|
Tamilnow Articles ->
Call Centers, Back office Activities, R & D Services, Outsourcing and Off
shoring
Call Centers - Another major
activity in the BPO sector is the Call Centers. Enormous amount of data is
being generated through 24 x 7 hours per week. For example, flight
arrivals and departures at all the airports in the world, hotel bookings,
airlines/railway reservations, bank transactions etc. Information about
all these as well as e-commerce transactions, e-currency, telemarketing
etc. has to be made available to those all over the world who need to
know. The service must be cost effective, prompt and efficient. BPO
provides a solution here also. This type of enquiry service can be
outsourced to a call centre in a country like India. The person at the
call centre has access to the airlines database. The agent receives the
call, refers to the corresponding information on the web and responds to
the query.
There are numerous call centers in India alone each employing about 8000
or more people. The major issue related to call centers is again the need
of efficient man power resources. The employees must have good
communication skills with an acceptable pronunciation, accent free
communication, pleasant and polite presentations and knowledge of multiple
languages.
Back office Activities - BPO helps in the back office activities,
which exists in all the organizations in the world. For example, the
transaction processing in insurance companies, reservation data
maintenance and updating in five star hotels, etc are back office
operations. They are called such because the customers are not exposed to
these activities. Other similar activities which forms part of the BPO are
process consulting, legal services, document scanning and conversion to
different electronic media, document storage and retrieval, HR
Administration, pay roll maintenance etc.
R & D Services - BPO is used today for the Product Development
services, R & D services, marketing research as well as analytical
services. Now the educational processes are also outsourced, which is
termed as knowledge process outsourcing. Indian teachers are now tutoring
American school children at far less cost than their US counterparts.
Types of BPO Organizations:
There are two types of BPO organizations - Outsourcing and Off shoring.
Outsourcing is contracting with another company or person to do a
particular function that might otherwise be performed by in-house
employees. Off shoring describes the relocation of business processes from
one country to another, regardless of whether the work is outsourced or
stays within the same corporation/company. This includes any business
process such as production, manufacturing, or services.
Benefits of Business Process Outsourcing:
BPO fetches productivity improvements, access to expertise, operational
cost control, overall cost savings, improved accountability, improved HR
management and gives the parent company an opportunity to focus on core
business.
Demerits of BPO:
Hazards of BPO include data security and privacy. These may be compromised
if there is malpractice in the BPO company. Fear of job loss by the locals
is another defect of BPO. Even if the BPO gives large cost benefits and
quality of information to the corporates, it creates unemployment among
local people. Several US states are comtemplating legislations to ban
outsourcing.
BPO Benefits for India:
India is one of the countries which is largely benefited by the IT
software and BPO. India occupies the numerous position in the outsourcing
market, other players being China, Ireland, Russia, Philippines, Korea,
and Vietnam. BPO provides job opportunities on a large scale in India. BPO
is a boon to countries like India in terms of employment generation and
foreign exchange earnings. Most of the jobs offered are in categories of
data entry assistants, file clerks, payroll managers, electronic media
stenographers and telephone answering personnel.
|