Verticalization in Indian BPO Industry 2012 – Top Vendors Vertical Strategy

BPO vendors like Genpact, WNS, etc. have adopted the verticalization strategy in the past couple of years and according to Don Schulman GM for F&A and Supply Chain Global Process Services at IBM, verticalizing the horizontal will be the next thing and quickly accelerating and is the key to the future for all the BPO services providers. All along Indian BPOs have been horizontal focused with service offerings like customer interaction and support, finance and accounting, procurement and human resources that are applied across different industry verticals. Nasscom estimates that horizontal services account for more than 70% of the Indian BPO industry.

According to Technology Business Research (TBR) report, Genpact vertical strategy focuses on key verticals like manufacturing and BFSI accounting for 33.3% and 41.9% of top-line revenue and other’s increased to 24.8% in 3Q12 from 22.8% in 3Q11 driven by life sciences, consumer goods and retail. During Q3FY2012, the company exhibited commitment to its vertically-aligned go-to-market transformation, indicated by front end headcount additions to its newly targeted vertical industries beyond the core. Business development leads boasting over 20 years of experience within their respective industries were added to Genpact’s life sciences, consumer goods, and retail businesses. TBR expects Genpact to hire additional experienced employees, including management-level hires, across industries through 2013 to beef up its expertise and gain vertical-specific clout.

WNS has introduced a completely new strategic orientation, by verticalization of the company around six areas and the company expects the restructuring to boost its revenues in the near future. Its businesses will be divided into six key verticals; with travel and insurance being the major focus verticals. Other verticals include shipping, logistics, healthcare, banking & finance and retail. It is also planning to restructure its senior management strategically to handle the new verticals which will function as a Strategic Business Unit (SBU) in order to achieve distinctive as well as overall growth. The company has also realigned the Go-To-Market strategy for each vertical.

Aditya Birla Minacs focuses on banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, and telecom, media and entertainment verticals. BPO verticalization is forced upon them by Industry-specific customer preferences and goals and a new orientation in the way BPOs offer services offerings. For vertical specific offerings, the BPO services providers have to invest significantly in domain specific human resources and technology which is a major strategic both at the enterprise level  and also at the account level. Clients are looking for a higher level of domain knowledge and expertise in the Indian BPOs as clients want BPO service providers to partner with them and deliver work that will have direct impact on Client’s business. BPOs have to invest in building domain specific expertise and look to offer standardized product and platform based offerings along with customized offerings. Verticalization also helps the BPOs to effectively customize their offerings according to client needs. 

India Outsourcing Industry - Cloud based Platform offerings by Top Vendors

Indian IT-BPO vendors had realized that there would be demand for cloud services and had started building their own capabilities in order to survive the shift in demand and create innovative new models. Indian vendors moved a step ahead and started building platform based offerings that will be delivered by cloud. This means that cloud computing is standardizing the IT-BPO offerings by the Indian vendors and they have realized the cost and productivity benefits of standardizing processes. Clients too are interested in the standardized offerings and since such offerings are more outcome-based offerings that influence their business values. These cloud based platform BPO offerings are delivered through either public or private clouds or through the data centers.

Traditionally Indian vendors get nearly all of their revenues from the installation, customization and maintenance of software that is branded and created by mostly foreign software companies. There is huge cost and technology expertise involved in development of packaged software hence Indian vendors were more involved in migrating and maintenance. The cloud presents a different scenario for the Indian vendors where they can build their own platform and products and evolve from just migrating and maintenance to running the services for the customers. In cloud computing there is very little scope for continued services in a Cloud market. Cloud based BPO platform offerings present an opportunity for the Indian vendors to develop their own offerings and also helps in increasing the non linear and outcome based revenues that have more margins.

TCS focuses on owning the platform and the services, instead of simply being ‘helpers’ for other cloud brands and wanted to own the brand, the solution and the customer. TCS started wanted its cloud computing offerings generate nearly 10% of its new business together with product revenues over the next few years and planned  to offer standardized solutions across the areas of insurance and banking to multiple customers using same resources. TCS started its platform BPO unit in April 2008 and since then “had seen good traction in human resource outsourcing platform, and had created new platforms in select areas of finance and accounting procurement and analytics. TCS platform offerings have been successful and have seen good traction since last two years and it has seen good success in UK market. With over 30 customers, TCS currently has seven platform-based offering in its BPO unit and 25% of revenues come from platform offerings.

TCS iON - a cloud-based integrated IT solution for Small and Medium Business (SMB) and has already gained over 240 SMB customers who have benefited from increased efficiencies. TCS has already realized the traction for its 'bank-in-a-box' solution among smaller cooperative and rural banks. The solution, which helps these banks automate and integrate their processes of deposits and loans for a fixed monthly rental fee for each branch, already serves nearly 2,000 bank branches. Cooperative banks, including Andhra Grameen Vikas Bank, Uttaranchal Grameen Bank and Purvanchal Grameen Bank, are using TCS' 'bank-in-a-box' solution. Already, smaller organisations, such as Kaya Skincare, Oxford Book Store and Ryan International School, are paying TCS on per transaction basis as they seek to lower their costs of operation further. Non SMB cloud revenues are still at very low levels.

Infosys is banking on innovative cloud-based platform to facilitate client's customized needs and its BPO arm is aiming for $1 billion revenue by 2014. At Infosys Connect, the company introduced 15 Business Platforms under a newly created brand Infosys Edge, a family of platforms that enable customers to buy software on a pay-as-you-go model and offerings range from helping clients with e-commerce businesses to managing human resources and procurement processes. In second quarter of 2011 Infosys Edge signed ten strategic deals. Of these, four were from EMEA, four were from Americas and two were from the APAC region.  Some of the edge platforms are Infosys SocialEdge, Infosys CommerceEdge, Flypp (mobile application marketplace), TalentEdge, etc.

Infosys has about 2000 engineers dedicated to the Cloud products and platforms. Infosys is also building its own data centers in Australia and US and it is exploring the establishment of another in Europe to host new Business Platforms. The company is expecting about 50%-60% of workloads to shift on cloud in next five years, which may yield significant revenues for it. Infosys continues to see strong momentum with its Cloud practice having delivered over 125 engagements till date and The company is building concepts on edge platforms like for mobile banking, medical tourism, etc. It is offering also managing through the cloud the Aircel's Pocket Internet Store. Infosys tied up with Microsoft to provide cloud-based services to clients and will offer Microsoft Private Cloud solutions such as Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center, and solutions on Windows Azure to clients.

Wipro is launched cloud computing services through its arm Wipro Infotech and it has around 25 customers. Wipro Infotech is selling two cloud offerings to SMBs – software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Customers are charged per user monthly price model and it has been selling the service directly so far and may start selling through channel partners from next year. Wipro Infotech has applications such as ERP, mail and messaging, human resources management system, dealer management system, hospital information system, vendor portal and learning systems on the public cloud offering and is targeting verticals such as manufacturing, automobiles, healthcare, the microfinance industry, textiles, and education. Wipro has gone in for a mix of self-developed and third party software. The dealer management system and vendor portal, for instance, is Wipro's IP.

Wipro has also offerings in other layers of Cloud including Business Process as a Service (e.g. loan origination as a service), Software as a Service (e.g. bank in a box with leading software vendors, implementation partner to leading SaaS vendors) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Wipro leverages its Global Command Center (GCC) to provide a unified monitoring and management platform for private, public and hybrid Cloud environments. Wipro Technologies has built a private Cloud for OnStream Utility Metering Services Limited. Wipro is also partnering with other players like Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Citrix, etc and offering various platform based services to their clients on the partner’s platforms since 2009.

HCL Technologies announced in 2010 end that new technologies such as cloud computing will become nearly $300 million business over next five years, as part of the company's new initiative to incubate next big opportunities. It had formed a unit called 'ecosystem and business incubation organization', which had already identified five new ideas. HCL Infosystems launched  cloud computing based services branded ‘HCL O’Zone’ with an aim to offer end-to-end cloud based computing solution services to
its customers.HCL’s IaaS services are concentrated on the European and North American markets, with data centers in Sweden and New Jersey. The target market is HCL’s existing enterprise customer base, including a small number of industry-sector clients. Its offering includes standardized platforms for management, integration within a hybrid cloud environment, and a self-service portal and dashboard.  

HCL offers competency based services such as Cloud assessment, migration, implementation and maintenance. HCL has strategic partnerships & collaborations with leading players in the cloud ecosystem. HP has recognized HCL Technologies as the “AllianceONE Partner of the Year” in the category of HP Cloud Computing – Service Provider. Some of these include: Technology/OEM's Partnerships with Cisco, EMC, Vmware, Sun, Microsoft; IaaS: Amazon Web Services; PaaS: Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure, Tibco; Cloud Management: BMC, CA.

Indian Vendors have realized cloud computing is essential for future growth and are investing in developing the various cloud offerings for the clients. Interesting fact is that instead of restricting themselves to the role of migration and maintenance they are more focused on developing their own brand of offerings and for this they are investing in data centers and technologies. They might be using the platforms, technologies and software of major vendors but they are developing service offerings use them but selling to the clients on their own brand name. Cloud product and services can be developed at a very low cost compared to packaged software and since cloud computing industry is at an evolutionary phase will definitely provide an opportunity for Indian vendors. All the vendors have created separate business units equipped with financial and thousands of human resources focused on creating products and platforms based on cloud. All of the vendors have developed their own IP product and platforms based on cloud and are aggressively marketing them to the clients.

Standardized offerings through cloud are also what clients are looking for as this comes with significant cost savings and no upfront technology investments. But clients have to be careful as there are some issues like data security, outages, contract complications and technology understanding. Cloud computing is expected to be a key offering for the Indian Outsourcing vendors for the non linear and outcome based revenues that have high margins and help these vendors move up the value chain. Platform BPO offerings is another segment where the vendors had been investing in development of platforms since past five years and they have been seeing success in terms of signing of platform deals since last two years. Vendors are also aggressively marketing the platform offerings to their clients and they are aiming for thirty percent of revenues from cloud and platform based offerings in next three to five years.

India Outsourcing Industry- Increasing number of Fixed Price Contracts but Time & Materials Contracts still dominate for Major Vendors

The outsourcing contract is critical document in an outsourcing relationship which typically contains: scope of services, assumptions, deliverables, pricing, intellectual property and deliverable ownership, contract duration, service levels, customer responsibilities, Vendor responsibilities, conflict resolution, and termination process. There were 472 outsourcing deals struck in the third quarter of 2011 compared to 516 transactions in the second quarter of this year according to Everest Group. Indian IT Vendors constantly write contracts with clients every quarter. Indian ITO vendors contracts are based on two types of pricing Time & Materials based pricing and fixed Pricing. Most clients still negotiate for T&M or Fixed Price contracts with T&M contracts more than 51-58% of total revenue and rest is fixed price contracts. Fixed-price projects to mitigate the impact of the rising rupee and wage inflation on their profitability.

Time & Material (T&M) Contracts are the major type of contracts done by the Indian IT Vendors. In the initial days of outsourcing of work to Indian Vendors the outcomes were unknown and both vendors and clients were not sure how effectively the work will be done by the resources provided by the vendors. They were not sure about the time and resources required, hence the T&M contracts were the best options. Clients wanted to have control on the resources and track vendor resources including the approval and clearance of time-sheets and the risks totally existed with the client. In the T&M contracts the risk lies totally with the clients. People are thrown at the problem and are billed on hourly basis and there are instances of unutilized resources in this scenario. Projects can be easily ramped up or down according to the clients needs easily. These contracts are best suited when the relationships between the clients and vendors are just starting fresh and the projects or process are new with no significant view of the outcomes and their impact. As long as uncertainty exist T&M contracts will be there and despite the fact some experts believe the golden age of T&M contracts is going to end in next ten years.

Fixed price (FP) contracts are clearly defined and deliverables agreed between client and vendor. Standard IT procedures, periodic reviews of performance and phased billing are other features of FP contracts. Risk is shared between the vendor and clients and vendors have to invest in the relationship and technologies required. This is a rigid model and mid way changes are difficult to make. Clients have to be very careful in choosing the best vendors for significant ROI and the vendors too have the scope on investing on the infrastructure and technologies as they are well aware of the client needs. Both clients and Vendors have to invest in building a relationship. Fixed price contracts are being favored by the Indian ITO vendors as they can efficiently complete the work using lesser resources and do it without much interference from the clients. In the past four years Indian vendors are trying to increase the Fixed price contracts percentage to total revenues as the client IT budgets/spend are being tightened due to the financial crisis, debt crisis and economic slowdown. Indian IT vendors looking to maintain 40-40% of total revenue through fixed price contracts. Fixed-price outsource contract attracts the customers due to immediate cost reduction followed by 3-5 years of cost control. Fixed-price projects are also more short term in nature, while the time and material are long-term contracts that give longer revenue visibility for companies

Tata Consultancy Services Limited

TCS has a higher ratio of fixed prices contracts in comparison to the competition and suggest TCS is undertaking more complex and mission critical end-to-end engagements.TCS has been looking to maintain the fixed price contracts in between 40-50% which they feel is optimal. The recent recession and financial crisis has tightened the client budgets and spends which forced to look for more fixed price as it helps them in controlling the resources and do the work more efficiently. 

TCS also increased the working hours of employees so that they can increase billable hours for T&M contracts. Fixed price contracts also have higher pricing compared to T&M and carry risk for the vendors. Fixed price contracts have to be signed constantly as the existing contracts get completed overtime and if there are no signings for some time then the overall revenue gets impacted. TCS in 2011 is facing such situation where they have seen fall in fixed price signings but confident to overcome as they have good pipeline. Margins also increase with fixed price contracts.

Infosys Limited

Infosys has successfully increased its fixed price contracts since 2008. Financial crisis and subsequent recession forced Infosys to start look for ways to curb the slow revenue growth. The US clients have changed their offshore outsourcing strategy and this prompted Infosys to look for fixed price strategy. But Infosys still have major revenues coming from T&M contracts as most of its clients want to stick with T&M and there are risks involved in fixed price like if the scope of a fixed price bid is unclear, it can lead to cost overruns. The share of fixed price contracts for Infosys in 2010-11 stands at 42% as compared to 28% in 2005-06. Infosys focused on shift to fixed-price contracts as part of the bigger effort to de-link revenue growth from manpower growth and move up the value chain. In long term, Infosys expects the proportion of fixed price bids going up.

Wipro Limited

Over the last 2-3 years, Wipro have increased focus on fixed-price contracts. Wipro has been able to increase the proportion of fixed-price contracts to 45.7% in FY11 compared to just 34 percent in FY-09. Fixed-price contracts ensure better realizations compared to time and material. Wipro is also is aiming to break the “linearity”, or revenue growth linked to the number of people added, and earn better prices through fixed-price contracts. Wipro was also forced to look for more fixed price contracts to overcome the recession. Wipro has in the past couple of years have been signing more fixed price deals as these deals provide revenue visibility and reduce the pricing pressures. 

HCL Technologies Limited

HCL Tech have increased its fixed price contracts to total revenue percentage in 2011 to 42% from 30% in 2006. HCL had move to more fixed-price contracts as it offers more certainty in contract execution and revenue. Fixed-price contracts require greater planning in terms of resource allocation and utilization and definitive timelines of implementation and were more relevant in the turbulent times where clients of HCL are demanding output/outcome-based pricing with service-level agreements. In the last two years HCL has seen good traction in the fixed price deals and it is planning to do more such deals in future.

Discussion Points:

1. Are the Indian ITO vendors doing well on the Fixed Price contracts front?
2. How comfortable are clients with Fixed Price contracts and how to manage risk?
3. What will happen to T&M Contracts in future?
4. What is the optimal balance for T&M and Fixed Price contracts?

Innovation & India Outsourcing Industry – Case Study of Top Indian Vendors (TCS, Infosys & Wipro)

Indian outsourcing companies realized that clients are more interested in innovation along with cost and process efficiencies.  Clients are interested in paying more for the transformational and innovation projects and product offerings. Initially it was sending technology workers to companies in the west for work onsite, then came the offshoring which is the traditional model of outsourcing based on the client needs and the latest third wave in Indian outsourcing is where companies design the platforms and systems that facilitate innovation and efficiency. But the fact remains that till now there has not been a disruptive offering from the Indian Outsourcing vendors. According to a 2011 Forrester survey, 41 percent of outsourcing clients cited lack of innovation as the biggest challenge with their existing IT services relationships.

Clients interviewed by Jan Erik Aase, (Sourcing & Vendor Management analyst-Forrester Research), identified three types of activities offshore vendors may try to pass off as innovation that failed to meet their expectations: innovation-for-pay (vendors creates a solution for one client and then licenses it back as a product to that client and the larger market), innovation for innovation's sake (emerging tech from vendor R&D labs that don't solve a customer problem), and administrative innovation (IT services buyers don't view process improvements, project management tools, relationship dashboards, and the like as real innovation). Clients want innovation relevant to their specific needs such as solve business problems, transformation in doing business, commercially viable solutions, creates competitive differentiation, improve market share, or have "an ROI with a multiplier of at least two”.

Innovation @ Top Indian Outsourcing Vendors (TCS, Infosys, Wipro)

Indian Vendors realize that Innovation is lifeline of business and is a critical factor for success in outsourcing industry. They know innovation is a complex process and is a vital component in their business strategy and in order to stay ahead, companies should increase the speed of innovation, be focused on the customer experience, understand their behavior, and co-create with customers and partners. Innovation has to be instilled into the organization at all levels and companies have done this successfully. The top three Indian outsourcing vendors have around 500,000 employees working in their organization for clients across the globe. They constantly innovate and improve the process efficiency there by leading to cost and other benefits for the clients. They work 24/7 for the clients and the innovation which most of the employees do on the day to day basis is called derivative or sustainable innovation.

All the three vendors are using their in house intranets, employee engagement and social media platforms for the idea generations. These platforms provide an opportunity to express their innovation ideas to the management. Managers and Leadership are being trained to act upon these ideas by the employees, evaluate them, commercial viability of the ideas and finally implement them and develop product and service offerings. Formal trainings for the employees include innovation and creativity. For the training programs they are employing third party consultants and experts and also tying up with the academics and other research institutions. Rewards and recognitions are provided for the employees who provided successful innovative ideas and Innovation is also part of the employees’ formal annual performance reviews. The vendors have invested on the training of the employees, provided them with necessary platforms and are investing and developing the ideas into final products and services.

Annual Innovation Events are being conducted where the employees are allowed to present their ideas, conduct demos not only to the management and leadership but also to the academic, clients, research, alliance partners and other stakeholders. These events bring together all the stakeholders of the innovation process and provide a platform to discuss and debate on the various innovations. All the vendors have tied up with the academic organizations, consultancies and other specific research organizations and do work with them in developing the innovative offerings. Wipro Technologies and Knowledge@Wharton together started conducting this tournament in 2010 which selects the most innovative managerial "tools" that companies can use to improve their business by increasing revenues, reducing expenditures and improving customer experience

TCS and Infosys have setup exclusive Innovation labs and these labs TCS Innovation Labs and Infosys SETLabs have been in existence for the past 30 and 20 years respectively. These labs has developed several process frameworks, methodologies, service platforms and work with standards bodies on future technologies, share best practices and maintain peer relationships with academic bodies, industry forums, conferences, and journals. Around 600 and 800 associates work in the R&D in the TCS and Infosys labs respectively. Wipro on the other hand provide third party R&D outsourcing services to their clients and they dominate this market. Infosys' SETLabs incubated the Innovation Lab in collaboration with Prof. Venkat Ramaswamy in 2005 as part of its research and innovation capability.

Frameworks are used by these vendors like TCS adopted Professor Clayton Christensen Innovation frame work and Co-innovation network with Clients and other stakeholders, Infosys adopted a Co-Creation framework based on the book published in 2004 “The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers" by Prof Venkat Ramaswamy and management guru the late C K Prahalad. Co-creation is the practice of developing systems, products, or services based upon innovative ideas from stakeholder experiences, that enhance strategic capital, increase returns, and expand market opportunities.

Wipro’s Innovation initiatives were developed based on a study of innovation methods in companies like Nike, 3M, and Home Depot that were reputed for their innovative practices and Applied Innovation which is the ability to infuse newer ideas and newer ways of doing things into all parts of the organization, and improve business outcomes, often without major disruptive change. Wipro Technologies, Innovation Evangelism happens through a series of vehicles that include: Wipro’s Innovation Camp, Innovation Bazaar, Story Book on Innovation, Systematic Creativity Workshops, and Inflection Point newsletter, etc

Despite all these efforts and investments India Vendors have innovated products which are more of sustainable kind and platforms that are mid range platform innovation but they are not able to innovate a disruptive offering. They have involved the employees and managers, provided tem with necessary infrastructure, established labs with exclusive focus on innovation and creation of new products, employed PHds and highly qualified people in these labs, provided with necessary infrastructure and other technologies in the labs, collaborated with all the stakeholders like clients, industry groups, research and academic organizations etc. Co-Creation with the stakeholders and forming strategic alliances with product companies and technology startups and investing significant amounts of money and resources are the major strategies adopted by these vendors. But success still eludes them.

Clients too have to make serious investments to profit from the vendor’s innovation strategy. Clients should treat the vendor not just as the cost reducing and process efficiency improvement partner but have to look at the vendors as strategic partners for the business growth. Clients should provide the vendors with the overall organization business strategy and make them understand that their role is not only limited to the IT department but also towards the overall organizational performance improvement. They should foster such relationships with their vendors and look for vendors with good innovation culture and strategies in place. It will be a win- win situation for the vendors and clients if they work collaboratively towards developing the innovative products and services.

All the players in the Indian Outsourcing industry realize the fact that only way to survive in this highly competitive outsourcing industry is to constantly innovate products and services that are relevant to the clients and lead to revenue growth to both of them. Innovation is highly complex and critical process that need significant amount of resources like monetary investments, technologies and highly skilled and trained professionals. The innovation Return on Investment is essential factor for both clients and vendors and they have to work together for this.

Further Reading:

Innovation @ TCS

Innovation @ Infosys

Innovation @ Wipro