In India with the American Express setting up its first back-office center, the Business Process Outsourcing was not considered seriously by the career-minded Indians. The profession has a seldom been considered at par with the mainstream Information Technology jobs. The times that have changed with even premier Information Technology body Nasscom. The Business Process Outsourcing sector has created around 10 lakh jobs in the country. The sector flourishes, the rising demand for the Business Process Outsourcing workers has pushed up manpower cost. The companies target educated people in the age group of 21 to 25 years and provide them an emplyment opportunities, to close to their homes.
The process also helps companies cut costs compared to that in big cities. From the rural BPO centers companies focus on voice service only and cater to the growing domestic demand. The Wipro opened its first rural BPO at Manjakkudi. To employ 120 people and will begin with a 50 seat pilot project for an international clients in the retail sector. The Wipro plans to expand its rural Business Process Outsourcing operations to 500 seats. Wipro’s leadership has always been determined to bring opportunity to rural communities through the application of the technology. This is whether that comes from the delivery of a service to that community. Decreasing the lower limit of the employment from the 100 to 50 by the Karnataka government has also paved the way to set up small center in the State.
These include logistics, infrastructure and the rest is taken care of by their partner in the rural BPO project. Most of the graduates liek the Deepa Shetty from thirthahalli are also feeling lucky to get a decent BPO job. At the RuralShores Thirthahalli for the last 2 months and is much excited about the opportunity. RuralShores is also happy from its experience as the attrition rate is very low and quality accuracy is 98 percent. From being a partner, a ruralshores also has independent operations with the 10 centers across India.
There is a problem of course but there are many challenges when the Business Process Outsourcing go rural, the foremost among them that is being availability of the electricity and the telecom connectivity. In the frequent power cut that is a big issue as they get power for only 6 to 8 a day. They need to use a diesel generators adding to their cost. The another problem that faced is that the employees have the little Business Process Outsourcing skills and a lot of investment and the process related training is required to impart computer skills to them. The learning curve for the process training is higher and thus gestation period is a higher than in city BPOs.
The another company that is into the business of the rural BPO is the Harva that finds that breaking a social mindsets is a huge challenge. Selecting the right location within the villages is getting electricity and telecom connectivity were other issues that Harva faced. The Nasscom is bullish on the rural BPOs and their ability to create a jobs in the small towns. They were also trying to help the government to understand the issue and challenges that faced by the business process outsourcing.
REFERENCE:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/209602/it-majors-exploring-rural-bpos.html
