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Global and local BPO dealings are things apart. In fact, the contrast is so vast that companies wanting to venture both operations should do it separately rather than incorporating them together.
It has been proved that Global working at night and local BPO operations during day from the same facility has not worked. The numbers reveals how different the two businesses are. Everything ranging from billing, profit margins, and employee salaries is different. It is difficult to mixing the two businesses and operating them from same location.
In the year 2005, the Department of Telecom had allowed local BPOs with more than 50 seats to share infrastructure and international call centre operations. What was noticed is that a local BPO worker's remuneration starts at Rs 6,000 at times even lower, and Global worker would fetch anywhere around Rs 10,000-12,000 per month.
While international BPO workers get facilities like transportation, local BPO staffs don't. With both of the employees in the same premises having different HR policies was again demoralizing and lets them feel down.
Billing rates in both businesses are entirely different. In hourly terms, the billing rates break down to $3-$4 per seat per hour in a domestic BPO versus $10-$12 per hour for an international BPO. Local BPO businesses carry billing rates almost one-fourth that of an international process. While a domestic client pays $450 (Rs 20,000) per seat per month, an international BPO pays $1,760-$2,000 per seat per month. So, an MNC bank outsourcing the same work for its India customers would pay a BPO $3 per hour versus $12 per hour that it would pay for serving its UK customers.
To put it simply about 4-5 persons in a local BPO will generate the kind of revenue that could be made by a single person in an international BPO for the same duration. Local BPO businesses operates at an margin of 13-14%, an international BPO works at 18-20% margins.
A company also cannot possibly provide the same kind of infrastructure - workstations, building, and ratio to a domestic BPO. An international setup runs on a 200% power backup at any point of time. Maintaining this in a domestic BPO will hit overall margins.
Of course, SLAs with clients also come into play. Some international clients want exclusive seats, workstations, and even floors for themselves, regardless of the call flow. And the time difference over global locations is a major dampener.
The UK shifts start at about 12:30 pm IST ending at 0030 hours IST. The US shifts start from 7.30 pm and continue till 6:30 am India time. The Australian shift starts at 3:00 am and continues till 11:00 am India time. Thus, nowhere can a BPO find an 8 am - 8 pm time slot exclusively free for allocating seats for domestic operations.
International BPOs like HCL, IBM Daksh, MphasiS, HTMT have started dabbling in domestic BPO operations. All MNCs that outsource international call queries to India also have domestic BPO operations, which they keep captive while outsourcing to third parties.
Citibank, HSBC, GE Money, American Express have outsourced domestic BPO operations. ICICI and HDFC also have large domestic BPO operations, apart from mobile operators like Hutch, Airtel, Spice and BSNL. The domestic BPO industry is estimated to be over Rs 6,000 crore, growing at over 40% per annum.
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