From Insights to innovation – IBM INSIGHTS 2010, Mumbai

March 4th, 2010 Ankit Kaushik

From Insights to innovation that was the IBM’s organizational view that helped them deliver cutting edge technology & solution to their customers.
So speaking on Information led transformation, the inaugural thoughts were shared by Mark Register – Vice President (APAC), IBM. He shared his views on how organizations are operating with Blindspots which literally means that the decision makers within the organization don’t have access to the right information.
So he pointed out
• how to leverage information for smarter business outcomes
• how to make the planet smarter& lead information change
• how to proceed along an information-led transformation
• how to get started
• And how IBM can help you
Now the question which all of us are facing today is that we don’t have access to the right information at the right time which can help us in taking right decisions, which in turn is hampering the growth of an organization. Organizations are struggling with information explosion and trying to cope up with these challenges. He pointed out that organizations will reach a tipping out where they will feel blind folded on decision making. So there is
• Lack of insight – 1 in 3 managers frequently make decision without the information they need
• Inefficient access- 1 in 2 don’t have access to information they need to do their jobs
• Inability to predict- 3 in 4 business leaders say more predictive information would drive better decisions.
Today top performers have right managerial system for them to seek, evaluate & act on opportunity. They are armed with state of art tools to support decision making like
• Dashboards & visualization
• Analytics & predictive tools
• Content management
• Content analytics

Interestingly IBM’s Global CIO study 2009 indicates that leveraging analytics is now the top priority for CIO’s. Business intelligence & analytics was identified by 83% of respondents as the top focus area to increase the enterprise competitiveness. CIO’s at high growth rate companies are 61% more likely to proactively turn data into actionable information.

V Subramanyam – VP Channel Management IBM India, spoke about the information management system and how useful information needs to be segregated to reduce data churning. He gave typical examples of companies like Incois which has used the seismic data to generate safety alerts, HDFC Ergo which have enabled faster turnaround in processing insurance claims by proper information management.

Uday Gurkar – CA – Former GM(Business planning & Analytics at Aventis Pharma), spoke about CFO’s prospective on new areas like GAAP, IFRRS, XBRL, fast close, rolling forecast & actual Vs budgeted MIS using tools like IBM COGNOS.

Famous Commentator – Harsha Bhogle also gave some very interesting insights into information led transformation which are taking place in all sports specially CRICKET! Like how Duckworth Lewis is calculated in a game hampered by rain, how data analysis is helping in cricket, how players are profiled based on their past performances & previous statistics. Countries like US use best sports analytics using data mining & information mining. It was a really interesting & interactive session with Harsha with lots of fun filled experiences off the field & on the field of cricket was shared by the star commentator.

Nitin Singhal – Country Manager IBM (Business Analytics) also shared his views on accelerating the information led transformation giving examples from the industry like
• Human Resource Analytics – Talent analytics, performance management, productivity management & workforce management.
• Sales Analytics- pipelining performance, foresee performance, sales segmentation, Customer relation, Pricing & program performance
• Procurement Analytics – Spend analysis, Vendor analysis, Contract management, operation efficiency

He concluded his session with the point that analytics are key to Business optimization & IBM smart analytics system can help you in
• Smarter communication
• Smarter Insurance
• Smarter Banking
• Smarter Government

Post lunch session was a dedicated session for information technology track

Nagendra Nyamgondalu – Senior Manager, Information Management Solution & Datawarehousing (India/SA) shared his views on how internal business processes need right information at right time. He gave typical examples of slow sales cycles, cutbacks, reluctant clients & intense competition – business leaders are really feeling the heat to act fast, but a single bad decision today could be fatal. So what is the key to working smarter? It is in having the right information & insight to drive smarter business outcomes. His session explained how IBM smart analytics system can give your organization the insight it needs to work smarter in this challenging environment by putting the right answers in the hands of your decision makers today while putting your business in the best position to quickly adapt & grow to answer the questions of tomorrow. He explained how this unique, deeply integrated & optimized, ready-to-use analytics solution leverages a flexible infrastructure of IBM software, servers & storage – to quickly turn information into insights.

Data growth is estimated at 30% annually. Yet you are directed to cut costs. How do you do that without cutting performance, reliability, scalability or IT’s capacity to support your company’s objectives? It may not be immediately obvious, but your enterprise database affects all those variables. Is Database administrators expenses a large part of your IT budget? Is your storage infrastructure growing by leaps & bounds? Parag Pithia, Senior Manager -Information management system IBM India/SA explained the ways that your enterprise database can help or examine the ways that your enterprise database can help or hinder the bottom line, he clearly pointed how to uncover cost savings while delivering performance, automation, productivity, Green IT & more…

Managing content centric business processes & gaining control speaking on the same Harpreet Dhariwal – Advisory IT specialist Information management system IBM India/SA put emphasis on how much of your information is over-retained, irrelevant or duplicated? So do you have a clear compliance agenda and a roadmap that guides you towards that? Are you struggling with tactical compliance and e-discovery agenda by delivering capabilities and a prospective approach to reduce complexity, lower risk & cost and improve business agility?

The entire event was a day-long affair, but the mix of ideas and experiences presented was enough to keep the audience hooked till the end. With industry moguls sharing their first-hand success and failure stories and exploring the possible reasons and hence remedies for leveraging information technology in the right manner was a truly enjoyable and learning experience for me.

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My Recent visit to Bangladesh…

February 15th, 2010 Ishdeep Singh

It was indeed a pleasure meeting a few of you all…

Just to give you a heads up, Drishti is a leader in the SMB segment. Its cutting-edge solutions have further gained wide presence across the Philippines and Middle East as recognized by the three awards (2008 IP Contact Center Technology Award, ContactCenterWorld.com Member’s Choice Awards 2008, BPO Times Award 2007). We are continuously striving towards creating advanced communications technologies to enable call centers to increase their operational efficiency while reducing the Total Cost of Ownership.

We believe, Bangladesh is all set to be a major player in outsourcing and there will be investments in both International and Domestic Call Center space especially from the telecoms, BFSI and health institutions etc. Drishti’s offerings are ideal for contact centers and enterprises in rapidly-emerging countries like Bangladesh.

Partnership with OneCall has already opened new gateways for Drishti to offer its innovative solutions to Call Centers and enterprises in Bangladesh. With 15+ successful installations in Bangladesh in the SMB segment & a great sales & support functionality we are now ready to target the corporate segment whilst maintaining our stronghold in the SMB segment.

BANGLADESH: Bangladesh is the newest country added to the BPO family. According to a recent research done by the San Antonio-based research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan Inc., the call center outsourcing market reached $19.5 billion in revenues in 2005 and is likely to reach $20.1 billion in the course of 2012.

The country benefits from a vast educated human resource that can be tapped effectively by BPO companies planning to diversify to newer geographies to subsequently cut costs. As compared to the call center businesses in other regions of APAC, Bangladesh does not have the starter benefit. Bangladesh must study the mistakes made by entrepreneurs in India and Philippines and carefully perform its business plans after doing a full diligence rotation. Any miss-step early on could curse disaster for the whole industry.

There is a large chunk of today’s Bangladeshi youth aspiring to work in call centers. Good salaries, professional work environments, and chances to enhance one’s communication skills, and exposure to customers on the other side of the globe, all have proved to be enough to ensnare candidates in huge numbers. But because of lack of exposure to the extremely aggressive standards of Call Centers that there is an acute lack of human resources in Bangladesh with the specific set of skills that are required to excel in this industry.

A widely suggested solution for Bangladeshi companies should initiate joint venture with USA or even India-based institutes to open up more and more training academies for the professional development of individuals in the Call Center industry. Strong political support and relaxation in government regulations would be the key support areas that Bangladesh as country would be required to provide.

With the right support in form of relaxed governmental regulations and a trained labor force available at low costs, Bangladesh can strike a home run in the game. I seriously feel that rather than running after the international clients the BPO companies in Bangladesh should target domestic clients especially in the Telecom & BFSI segment.

One of the best stated examples here can be of Windmill, which is now operating with over 100 seats and has major expansion plans in the domestic business. Drishti is ready to render all the support required to help the BPO industry to flourish in Bangladesh.

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NASSCOM HR Best Practices Session

February 9th, 2010 Neha Gupta

On Jan 29, 2010 a session on “How Leaders Make Change Happen” was held at NASSCOM’s headquarters in New Delhi. Mr. Pradeep Henry, Innovator of a globally-proven method for business process centric software development as well as Consultant and former director at Cognizant started the session with his Presentation on the topic.

Ms. Neeru Goel, Director, Snap-On Business Solutions welcomed the audience. Close to 20 people in management positions from various verticals attended the session. In total 8-9 companies like New River, Magic Software, Company from Insurance sector, DIA( Delhi International Airport), Remiel Softech etc participated ( 2-3 members from each of them).

The open discussion on the topic was the most interesting part. People from all age groups participated making it a lively experience. The discussion included importance of Innovation and various change killers hindering change in today’s world. The discussion also highlighted various reasons like our education system, our culture, various fears etc that hinders change and innovation in Indian society.

Mr. Henry explained the importance of change and Innovation by highlighting works of Steve Jobs, Tom Peters and live example of the innovation change brought by himself by means of a presentation on “Leading the Innovation”.

By the end of the session, he triggered the audience by asking 5 questions on “Need a change leader”. The questions were thought provoking. The questions were:
•    Paving the cow paths?
•    Stuck with best practices?
•    Pursuing profit ” at any cost”?
•    Pursuing timid improvements?
•    Just Trendwatching?

He suggested using these questions in the organization and checking the responses from audience. Overall it was a refreshing experience with lot of views pouring in from experts.

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NASSCOM Fridays 2.0 sessions….

January 15th, 2010 Kshiti Garg

Last Friday, Bishal asked me to attend this session on online social media at NASSCOM office. Reached there with team mate Vijay… Well now a gist of the session. 

Since, we reached there much ahead of time (actually we were the first ones to reach,) we had plenty time to ‘Network’ with industry people over tea before the session actually started. Now give me an opportunity to talk and I would never let it go unexplored…lol…tried talking to these ‘serious’ people. Okay let me not get wandered away… 

Let’s focus on the core event… 

It was the 55th Fridays 2.0 session. It started with a key note from Ankur Lal, CEO Infozech.  

Ankur introduced the format to the audience that every attendee first introduced themselves, a brief about the company they are representing and their sole reason of being there for the session.

Okay one thing I’m missing here is the audience strength. As Ankur and Avinash, NASSCOM pointed out, as opposed to the expected crowd of around 30-35 people, the session had an audience of over 50. I would prefer to give the credit to the hot topic of the session – leveraging social media as a tool for online marketing.  

The presenter for the session was Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 20-20 Social. Gaurav is more popularly known for his blog gauravonomics. He’s in his own words a thought leader and a major promoter of social media and social media analytics. 

Gaurav’s presentation focused on Indian product start-ups.  He began with defining a quadrant of target users on x-axis and type of innovation on y-axis. The quadrant defined how any product start-up in India can be classified as either a tweak or an invention and can have either local or global audience.  

The question that hooked everyone in the audience was – Where do most of the product start-ups we can name belong? As Gaurav aptly pointed out, most of the Indian start-ups have been tweaks for the local markets and hardly any targeted Global market.  

He named a few that have not just dared to build products for the global market but also turned into successful ventures. These examples saw some contributions from the audience as well and heated up some discussions on the USPs and potential of these startups.  

Gaurav listed out five trends that would prepare Indian startups for a global stage –  

1.       SaaS-based delivery models and Cloud Computing – enabling widespread sales and distribution and easy scalability with minimum investments since it is always easy to get trail users and eventually migrate to pay per use models.   

2.       Application Ecosystems – These are user-friendly and easy-to-use platforms where anybody can build their own innovative applications.

3.       Social Web – The global Tech Blog Ecosystems are showing interest in Startups from emerging economies like India and China. The gatekeepers driving initial adoption of tech startups are waking up to success stories from Indian tech blogs. Leveraging these to find the right resources as well as customers could prove to be a highly fruitful investment of time.

4.       Viral Marketing – besides using the social web to build effective social connections, Gaurav pointed these could also be used for creating a buzz about a new product or application by reaching out to millions of subscribers of virality platforms like Techmeme, Tweetmeme and Facebook Connect.

5.       Support Ecosystem – Tech start-ups can either build and maintain their own support platforms or leverage social websites like Twitter to find prospects and track customer complaints and then use Skype to convert or close them. Customer-driven support platforms like GetSatisfaction can enable tech startups to offer support at scale without building a big support team.

Couldn’t agree more to the must haves Gaurav listed here. The great part was – I see Drishti fulfilling the first two very aptly. Also we have our in-house 24 X 7 support team answering the 5th one. And the remaining… tech blog ecosystem and viral marketing parts are definitely the ‘Take Aways’ for us.

Another lesson learnt…Social media could be a powerful tool for B2B type of businesses and could prove to be worth the time and patience invested. I’m not considering the costs here since it’s probably the cheapest when mass advertising comes into the picture. 

Let me sum up now with a Thank You to Gaurav Mishra for making me understand the core principle of any form of marketing – sell the idea as in “What is the benefit that the end user can derive from your product or service?” The product and brand become secondary to this. Also a confession to make… It was the very idea of – How we can leverage the power of social media for online marketing of our business that brought us to the session.   

;-)

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The Automation Black Hole

January 8th, 2010 Naveen

Automation has become the buzzword all around. Every business entity is looking at automation as their sure shot way to success. Wherever you go whatever you do everybody believes in the word Automation, but falls trap to the fallacies associated with it. Let me explain it further by an example -

Recently I met one of our potential clients where we were supposed to automate their business in-order to streamline the workflow and increase the effectiveness of the services being offered. Believing in the ‘Push instead of Pull’ theory, the client said instead of pulling potential customers into our services fold; we should go whole-heartedly to push ourselves to the customers.

Our firm coherently agreeing on the client’s business acumen delivered a product that met most of the specification listed by them. Initially the software worked wonders as everybody was excited about the new automation toy and were eager to get into the play-mode. The hoopla died once the pressure of targets and revised organizational goals got hold of the enthusiasm head-on. The resetting of goals meant employees were supposed to put in extra effort to meet the extended targets. Adding to the woes was an unofficial whip that made it compulsory for the each one of them to put their best foot forward to report technical glitches in software provided by us to ward of floor pressures. The human mind found a unique cure for this target headache.

We as a company, were initially quiet worried about the trend and were thinking of going back to the drawing board to reinstall or rework the software and were gunning for our project manager for the possible glitches. Upon careful monitoring it was found that service requests weren’t real tech issues and were merely the hapless employee’s way to ward off work pressure so that at the end of the day when reporting on employee performance was done they had an alibi that it was the software that was hindering an effective performance delivery from their end.

The above scenario was our first case but might not be the last as organizations retrofit themselves for the great chase i.e. emerging from the recession debacle and looking for a possible growth path across the cost-cutting maze. People need to understand that automation is not a so called ‘magic wand’ that will do wonders for an enterprise and organizational thrust for such an activity should come with simultaneous changes in its perspective of its internal aims and aspirations, its core competencies and above all its understanding of the market.

Blind stakeholder belief in automation has always led businesses to plunge in a black hole like situation from which they cannot emerge unscathed. The Risk-to-Return theory falls flat in situations where collated understanding of business proposition has not taken place. Waiting for automation to increase your business value does not always give the desired results as automation can only be an enabler and not to be considered as a proposition that works standalone.

The onus also lies on the technology firms delivering a service to such business entities. They shouldn’t just sell; it should be an IDEAL sell which should come with a proper understanding of the exact business requirements of the clients and not just something done for the heck of it!

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APPCAL Conference – CCAM Malaysia Nov 2009

November 9th, 2009 sachin

Thanks to everyone who was there to attend the presentation at the APPCAL even in Malaysia.
I am uploading a copy here and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

All The Best
Sachin Bhatia
Trends in Telemarketing – Presentation – Nov 09

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NASSCOM’s Product Conclave 2009

November 9th, 2009 Ankur Sharma

NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 was as expected a highly-interesting and definitely educating experience. The attendees included a potpourri of large corporates, emerging IT companies, start-ups, evangelists, academicians and of course the Press. The conclave began with key note address by Guy Kawasaki, MD, Garage Technology Ventures. He emphasized on not the best but the smartest utilization of available resources. Some key points made by the noted VC and evangelist that got me hooked were:

  • Making use of OS, development platform and tools that are absolutely free rather than spending money on expensive tools and technologies
  • Best possible usage of Cloud services
  • Crowd-sourcing the product and making users as your beta tester rather than waiting for stabilizing the product at development level
  • Leveraging social media and social networking in the right way as opposed to print, radio and TV ads
  • Making use of Twitter and TweetMeme as a platform for market survey and analytics as well as marketing of your products
  • Hiring college interns and enthusiast students to certified professionals since they are usually brighter and can be hired at a very nominal salary

The opinions on Guy’s theories were divided, but for me the above mentioned points seemed most relevant to my expectation from the event. From the marketing strategy perspective, I have always believed in the idea of optimal use of generic marketing strategies like SEO, SEM, Press Releases, Email campaigns, blogs and forums, quality marketing collaterals, networking events etc. rather than expenditure on expensive media like print, radio or television where the ROI won’t be attractive enough for start-up B2B companies having niche segment markets.

Next event in my itinerary was the “Workshop in Marketing and Branding Strategies for Product Organizations“ where I presented Drishti’s marketing map. Workshop Moderator Peter Yorke welcomed the panel and laid down the platform for the points to be discussed. The panel discussions at the workshop primarily included marketing strategies for product software companies, the challenges they face, possible solutions and industry specific best practices.

Peter hit the right chord by bringing up this intriguing topic of the need to change services mindset towards India as opposed to product development. With no-offences to IBM, HCL, Wipro or Infosys, they are the flag bearers of Indian IT industry, the general belief that India is primarily an IT services country needs to be changed. While the brightest brains behind microchips and even Windows 7 development included Indians, the perception lags far behind.

My personal fight in the industry has been to obtain equal professional respect for Indian software product companies and find answers to the conceptual questions like Are we building the right products? Are we marketing them rightly? Are we packaging the products as per global standards and able to establish a brand value? This also formed one of the reasons as to why NASSCOM Product Conclave was an event I was looking forward to. It was heartening to see an increase in number of product companies attending, moving up from somewhere around 371 last year to over 600. However, this figure is yet to bring satisfaction of acceptance to me as well as my fellow software product companies.

The remaining workshop session was quite interesting from the point of view of young software product companies. Lots of points emerged emphasizing on customer relationship management and customer satisfaction. One of the panelists Professor Venkateswaran, SDM, Mysore emphasized on the importance of customer retention. He stressed on the fact that a satisfied customer cannot be pulled away from a competitor no matter how aggressive our efforts might be. On the other hand a happy customer can be a brand advocate and bring surprising business by word-of-mouth marketing.

My personal belief in this regard aligns itself with this point – generating new business from existing customers is often more lucrative option as opposed to garnering a new client base. This theory is similar to the policies of cross-selling and up-selling in telemarketing services. Understanding the business environment of existing customer and then re-designing or tweaking the product thinking from the customer’s point of view can lead to generation of new business opportunities from the same customer.

Another noteworthy point was made by Sridhar Ramanujam, CEO, Brand-comm as he underlined the importance of creating lasting impressions on not just the customers but the entire community of investors, customers and employees (both current and potential). Samir Kumar, MD Inventus Cap elaborated on the essentials of a business plan which included customer focus marketing specifics and not just the technical capabilities of the product in question. He also suggested a way of calculating the ROI on marketing expenditure by comparing the marketing spend to the revenue generated per customer.

Following the Twitter and online social networking idea, there was a question on how should one handle any negative publicity like adverse comments in a blog posting. In reply to this, Aruna Schwarz, CEO, Stelae Technologies stressed on not just responding to the comment but also being consistent in your point of view. Emphasizing further, Aruna said handling feedback and prompt response to customer queries is also as important for customer relationship management.

The panel discussions highlighted the core of marketing – it’s not the product that is marketed but the entire customer experience. A company that can effectively sell a satisfying customer experience has won the battle. The entire process of pre-sales to post-sales requires equated emphasis from both the marketing & sales perspective of the company. Management of this ecosystem becomes mandatory in case you lie in the start-up and emerging segment.

In Drishti’s presentation, our focus was on the idea of marketing strategies we imply for a niche communication suite market. I presented our product and applications and a generic comparative analysis with the big guns to position our solution. Then I moved on to placing our brand value and marked our future outlook as we move up the ladder from being a start-up a few years back to an emerging company and further entering into large corporate segment.

A very interesting question that came up was how we ventured into building partnerships and associations outside the country of origin. Here I highlighted the importance of channel development and management in our marketing strategies. Even though local presence cannot be ruled out from the customer’s angle, a quality solution reaching out to them with custom capabilities and further advancements always find room. The key here is reaching out.

I elaborated further on our marketing mix and the basic strategies we follow to market our products in global markets. These include innovative business packaging, cost proposition, optimal use of expertise and effective team structuring. While explaining the same, my enthusiasm overtook the drive and I was cut short by the panelists for going elaborate on our product. Brought back on the track, I quickly gathered the focal point of discussion and summed up appreciatively

The product conclave progressed further with many more interesting discussions and left enthusiast participants like me a lasting impression. The industry knowledge gathered and marketing angles explored make it a highly enriching experience. As a company, Drishti was pleased to participate and would look forward to more such networking events from NASSCOM.

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Indian BPO Industry: Where Next?

August 18th, 2009 Shashank Shalabh

A lot has been written about the economic downturn and its harsh consequences on various Industries. Though the Indian Call Center Industry has not been able to shy itself from recession, it continues to show signs of potential growth. Let us look at some statistics.

The Domestic BPO market is expected to grow by 40% in the year 2009 over 2008, to INR 88.7 billion. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO), though in its nascent stage, currently estimated to be USD 80 million, would hit the USD 4 billion mark by 2015, according to Forrester Research.

India is a reputed name in the Global Sourcing Services domain with a market share of over 50%. However, on the flip side, it is not recognized as an Innovation Hub.

Industry experts feel that Innovation will drive the growth of the Indian BPO Industry in future. Till now, most companies have been quite myopic as far as tapping new segments is concerned. Businesses in the domain should explore beyond the clichéd BFSI segment, and try to catch some fish from the hitherto virgin waters of defense, healthcare, retail and manufacturing.

The Indian BPO Industry has been limited to providing services to their clients in the US, Australia and Europe. However, South America and EMEA are some of the possible areas that should be explored. The global economic downturn has a positive side too- Indian companies can look forward to Mergers & Acquisitions.

This might bring a smile on our faces- Asia might overtake Europe by 2020 in the global economic front.

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NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009

February 21st, 2009 Sachin Bhatia

The three days that I spent at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009 left an everlasting impression on my thought process. With a number of reputed names in the IT circle interacting with each other, I was bound to listen.

As predicted, the most important topic of discussion was ‘Recession’. Lately, this term has found its way into the psyche of perhaps every business entity in India and abroad. Mr. Shashi Tharoor, in one of his speeches, has rightly said that there is an immediate impact of any development, positive or negative, taking place in the US, in India.

In context with the Leadership Forum, the same thought was clearly reflected in coffee table discussions as well as sessions at the Forum. The ‘concern’ of most senior executives was the current volatile situation, particularly that in the Indian IT Industry. All of them unanimously agreed that the downturn was quite unprecedented, and that the same would have a long-lasting effect.

It was quite interesting to listen to the different ‘solutions’ proposed by the business think-tank for the common problem doing rounds in the Indian IT Industry- Downturn. C.K. Prahalad emphasized on the importance of ‘unique personal experience’ with regards to future services. His views hinted at the fact that the economy would gradually shift towards the Pay-as-you-go model. And solutions would also need to be closer to businesses as compared to rigid ‘boxed’ systems.

I was all ears to Sharad Sharma (CEO, Yahoo! R&D) and Ashish Gupta (Managing Director-Investment Advisor, Helion VC) delivering their respective speeches on- How Niche companies can make the most of the crisis. Their speeches conveyed that specialization is the order of the day. The seminar on “Hard Times, Slow Economy, Sales Slump – will it get worse? Will you survive?” addressed by Nandan Nilekani (Infosys), S Ramadorai (TCS), Vineet Nayar (HCL) and Denny McGuire (TPI) surely motivated me to sit and introspect.

The gloomy picture of recession that’s etched in our minds was transformed into that of optimism when eminent speakers shared their ‘solutions’ for dealing with downturn. Among many others, cost effectiveness, increasing operational efficiency, infrastructure consolidation, exploiting existing assets to the fullest, and the most important- customer experience were some of the important solutions that impressed me. I couldn’t help but wonder that it’s extremely close to what I advise my clients to look out for, and felt more confident that Drishti is on the right track.

Mr. Kamal Nath, Hon’ble Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, said while addressing the inaugural session of the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009 “The Indian information technology (IT) industry has flown the India flag high but we have for long looked outward. It is now time to look inward and maybe the current global crisis will trigger some inward looking”. His views instilled the much needed ‘hope’ we Indians badly need at trying times like this. Moreover, his tagline ‘Next practices as opposed to Best practices’ is indeed something to ponder upon.

I was particularly fascinated by the statement of C.K. Prahalad that it’s important to support small enterprises, as it’s quite difficult for large companies to thrive without them in the business ecosystem.

One of the interesting discussions during Mergers and Acquisition session and Cloud computing session was about Software as a Service (SaaS). There were different views on whether the Enterprise will adopt SaaS first to deliver growth fast or would SME be early adopter due to pressure of being more automated and efficient but keeping costs minimal. In the same session Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal (Helion) mentioned that non-Indian products that can first cater to India, then emerging economies and then developed economies would do well. It’s time we looked ‘inwards’. It’s time we do some brainstorming, not only to ward off recession, but also to emerge as organizations that can shape the global business scenario.

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Outbound for dummies – The technology nitty-gritty

February 14th, 2009 Ankur Sharma

Most of us (in the Contact Center industry that is) are aware of what the dialer technology is about. Dialer simply does the dirty work for us – eliminate the busy numbers, answering machines, FAX tones and connect us to the live callers only. But it is easy to get lost in that technology jargon we regularly come across, so I am simply going to try to clear up the air for those who get lost in the maze of technology-related terms and phrases

Predictive Dialer (Dynamic Pacing Dialer)

The predictive dialer is the smartest of them all. Managed either in-premise or hosted (SaaS), the dialer uses internal algorithms and methods to make more calls than the number of agents, and connect only the live calls to agents. The system “learns” intelligently how many calls to make at any moment, depending on various parameters such as agent availability, average talk time, average wrap-up time, and “paces” the call-making mechanism accordingly. For instance, out of 100 calls made any moment, about 60 calls are answered by Answering Machines or are busy/unreachable. Out of the rest 40, another 10 could be FAX or SIT tones (maybe just incomplete numbers too). That leaves us with 30 calls, which are connected to the agents. The pacing varies depending on the connection and response rates. For example, in 1:3 pacing, the system can make about 90 calls for 30 agents any moment. The ratio varies as system becomes more sensitive to fluctuations in the parameters and minimizes idle time as well as call drops.

Now the agents save up a lot of time this way (it takes about 20 secs to 1 min just to dial a number once or multiple times in case it’s busy/wrong/unreachable), and as a result, we get over 400% increase in call connects and about 50-100% increase in effective sales. Number of calls can range upto 500 calls per day with occupancy rates of above 80%!

This mode is ideal for huge call lists (usually B2C), where businesses can afford a few dropped calls too. Not recommended for small or expensive high-quality lists with high priority customers.

Good systems also take care of Do-Not-Call and regulatory compliances. Some systems integrate with external systems while others have inbuilt DNC modules.

Fixed Pacing Dialer

Now be wary on this one. Lots of vendors claim to offer Predictive Dialing, but instead provide what we call “Static Pacing”. The system will make a certain number of calls depending on the pacing limit (for instance maximum of 150 calls for 100 agents if the ratio is 1:1.5). The system does not intelligently change pace as per the various parameters, but has to be modified (rather intuitively) by the system admin, as the agent occupancy and dropped call rates fluctuate. This is a good mode if you are not very hung-up about the live connection rates, and if you have a dedicated guy running the show. Less  expensive than the predictive dialer.

Broadcast/IVR dialer (also Autodialer)

This dialer does not require any agents. The system simply takes a lead list, and starts calling prospects/customers. The customers are then made to listen to pre-recorded messages or take actions via an IVR menu. This is good for reminder & notification calls and political campaigns, but requires an IVR system that works in conjunction with it.

Preview Dialer

This is a better version of manual dialer, and is ideal for very high value and/or expensive lead-lists. In this case, the customers details pop-up on the agent screen and the agent can continue with the call if he/she so desires. The lead list (like in most cases) is uploaded in the system, but the agent has the control over accpeting/denying the call.

Progressive Dialer (Also forced-preview or precise dialer)

The same as preview dialer, with the difference that agent does not have control over accepting/denying the call. The agent has a few seconds to go over the customer details before the call is connected to him/her. Good when you’re dealing with high net worth clients, who don’t like to wait at all.

Power dialer

In this mode, the system ensures availability of the agent by connecting him/her first to the system, and then dials out the call to the customer. In case the agent hangs up before the customer is connected, the system will cancel the call, and initiate the next call(s) to the available agent(s). Useful in scenarios where the lead lists are of very high quality and there is zero tolerance for dropped/abandoned calls.

Interactive Voice Messaging

This has become prominent off-late and involves an IVR’s involvement too. The system plays a pre-recorded greeting for the customer in case the agents are engaged in other interactions, and connects him/her as soon as an agent becomes available. This is particulary useful in lowering the abandonment rates, and in boosting cross-selling and up-selling with minimal resources. Not very widely used, however.

So that’s the fodder on dialer terminology. It becomes important to know the requirements and criticality of the process before deciding on what kind of technology would be apt for your outbound process. For most B2C campaigns, predictive dialer would perhaps be the best option. Preview, power or progressive dialer would suffice on other cases where you’re not looking at dialing hundreds of numbers everyday. However, it becomes imperative to choose the right vendor with the right technology. It would be advisable to have a demo run (if your vendor can provide it), or check with a few clients about the productivity increase they’ve seen, before you zero in on the technology.

But good technology will not be cheap, and you may have to shell out a little more. Good premise based solutions require one to invest upfront in the infrastructure. There is another alternative however if cost is a deterrent – a “hosted dialer” offering for which you’ll need to pay a small one-time charge and a per-user-per-month recurring fee. More on these later.

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