Even Inventing Is a Process....

They say that human society progressed on stepping stones of inventions.   This is nothing but reality.   The world has changed more, there has been more progress and more inventions in the last  sixty years or so than previous three centuries.  Such is the contribution of invention that has made this possible. 

We think that invention is the forte or realm of few different kind of people.   Some may be wondering if invention is a random,  hit and run, trial and error,  way of getting new things created, thought of or implemented.  This may have been in the past as there was no framework or pattern that could be generalized and imposed on the process of invention. 

However over past few decades thinkers have come up with frameworks for innovation and invention.   One such methodology I came across was the TRIZ framework. (Pronounced and TREEZ) that was developed in USSR and now being explored in many parts of the world.    While it may apply to engineering inventions it can be extended to other kinds of inventions too.

So from a understanding that it was impossible to learn how to invent today there is clear evidence on how to learn to invent.   I am not going to elaborate what TRIZ methodology is all about.  Google can do it for you but what I would like to emphasize here is that there is yet another process that can be broken down into a set of logical steps.   Can be mastered, can be transition and will provide opportunities for outsourcing in the future days.   Some of it may already be done in bits and pieces but along with robotic automation,   transformation etc,  will be things to watch out in the future.

Other BPS Industry Topics

Myth Busters about BPS

BPS Industry : Some Sectoral Challenges

Busiess Process Services: Myth Busters

There are lot of myths about working in the Business Process Services industry (aka as BPO / ITeS industry) 

For the BPS industry has been a story of rapid growth in India having grown  from less than a Billion US Dollars in  revenues around 2001 to about 20 times that revenue by 2013. Truly with the forecast for 2020 being 50 Billion US Dollars the industry is in a sweet spot.

Some popular  myths about this industry:

Myth 1:  It is an industry where work is low end and run of the mill.


Reality:  BPS industry is a very diverse spread of work ranging from F&A,  Supply Chain Management,  Analytics & Insights spread across several industry verticals ranging from Pharma, Manufacturing, Banking, Insurance etc.  Also the industry offerings include managing various business processes of client organizations e.g.  reorder in a store or manufacturing facility; or improving the cash flow management in a business and so on.   Remember Cash flow is a major problem faced in many industries and several organizations are willing to put their money where the mouth is.


Myth 2: Educational Qualification, Degree's not very important.  Anyone can join.

Reality:  This is one of the most diverse industries in terms of skill and educational background.  Employees come with background ranging from Graduate to Post Graduate to Advanced Doctoral Studies ranging from Commerce,  Finance,  Marketing, Pharma,  Economics, Statistics,  Business Management,  Arts, Literature,  Medicine, Law and So on.   The industry has a very good ratio on gender diversity also.  While many companies may have about 30 to 40% women employees overall the industry has over 40% women working. Every industry will have jobs where qualification is not very important and you just need to have a school or pre-college certificate.  This industry is no different.  So Remember: Opportunity in Diversity is what this industry is all about.   

Myth 3: Not safe place to work;  Not good for women

Reality:  Absolutely misplaced understanding. The industry has over 40% women as part of the workforce.   Companies in this industry serve to work for customers in different time zones and so we have employees working in various time slots.   So almost every one gets a pick up and drop facility to their homes,  there is enough emphasis on safe commute with companies playing a very active role in security provided to employees both at work and to and from home to work.   Also being an industry which works on client data there is a highly secure and safe environment with very little scope for unsafe conditions.    Women employees being a big constituent companies have given lot of emphasis on policies that are women friendly and have made it a matter of ease, comfort and convenience for empowering women.

Myth 4:  Industry will not survive long.

Reality:  The industry which grew rapidly from about < 1 Billion USD in 2001 has now clocked nearly 20 Billion USD in revenues and slated to grow to over 50 Billion USD by 2013.  Moreover every country, every industry and every business needs to have better, smarter and newer ways of managing their processes and this industry will find opportunities even in the times of down turn.  Remember when growth was stunted across industries in recent years BPS grew in double digits.

Myth 5:  Low Growth, Low Attractiveness

Reality:  The industry has enormous opportunities,  serving clients across two dozen or more industry verticals.   Given the forecast and nature of work this industry can only expand with more and more industries seeking opportunities for bettering their processes.   With rapid growth comes opportunities. The industry has a matrix of opportunities in a combination of domains and functional areas which span from sales, marketing, operations, transitions, quality,  customer engagement,  risk and compliance and a host of other business enabler functions 

Myth 6:  Bad for Health due to Night Shifts

Reality:  The difference is no more than for e.g. what Bangalore was in the 1980's and early 1990's.  Most of the large companies in Bangalore, Mumbai (textiles) ,  Chennai etc worked round the clock and a host of people worked in the night shifts and rotating shifts.    A range of industries like hospitality, medical care,  transport, airline,  telecom, petrochemicals and other manufacturing all had night shifts and a whole lot of people working in different shifts.  The problem is not about night shift or rotating shifts making you fall ill, rather it is the change in lifestyle in general today that has made people prone to some of the hazards of low sleep levels,  poor diet and exercise regimes,  lack of  revival through breaks and holidays, etc not because they work in shifts but because the world in general has become fast paced.   Imagine you want to do your work, spend hours on Facebook,  Hangout in chat rooms,  celebrate at eateries, coffee shops and do all this in 24 hours -- the victim is sleep.   This is a problem all round not just for those in shifts but a society's challenge.


Myth 7: Strange people,  Work There

Reality:   Thanks to Chetan Bhagat's novel One Night At A Call Center which is a story woven around lives of a few strange people working in a call center and their complex ways and lives, this perception was created.  Reality is that the people in this industry are from diverse segments,  diverse backgrounds and are as good or as bad as people in any other industry.   It's the lens you wear that counts.

finally

Myth 8:   It is a call center. / Telemarketing space

Reality:   The spread of work done by BPS companies ranges from transaction processing to analytics and insights to legal process services to providing inputs on pricing decisions to global retail companies, to helping companies improve their cash flow, to allowing pharma companies launch drugs, vaccines faster and so on.  Today the BPS industry also involves call centers but that is one aspect of the industry and surely one where people enjoy varied opportunities.

You may also like to read.

Some Sectoral Challenges: BPS

Robotic Automation in BPS

BPS Industry in India

BPS Industry: Need for Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry: Myth Busters

BPS Industry In India? Some Elaboration of What it Involves.

There are lot of myths about this industry viz.,  Business Process Services (BPO or ITeS as it is also known) has been a story of rapid growth in India having grown  from less than a Billion US Dollars in  revenues around 2001 to about 20 times that revenue by 2013.  Truly with the forecast for 2020 being 50 Billion US Dollars the industry is in a sweet spot.

However popular perceptions are an issue, for e.g. .... thanks to Chetan Bhagat (novelist who wrote a novel describing the complicated lives of a few characters and put this the context of a call center) there is a common belief that BPO companies are all about telemarketing and making those pesky calls to clients who don't need them in the first place, of strange people working odd hours and living lives stressed out to the edge.   Well reality is very different.  Sample this....

Imagine you want to launch a product and worried about the price you should launch it in a particular city or region or geography.   What should be the price and how much share will this give you potentially?

Imagine you are a Procurement Leader for a global paint manufacturing company and want to optimize your sourcing of pigments across the globe from various geographies.  Where should you order the next batch of  pigments for your plant in New Zealand.   

Imagine you want to set up a process to engage with a large group of regular clients through a loyalty program and make them feel great each time they connect with you on your network through various channels or touch points.

Imagine a pharma company wants to launch a new vaccine in a much shorter time frame, and you need to work in alignment with various regulations that govern the trials and outcomes. With the development of a vaccine being a long elaborate process (several years) it is greatly beneficial if the process can be speeded up without compromising any of the  steps.

Imagine you have a great retail banking product and need to really understand quickly which are your most valuable customer segments and how to increase your revenues and at what level of income potential should you sell these to maximize your profitability from this line of product.

Imagine you want 20 to 30% improvement in your gross margin and looking at some transformation of your processes to realize better contribution and profitability.

Well all of these scenarios above are some of the ways in service providers can add value to businesses that look to become better, more agile, more profitable, better performance at business outcomes.

Business Process Services is a very large industry today and several companies are working in this space to make all of above kind of scenarios a reality.   Couple process focus with technology innovations and solutions that blend technology with business process and you have increased marginal returns on your investments.

In short the industry is surely in a sweet spot and looking to change business outcomes by more than just running contact centers.  The industry has matured to an extent that it is a formidable partner to businesses globally and set to be here for a long haul journey of excellence.

You may also like to browse

Some Sectoral Challenges: BPS

Robotic Automation in BPS

BPS Industry in India

BPS Industry: Need for Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry: Myth Busters

BPS Industry In India: Some Sectoral Challenges

Earlier I had written about the BPS industry being at a sweet spot.  However the bitter truth is that we are staring at big numbers when it comes to employability too.  A survey by Aspiring Minds (www.aspiringminds.in) in 2013 reports that about 47% of graduates are not employable in any area primarily due to poor cognitive as well as English language skills. Computer knowledge and application is another weakness.  Only about 21.37% of the graduates are employable in the ITeS sector and mostly for non functional roles.  

If India has to maintain its competitive advantage in the ITeS sector (today it is talent availability more in terms of numbers) then quality and consistency are key in the future.  With forecast 2020 revenues in the region of 50 Billion USD my estimate works to about 1.9 million direct employment in this sector by 2020.  Around that time we can compute that the ITeS industry alone would need about 100,000 to 150,000 graduates per year.    This is based on the trend where we grew from < 1 Billion USD in 2001 to about 16.8 Billion USD over next ten years.   

Each year Indian universities and colleges graduate about 5 Million every year from over  30,000 colleges and of this over 85% are non-engineering graduates.   If you look at the demographics as per the Aspiringminds report female to male ratio is about 100 to 109 for general degree programs versus 100 to 196 for engineering degree programs. 

Reasons for lower employability is that today's curriculum is not job oriented and from our experience in working with colleges and universities the curriculum lags by anything between 1 to 10 years from what industry demands across various skill areas in ITeS. 

While the ITeS sector caters to several global clients the challenge is that today organizations don't have the luxury of training (unlike previous decades of 60's to 80's) hires for extended periods of time.  Today's customers need a quick turn around in taking over their business processes and running them real time.   So it is not about one organization in India losing business to another rather it is about other countries vying for the same business.  We have a threat from Latin America,  Eastern Europe as well as Asian Countries like Philippines.

Unless something drastic is done on the employability front it would be futile for India's competitive edge in the coming decade.   Solution required cannot be only in hands of the education sector.  Lot of investment has happened in education but it is only a collaborative effort with industry working closely with academia that can bring about this change in focus.

More on how and what can be done in a later post

You may also like to browse

Robotic Automation in BPS

BPS Industry in India

BPS Industry: Need for Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry: Myth Busters

Robotic Automation? The Emerging Differentiation for BPS

As organizations look for ways and means to become more productive, more efficient we look for ways and means to achieve faster, more accurate work processes,  to eliminate unnecessary steps or to design and implement alternative process steps.  

Robotic automation is one such quest that business process services organizations are chasing these days.   In the world of business processes - robotic automation is very different from the industrial automation that we find in manufacturing.    In the BPS industry "robotic" is used a metaphor - akin to industrial automation - but done by software tools that produce generic automation of processes both business and clerical (that are generally repeatable, manual processes) and augment them into the client processes.  Don't imagine moving robots, looking like humans that you may find in factory or manufacturing shop floors.  Consistency, scalability and ability to deliver the process in a very secure manner are some of the key levers that drive the search for robotic automation in services as an alternative to manual repetitive work flows.. 

Will the cost be justified?  Unlike industrial process automation the capital investment will be lower in services automation as the tools are reusable (or with some customization) and can be replicated over and over thereby bringing down the operating cost significantly.  So you can expect a surge in robotic automation adoption in the coming year and beyond. 

What would be the implication?  Would there by mass scale redundancies created (lay offs').  Not really.  As global businesses outsource more and more of their work the simple repetitive ones get automated and others move in.  This would of course mean that you would need people to perform the more complicated stuff and some amount of re-skilling would happen.  

At the same time you would need a whole new set of skills to create these automation tools and also to manage and run these tools.   These would be more automation technology skills and skills to maintain these systems in steady state (operations).

As we enter the new financial year keep looking for the buzzword "robotic automation" in the quest for business process services becoming more agile, more efficient and moving up the value chain. 

BPS Industry In India....

Why a blog post on the BPS industry (business process services for the uninitiated).   First to let readers understand that this is no longer a fledgling industry. Once called the sunrise industry it is today well established as a force to reckon with and one of the fastest growing industry sectors.   

In this and few more blogs I will cover how talent management and talent engagement in specific and many other life cycle stages are managed in this industry.   From my perspective... and the key driver  if I may say so is that I currently work in the BPS industry handling..... Organizational Effectiveness  for the BPS Line of Business of Tata Consultancy Services  (TCS).  

Truly a people intensive and fast growing industry and very relevant for discussing people related matters.  The BPS line of business accounts for about 12% of the overall revenues of TCS.   (closed FY13 with  overall revenue of INR 62,989 Crores or 11.57 Billion USD) 

Well BPS industry in a sense changed the fortunes of many many people in India.  Job opportunities shot up and the industry has contributed significantly to direct employment which grew from about 70,000 in 2001 to over 0.85 Million in 2011. Also from revenues of < 1 Billion USD in 2001 the industry crossed about 16 Billion USD in 2011 and today its revenues are in the range of 20 Billion USD which represents about 20% of the IT/ITeS industry.    

Slated to grow at a rapid pace even in the coming few years NASSCOM has projected a revenue of 50 Billion USD for this industry in 2020.  This surely implies that we are in a sweet spot today as far as potential and growth are concerned.

The industry hires employees with graduate, post graduate and higher advanced level degrees across a range of degree streams (Commerce, Finance,  Mathematics, Statistics, Biotech,  Pharma and Life Sciences,  Management,  etc... to name a few) and hence truly a big contributor to the diversity focus also.  In fact most companies in this sector have in upwards of 25% female composition in their workforce when some even have as high as 40 to 45% women in the workforce.

BPS Industry: Need for a Mainstream Curriculum

Once called the sunrise industry of India (now it is already in range of 20 Billion USD revenues) and today well into  the second decade of existence.  The industry provides direct employment to about 1 Million People and is slated to almost double the employment by 2020 (To about 1.9 Million)

In spite of growing into a large industry by itself, BPS still does not have a mainstream curriculum at degree level both three year or four year level.

Now imaging what the field of medicine would have been without M.B.B.S (Bachelors level Degree in Medicine) degrees.   You would probably have a certificate course in pathology, or a bridge study of diagnosis, or diploma in pain management etc.   The Bachelors Degree in Medicine gave the industry a foundation.  Similarly we need a foundation level specialization for the BPS industry. 

There are sandwich courses,  short term certificates offered through distance as well as continuing education institutes and training centers.  However the specialization level curriculum is missing for those who get into the Business Process Services industry.

Now one may ask "What's the need to specialize after Higher Secondary or Pre Degree level in BPS.   When else will you want the employees getting into the industry to make a choice,  shouldn't  it be at the 12th class level like any other major stream of education.    That's when they make a good choice and commit themselves to studying something that they want to build a career in.  In this case it would be a career in managing business processes, running a business process or even setting up business processes.... which are some of the things that BPS industry works on. 

So the need today is for a mainstream specialization in BPS.  This will enable a whole new talent to enter the industry and we would have better quality of man power getting into the industry by choice.

The reality today is that by and large students are not aware of what the business process industry is.  The common myth is that it is a call center or a telemarketing firm.   This is far from true as BPS companies work across a spectrum of  capabilities ranging from business transactions, to optimizing supply chain costs, to  deciding price points to banking analytics to retail and pharma analytics, to clinical trials and pharma co-vigilance to name a few. 

So both the industry and the academia working together can solve the problem of lack of a specialization degree in BPS.   We don't need vocational courses but what we need is a mainstream degree level specialization to make the students understand everything about business process and provide them appreciation of how these work in different industries. 

You can also read the other related posts below.

BPS Industry : In a Sweet Spot

BPS Industry: Some Sectoral Challenges

Business Process Services Industry: Myth Busters

There are lot of myths about working in the Business Process Services industry (aka as BPO / ITeS industry) 

For the BPS industry has been a story of rapid growth in India having grown  from less than a Billion US Dollars in  revenues around 2001 to about 20 times that revenue by 2013. Truly with the forecast for 2020 being 50 Billion US Dollars the industry is in a sweet spot.

Some popular  myths about this industry:

Myth 1:  It is an industry where work is low end and run of the mill.


Reality:  BPS industry is a very diverse spread of work ranging from F&A,  Supply Chain Management,  Analytics & Insights spread across several industry verticals ranging from Pharma, Manufacturing, Banking, Insurance etc.  Also the industry offerings include managing various business processes of client organizations e.g.  reorder in a store or manufacturing facility; or improving the cash flow management in a business and so on.   Remember Cash flow is a major problem faced in many industries and several organizations are willing to put their money where the mouth is.


Myth 2: Educational Qualification, Degree's not very important.  Anyone can join.

Reality:  This is one of the most diverse industries in terms of skill and educational background.  Employees come with background ranging from Graduate to Post Graduate to Advanced Doctoral Studies ranging from Commerce,  Finance,  Marketing, Pharma,  Economics, Statistics,  Business Management,  Arts, Literature,  Medicine, Law and So on.   The industry has a very good ratio on gender diversity also.  While many companies may have about 30 to 40% women employees overall the industry has over 40% women working. Every industry will have jobs where qualification is not very important and you just need to have a school or pre-college certificate.  This industry is no different.  So Remember: Opportunity in Diversity is what this industry is all about.   

Myth 3: Not safe place to work;  Not good for women

Reality:  Absolutely misplaced understanding. The industry has over 40% women as part of the workforce.   Companies in this industry serve to work for customers in different time zones and so we have employees working in various time slots.   So almost every one gets a pick up and drop facility to their homes,  there is enough emphasis on safe commute with companies playing a very active role in security provided to employees both at work and to and from home to work.   Also being an industry which works on client data there is a highly secure and safe environment with very little scope for unsafe conditions.    Women employees being a big constituent companies have given lot of emphasis on policies that are women friendly and have made it a matter of ease, comfort and convenience for empowering women.

Myth 4:  Industry will not survive long.

Reality:  The industry which grew rapidly from about < 1 Billion USD in 2001 has now clocked nearly 20 Billion USD in revenues and slated to grow to over 50 Billion USD by 2013.  Moreover every country, every industry and every business needs to have better, smarter and newer ways of managing their processes and this industry will find opportunities even in the times of down turn.  Remember when growth was stunted across industries in recent years BPS grew in double digits.

Myth 5:  Low Growth, Low Attractiveness

Reality:  The industry has enormous opportunities,  serving clients across two dozen or more industry verticals.   Given the forecast and nature of work this industry can only expand with more and more industries seeking opportunities for bettering their processes.   With rapid growth comes opportunities. The industry has a matrix of opportunities in a combination of domains and functional areas which span from sales, marketing, operations, transitions, quality,  customer engagement,  risk and compliance and a host of other business enabler functions 

Myth 6:  Bad for Health due to Night Shifts

Reality:  The difference is no more than for e.g. what Bangalore was in the 1980's and early 1990's.  Most of the large companies in Bangalore, Mumbai (textiles) ,  Chennai etc worked round the clock and a host of people worked in the night shifts and rotating shifts.    A range of industries like hospitality, medical care,  transport, airline,  telecom, petrochemicals and other manufacturing all had night shifts and a whole lot of people working in different shifts.  The problem is not about night shift or rotating shifts making you fall ill, rather it is the change in lifestyle in general today that has made people prone to some of the hazards of low sleep levels,  poor diet and exercise regimes,  lack of  revival through breaks and holidays, etc not because they work in shifts but because the world in general has become fast paced.   Imagine you want to do your work, spend hours on Facebook,  Hangout in chat rooms,  celebrate at eateries, coffee shops and do all this in 24 hours -- the victim is sleep.   This is a problem all round not just for those in shifts but a society's challenge.


Myth 7: Strange people,  Work There

Reality:   Thanks to Chetan Bhagat's novel One Night At A Call Center which is a story woven around lives of a few strange people working in a call center and their complex ways and lives, this perception was created.  Reality is that the people in this industry are from diverse segments,  diverse backgrounds and are as good or as bad as people in any other industry.   It's the lens you wear that counts.

finally

Myth 8:   It is a call center. / Telemarketing space

Reality:   The spread of work done by BPS companies ranges from transaction processing to analytics and insights to legal process services to providing inputs on pricing decisions to global retail companies, to helping companies improve their cash flow, to allowing pharma companies launch drugs, vaccines faster and so on.  Today the BPS industry also involves call centers but that is one aspect of the industry and surely one where people enjoy varied opportunities.

You may also like to read.

Business Process Services: Need for a Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry In India: In a Sweet Spot

BPS Industry in India: Some Sectoral Challenges

BPS Industry: What is It All About?

There are lot of myths about this industry viz.,  Business Process Services (BPO or ITeS as it is also known) has been a story of rapid growth in India having grown  from less than a Billion US Dollars in  revenues around 2001 to about 20 times that revenue by 2013.  Truly with the forecast for 2020 being 50 Billion US Dollars the industry is in a sweet spot.

However, thanks to Chetan Bhagat (novelist who wrote about the strange, complicated lives of a few characters and put this the context of a call center) there is a common belief that BPO companies are all about telemarketing and making those pesky calls to clients who don't need them in the first place.   Well reality is very different.  Sample this....

Imagine you want to launch a product and worried about the price you should launch it in a particular city or region or geography.   What should be the price and how much share will this give you potentially?

Imagine you are a Procurement Leader for a global paint manufacturing company and want to optimize your sourcing of pigments across the globe from various geographies.  Where should you order the next batch of  pigments for your plant in New Zealand.   

Imagine you want to set up a process to engage with a large group of regular clients through a loyalty program and make them feel great each time they connect with you on your network through various channels or touch points.

Imagine a pharma company wants to launch a new vaccine in a much shorter time frame, and you need to work in alignment with various regulations that govern the trials and outcomes. With the development of a vaccine being a long elaborate process (several years) it is greatly beneficial if the process can be speeded up without compromising any of the  steps.

Imagine you have a great retail banking product and need to really understand quickly which are your most valuable customer segments and how to increase your revenues and at what level of income potential should you sell these to maximize your profitability from this line of product.

Imagine you want 20 to 30% improvement in your gross margin and looking at some transformation of your processes to realize better contribution and profitability.

Well all of these scenarios above are some of the ways in service providers can add value to businesses that look to become better, more agile, more profitable, better performance at business outcomes.

Business Process Services is a very large industry today and several companies are working in this space to make all of above kind of scenarios a reality.   Couple process focus with technology innovations and solutions that blend technology with business process and you have increased marginal returns on your investments.

In short the industry is surely in a sweet spot and looking to change business outcomes by more than just running contact centers.  The industry has matured to an extent that it is a formidable partner to businesses globally and set to be here for a long haul journey of excellence.

You may also want to read

Business Process Services: Need for a Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry In India: In a Sweet Spot

BPS Industry in India: Some Sectoral Challenges

BPS Industry in India: Some Sectoral Challenges

Earlier I had written about the BPS industry being at a sweet spot.  However the bitter truth is that we are staring at big numbers when it comes to employability too.  A survey by Aspiring Minds (www.aspiringminds.in) in 2013 reports that about 47% of graduates are not employable in any area primarily due to poor cognitive as well as English language skills. Computer knowledge and application is another weakness.  Only about 21.37% of the graduates are employable in the ITeS sector and mostly for non functional roles.  

If India has to maintain its competitive advantage in the ITeS sector (today it is talent availability more in terms of numbers) then quality and consistency are key in the future.  With forecast 2020 revenues in the region of 50 Billion USD my estimate works to about 1.9 million direct employment in this sector by 2020.  Around that time we can compute that the ITeS industry alone would need about 100,000 to 150,000 graduates per year.    This is based on the trend where we grew from < 1 Billion USD in 2001 to about 16.8 Billion USD over next ten years.   

Each year Indian universities and colleges graduate about 5 Million every year from over  30,000 colleges and of this over 85% are non-engineering graduates.   If you look at the demographics as per the Aspiringminds report female to male ratio is about 100 to 109 for general degree programs versus 100 to 196 for engineering degree programs. 

Reasons for lower employability is that today's curriculum is not job oriented and from our experience in working with colleges and universities the curriculum lags by anything between 1 to 10 years from what industry demands across various skill areas in ITeS. 

While the ITeS sector caters to several global clients the challenge is that today organizations don't have the luxury of training (unlike previous decades of 60's to 80's) hires for extended periods of time.  Today's customers need a quick turn around in taking over their business processes and running them real time.   So it is not about one organization in India losing business to another rather it is about other countries vying for the same business.  We have a threat from Latin America,  Eastern Europe as well as Asian Countries like Philippines.

Unless something drastic is done on the employability front it would be futile for India's competitive edge in the coming decade.   Solution required cannot be only in hands of the education sector.  Lot of investment has happened in education but it is only a collaborative effort with industry working closely with academia that can bring about this change in focus.

More on how and what can be done in a later post

You may also like to browse

BPS Industry in India: In a Sweet Spot

BPS Industry In India....In A Sweet Spot

Why a blog post on the BPS industry (business process services for the uninitiated).   Well actually it is not  just this one but several forthcoming one's including this one.  And the key reason if I may say so is that I currently work for this industry.  I take care of the Organizational Effectiveness Function for the BPS Line of Business of Tata Consultancy Services  (popularly known as TCS).  

Truly a people intensive and fast growing industry and very relevant for discussing people related matters.

The BPS line of business accounts for about 12% of the overall revenues of TCS.   (closed FY13 with  overall revenue of INR 62,989 Crores or 11.57 Billion USD) 

Well BPS industry in a sense changed the fortunes of many many people in India.  Job opportunities shot up and the industry has contributed significantly to direct employment which grew from about 70,000 in 2001 to over 0.85 Million in 2011.

Also from revenues of < 1 Billion USD in 2001 the industry crossed about 16 Billion USD in 2011 and today its revenues are in the range of 20 Billion USD which represents about 20% of the IT/ITeS industry.    

Slated to grow at a rapid pace even in the coming few years NASSCOM has projected a revenue of 50 Billion USD for this industry in 2020.  This surely implies that we are in a sweet spot today as far as potential and growth are concerned.

The industry hires employees with graduate, post graduate and higher advanced level degrees across a range of degree streams (Commerce, Finance,  Mathematics, Statistics, Biotech,  Pharma and Life Sciences,  Management,  etc... to name a few) and hence truly a big contributor to the diversity focus also.  In fact most companies in this sector have in upwards of 25% female composition in their workforce when some even have as high as 40 to 45% women in the workforce.

In my next post  I shall discuss some challenges on the people front for this industry and what can be done to overcome these.