Quality and not volume should be the motto, for the outsourcing firms

Business process outsourcing or BPO as it is popularly known, actually means handing over all of your non-core activities to a third-party who owns, administers and manages the process. Non-core activities include human resources, finance and accounting, supply chain management, and customer care. At the rate at which at which India has been bagging outsourcing contracts, it is all set to become a global player for providing offshore BPO services.

This concept of outsourcing is being bought like hot cakes in the U.S. and U.K. Actually outsourcing the non-core activities help companies concentrate on their core activities, which then gives them the competitive edge. Companies mainly outsource with an idea to reduce costs considerably, and one more reason for the move is the slowdown of the U.S. economy,which has provided the Indian firms a big outsourcing opportunity. In fact today companies in U.S. are looking to outsource their entire business functions to a third party provider, which helps them reap cost benefits.

As far as providing call center services is concerned, India has already claimed top spot. There are quite a few reasons for that. The cost factor is definitely there, but what is also there is the time zone India falls in to. And leveraging this opportunity, we can provide them a 24/7 service, 365 days a year. The cost-factor helps US companies to outsource their jobs to India at just one-third of what it would have cost them in the US. The telecom revolution on the anvil, which would lead to the reduction in international communication charges, would further help India become the most cost competitive center in the global scenario.

But the one thing Indian outsourcing companies should take care of is the quality, because in the end only that is going to count and the volume. Companies to stay away from price wars, as far as possible, because dropping of below a certain level may lead to a droop in quality and that will seriously affect business, which was exactly the case with medical transcription. In the case of call centers, Indian companies should have a group approach where they would share the best practices in the call center industry and probably adhere to standards like COPC 2000.

With all these things in place, nobody can stop India from becoming a mammoth global outsourcing giant.