Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 8)

By guest author Tony Scott

The Future of Outsourcing in India

Tony: I don’t know if you have read Sramana Mitra’s article “The Death of Indian Outsourcing”?

Alok: Wow, that’s pretty provocative – but no, I haven’t.

Tony: She basically said that there are many challenges to the growth of the outsourcing industry, particularly for those companies that are providing a pure labor arbitrage model. >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 7)

By guest author Tony Scott

Global Leaders: Bridges Across Cultures

Tony: What about your leadership team? As you look at the kind of leadership team you need around the world to help drive your company forward, what do you think are going to be the key strengths you will need to help you be successful?

Alok: We were just talking about those cultural reasons, and that’s actually a good segue into this question. That’s why we are looking increasingly at the vice president and the assistant vice president level for people who may be Chinese or Indians living in the United States or Canada and who want to move back to China or India. >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 6)

By guest author Tony Scott

Cultural Differences: Can Indians and Chinese Provide High Value-Add?

Tony: So let’s talk about this as it comes to the culture of the people providing this “high-touch – technology-enabled” model. First of all, you have four different locations from which you are providing services. Do you find differences in the cultural approach of the employees whom you have in those locations? How do those differences impact your ability to deliver this kind of model to your clients? >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 5)

By guest author Tony Scott

The Value of Productizing Knowledge Processes

Tony: You are talking about how the downturn is impacting these kinds of knowledge process outsourcing companies. Are there things that you are doing to try to move into even higher value services? How about productizing parts of your services? >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 4)

By guest author Tony Scott

Jumping on the KPO Bandwagon and the Coming Shakeout

Tony: Have you seen other competitors doing what you are doing?

Alok: Yes, there are a lot of competitors now. Until 2004, when we created the term KPO, nobody knew this segment. But then what started happening in India in 2005 was that there were massive retention issues – turnover was at the rate of 80% to 100% in the call centers. That started causing problems for the BPO companies, because they just could not hire enough people and make any profit margin, since BPO is a pure commodity business. Since they could not make much profit margin on BPO work, some of those companies started getting into KPO. >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 3)

By guest author Tony Scott

Global Delivery and Talent Acquisition

Tony: Obviously, to do that kind of knowledge-based outsourcing requires specialized talent. How do you build that capability?

Alok: We are hiring people in four centers: in India in New Delhi; in Shanghai; in Chile just north of Santiago to cover Latin America; and in a university town in Romania to cover Europe and in particular German, Italian, Russian, and Eastern European languages. >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 2)

By guest author Tony Scott

Knowledge Process Outsourcing: Labor Arbitrage or Value-Added Knowledge?

Tony: So you are defining the market space as anything that’s a knowledge-based process?

Alok: Yes, whatever is a knowledge process where you need domain expertise. Legal, consulting, and accounting and CFO-type solutions all require a lot of domain expertise. Investment banking data analytics is another area. And doing data analytics for health care is different from doing data analytics for telecom and technology guys – each requires specific domain expertise. So that’s what we do; we provide these knowledge-based processes that are built on top of the domain expertise we create over time. >>>

Outsourcing: Evalueserve Interview (Part 1)

By guest author Tony Scott

I recently talked with Alok Aggarwal, the chairman and cofounder of Evalueserve, a pioneer in providing knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services, a term the company coined in 2003. Evalueserve is at the opposite end of the spectrum from typical call center outsourcing companies because its focus is providing customized research conducted by highly educated professionals who have deep domain expertise. Its clients include investment banks, insurance companies, private equity firms, leading consulting firms, law firms, and intellectual property firms.

The company’s history and approach and Alok’s view of the transformation occurring in the outsourcing segment are fascinating – and they point to the continued and increasing disaggregation of activities many would have considered highly unlikely to be outsourced only a few years ago. >>>