Demand Of IT Services

Demand of IT Enabled Services

The demand for call centres was primarily driven by the increasing trends of companies becoming more and more direct and personalized in their sales and service approach to their customers. Call Centres can meet the customer's sales and service needs, more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost, of doing it in person. They enhance organizations competitiveness and also improve customer loyalty. Over time, call centres has evolved more as a business process than a mere a business operation.

Advantage India

A booming IT industry, with IT strengths recognized all over the world. A large English-speaking population, a vast workforce of educated, English speaking, tech-savvy personnel is a boon in a high growth industry faced with a shortage of skilled workers. Cost effective manpower in a call center operation, manpower typically accounts or 55 to 60% of the total cost. In India, the manpower cost is a approximately one-tenth of what it is overseas. In India about 100,000 engineers graduate each year. These can be used in Call Centres for troubleshooting /tech. support, as the salaries are very much lower than in Europe or the US · The Government of India has recognized the potential of IT enabled services and has taken positive steps by providing numerous incentives. The presence of most international technology vendors and solutions would enable creation of most advanced set-ups in this technology-intensive segment.

Location attractiveness:

Several government initiatives in the last two years have considerably enhanced the attractiveness of India as a location. These include : Significant investment in infrastructure with the establishment of Technology Parks like Hitec city Hyderabad, Tata-Singapore Consortium Bangalore, Tidel Park Chennai, etc. Liberalisation of telecom sector allowing private players in ILD, NLD and leased the services Competition among state governments to attract BPO investments A more conducive regularity environment, in which the industry is made eligible for several incentives including a 10 -year tax holiday, rebates in customs duties, liberal investment policies, etc. The international bandwidth situation in India has improved dramatically with the launch of India's first private undersea cable on 9 April 2002. Moreover, considerable bandwidth is also available to Indian companies through VSNL.

People attractiveness:

India's large, low cost, English speaking talent pool will remain its most important source of advantage in the long run. Today, the wage of an Indian Call Centre operator is about 15% of his or her US counterpart. Every year, 2.1 million graduates and 0.3 million-post graduates pass out of India's non-engineering colleges. While 2.5-3 per cent of them find jobs or pursue further studies abroad, the rest have very few avenues of employment open to them. Hence, even at current rates, there will approximately be 17 million people available to the BPO industry by 2008. Moreover, approximately 19 million students are enrolled in high schools and 10 million students in pre-graduate degree courses across India. So, if the flow from high schools to graduate courses increases even marginally, there will be a massive increase in the number of skilled workers available to the industry.

Spread of BPO in India:

BPO Services in India are spread around cities where basic IT and Communication (ITC) infrastructure exists and is being developed. The 9 cities where 90% of ITES-BPO situated are Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, NCR (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon) and Pune. It must be mentioned further that BPO is also spreading to new cities like Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Lucknow etc. where ITC infrastructure is developing and also the manpower cost is lower. At present majority of BPO Services are centred on Medical Transcription, Call Centre, Back Office Operation etc. However, as the confidence level posed by international companies on Indian Market is increasing more and more value is being put in the job outsourced. It is expected that the BPO Services in other fields mentioned will also pick up substantially and India would continue as a major destination in BPO.

Advantage North East:

There are a number of reasons why North Eastern India has the potential for taking up IT enabled services (Call Centres) as career opportunities such as Attractive financial/ tax and infrastructural incentives, Significant number of English speaking people,Education infrastructure, Workforce quality, IT / telecom infrastructure and Low attrition rates.