"India is a true pioneer in BPO"
Mar 24, 2008

William Bosma, VP (Speciality Sales APAC) of Oracle, in an interview with Pankaj Maru discusses the latest trends in the contact center industry, its technological issues, infrastructure needs and growth in the Asia Pacific region

Can you tell us a bit about your Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution?

Traditionally Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and telephony components used by BPOs and enterprises have been different. In addition, there's need for proper infrastructure like Communication Channel and Network, EPBAX, IVR, VoIP, Computer Network and Software Applications as per the client's requirement. For different clients the BPOs and enterprises would need specific software applications and platforms.

Typically, these BPOs and enterprises face the key task of integrating its systems and applications to match-up the requirement of their clients. But such integrations are not just of a complex nature but are also quite expensive in terms of its maintenance and up-gradation. This raises the operational cost for enterprises and BPOs.

Thus with Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution, all the infrastructure of BPOs and enterprises gets integrated and shared into a single window. This integration is done on the Oracle platform. In fact it comes with a pre-built integration of Oracle platform that offers a highly scalable, multi-channel functionality for communication channels and supports calls, e-mail, fax, web and IVR. The solution is architected for multiple tenant operations, a single physical installation to manage multiple clients.

From an agent's perspective, it means a single platform, more productivity and efficiency, no switching between applications; the centers can manage the call interaction and management easily. This capability is called the virtual agents, where agents are not required to be at a single physical location but they can manage calls from anywhere or even from home. It saves both time and money for contacts centers.

India's BPO industry is growing at a great pace compared to the Asia Pacific region. In your view, can this growth be sustained or can it slow down after a period?

I would not like comment about India specifically and also it would not be appropriate to talk in terms of numbers or draw any comparison. But in terms of the Asia Pacific region, according to a Frost & Sullivan study the number of contact centre agents in this region will grow to 3 million by 2012. Among them, 35% would be outsourced agents.

Overall India has the advantage in technical skills, language knowledge; the low cost of labor here is the biggest advantage for large scale outsourcing. But there are now challenges from some other countries like Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, which are also offering low cost operations. India has the pressure of cost cutting, infrastructure and quality of service against these countries.

Is the Oracle Contact Centre Anywhere solution based on the concept of virtualization?

Contact Centre Anywhere came to Oracle by way of an acquisition of a company called Telephony@Work, a large communications carrier offering services to customers.

It's a comprehensive multimedia IP contact center solution, architected to cover all forms of interaction, operates in distributed form across all platforms and supports all telephony standards (telephony protocols).

It has been architected in a multi-tenanted environment termed virtualization that allows business processes, processes of large enterprises and vast number of contact centers. It also allows one physical installation and other contact centers can operate as virtualized contact centers.

Can you explain the importance of cost cutting factors for contact centers?

Cost cutting factor for contact centers comes in couple of ways. Robust contact centers deal with challenges of integrating pieces of solutions and applications for various customers and their needs.

According to Guru of call centers, Jon Anton from Purdue University, basically there are multiple platform contact centers versus single platform contact centers. So the benefit comes by reducing the integration cost, the maintenance cost and upgrading cost. These are some cost cutting factors for contact centers.

There are some intangible things that make it difficult to cut costs but the benefits of single window system over multiple windows offer more efficiency and interaction with the clients and customers.

Can the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution be used only on Oracle platforms or is compatible with other platforms and applications?

We provide pre-built Oracle application and it works with other Oracle applications like Siebel CRM, Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Helpdesk etc.

But we know there are many people in the world, who don't work on the Oracle platform. However, the solution has 3 web services that allow the solution to integrate with various applications. It allows integrating with non-Oracle platform and applications. So this solution can be easily compliant with other applications.

Other countries in Asia Pacific region are competing against India in the BPO industry. So what are the points that keep these countries behind India?

In terms of trends it's obvious; India is a true pioneer in the BPO. In the early 90s, India first started by offering outbound campaign service to customers in US, Australia and other countries. That's a relatively simple application service by contact centers, not so complex.

The industry has grown and matured, so overtime there has emerged a strong element of inbound centers. India is answering to the customer's customers, which is a complex service but is done here for quite a while now. India has significant advantage over other countries with its IT and language skills. But other countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam are more into domestic markets offering outbound call to local clients.