{"id":1683,"date":"2010-05-05T10:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T10:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/pramod-bhasin-partii_050510\/"},"modified":"2010-05-05T10:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T10:47:00","slug":"pramod-bhasin-partii_050510","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/pramod-bhasin-partii_050510\/","title":{"rendered":"Preaching Process with Pramod, Part II: integrating IT and BPO and not getting blown up into small pieces…"},"content":{"rendered":"
Without further ado, let’s dive back into our discussion with Genpact’s President and CEO Pramod Bhasin, who graciously abandoned his golfing\u00a0buddies to spend time with us.\u00a0In <\/strong>Part I<\/strong><\/a>, we talked about how Genpact survived the Recession; in Part II we delve into how Genpact is\u00a0striving to retain a <\/strong>unique identity<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the industry\u00a0as a pureplay BPO provider, in the face of increasing competition and the convergence of Cloud, SaaS and BPO delivery models….<\/strong><\/p>\n Phil Fersht: <\/strong>Pramod, there is a\u00a0concerted drive from the service provider community, particularly those with an IT services heritage, to diversify into BPO by pushing “productized solutions”, whereby you have the IT componentry underpinning the BPO.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>\u00a0My view is that BPO is critical for these\u00a0offerings, providing the “personalization”\u00a0that can\u00a0mould them effectively into client scenarios.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Is Genpact\u00a0pursuing a similar “product” strategy,\u00a0or do you have a different angle here?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Pramod Bhasin:<\/strong>You and I are in exactly the same spot on this one. IT companies are going into our industry and I am convinced that it is more because of their ability to access customers than it is with “convergence of BPO and ITO”. I am pretty sure about that. Why do I say this? If you look into how companies are running their business process areas, they are running them very separately. It is not that they are running them to get any great traction, which is where you might say there is real convergence between the two at a meeting point across the board. Of course, there are areas, which have meeting points. There are areas like healthcare claims and insurance platforms\u00a0where you can process a lot of transactions. There are the HR and payrolls platforms that one can use. So, yes, you can have this kind of convergence.<\/p>\n But I think that the vast amount of movement that we do on the process side is very, very\u00a0different from the IT side. I think that is obvious when you look at the skill levels, and how these people need to be managed. I also think, Phil,\u00a0that much of it will be left up to the technology companies because there are more of them. Ninety, ninety five percent of the companies in our space are technology companies. So, of course, they are going to say, \u201cThat it fits right in with what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n I do think though –\u00a0and it doesn\u2019t happen enough –\u00a0but is happening more and more, that there is increasing recognition by companies that managing business processes is still too much of an art. I think that there is increasing recognition also, and it always been there, that people say “if we automate, we\u2019ll eliminate and that\u2019s the only cure”. Whereas, now there is a greater recognition that there are many capital light, efficient solutions for making business processes much more effective and efficient. Those need to be pursued vigorously.<\/p>\n Most companies can\u2019t tell you how good or bad their business processes are. And yet, their health depends upon it. How much money they make depends on it. How they make their money depends on it. This is an astonishing statement in a world where companies have existed for centuries with business schools and everything else. Yet every company tends to be willing to find a simpler process for accounts payable all by itself, that is brand new\u00a0in their own way. Everyone reinvents the wheel a thousand times. If you ask someone at a C-level how good of a value processes are, they can never give you a quantifiable answer. All they can give you is \u201cgood\u201d, \u201csomewhat good\u201d, \u201cnot good enough\u201d, \u201ccould be better\u201d. That is really a killer switch for a company. Surely, all of us need to know, \u201cI have process XYZ and how well it is doing, what it is expected to do. Is it\u00a050 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, how well is it doing? That is the real weird thinking of the world.<\/p>\n We want to build a science and it is a real unique opportunity. We then erect a form firmly in the middle of that space that we think is a large vacuum in the world and we want to be among the best, if not the best in the world at managing and improving business processes. This includes analytics,\u00a0technology tools, enablers, platforms, call it what you want\u00a0for processes and expertise. That is what fundamentally companies want. Point solutions are over for them. If not, I hope that it will be. They are saying, \u201cI may put a technology tool in here but leaking on the other end of the system is destroying any benefit that I get.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil Fersht:<\/strong>\u00a0How can customers achieve process\u00a0innovation with BPO?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Pramod Bhasin:<\/strong> As long as we can do it at the right level, we see enormous recognition of what we are trying to do, in terms of innovation. They may say, “We are not ready yet, we are trying to solve far too much right now, this is too slow in coming”, (lots of things like that), but the fact is, that all of them recognize and say, \u201cThis is what I need. I have no means of assessing how well or badly my processes are running. Maybe you can give me something that allows me to do that. This is the only way that I can anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n The point that we make to them is that good work versus\u00a0average work\u00a0is not 15 percent. It is five times that. That is the amazing part about this. It is like what they talk about in cloud computing. The benefit of cloud computing is not incremental savings. Maybe there is an analytic solution, but unless you can look at it end-to -end, and we can help, then we are missing the boat.<\/p>\n I use simple examples. One person processes 4,000 invoices per month for the UK subsidiary of a pharmaceutical company. We make it to 6,000 and everybody is delighted and say how wonderful and what a great job, except if you look at the same company in the US, they process 20,000 a month. The difference is huge and that is because nobody looked at how good their processes truly are.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n