the picture of India's rise to prominence in the age of globalization. The industry has now matured; but the sheen has worn out.

In the beginning it was considered to be a close cousin of the IT services industry, so much so that it was called the IT-enabled industry. But now it seems that the two industries have drifted away far from each other. After all someone who is writing code on real-time credit risk analysis for some of the world's largest banks is far higher in the pecking order than someone who answers customer service calls from the customers of these banks.

So it seems. But the reality is different. BPO is actually riding the IT wave very high.

For one, BPO is no longer about running sweatshops with people toiling away at processing work mechanically. The development of specific technologies like document management, information retrieval systems, and such had speeded up work in many document-intensive processes. But the advent of IT-based solutions that automate specific parts of the process lent further improvement in efficiency. For example, solutions dedicated to processing insurance claims or processing mortgage applications, automated the process to deliver better efficiency and required lesser resources. At one level, this could be called as the integration of process with technology, but at another level, it could be called as the integration of IT with operations.

Platform-based BPO usually involves the development of IP in the form of a solution that delivers the process. This is then overlaid on an IT infrastructure and services are delivered using ‘per transaction-based' pricing model (rather than per FTE-based). The latest talk in the industry is robotics-based delivery of services.

The impact of SMAC on the BPM industry is quite significant. In some ways it adds more complexity but in other ways it makes services more powerful. Take for instance analytics, which is now the holy grail of the IT industry. Analytics is about tapping into the embedded intelligence of a system. Analytics helps in identifying patterns in behavior and performance and is both predictive as well as descriptive.
The application of analytics in other spheres like marketing and engineering have yielded results that go beyond improving efficiency to delivering better outcomes and therefore higher performance. The same is true of business processes and how they are handled.
Smart enterprises derive decision-making power and agility from analytics that run across various business functions. Leaders in the BPM industry help their clients become just that. BPO and IT are woven with each other stronger than ever.