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BPOs have been continuously challenged to improve their competitiveness in the dynamically changing markets. The industry is experiencing global challenges including the sub-prime crisis, slowdown in the financial market, and infrastructure cost are continuously adding burden on the BPOs, apart from global competition. There has been increased pressure on the outsourcing industry to reduce cost, increase productivity, and to create higher value.

The existing challenges are forcing BPOs to re-look at the way the current processes are delivered. As a part of their restructuring, the Green revolution is becoming a fundamental part of BPO business strategy and this initiative will play a significant role in helping the BPO industry in addressing the environmental issues in an international forum.

Benefits of Green
Going green is no longer associated with just ethics. The adoption of green practices has become essential due to environmental and economic considerations as well as rising cost of energy.

Talking about the advantages of adopting green practices in BPOs, Shekhar Sharma, global head, infrastructure and logistics, Genpact says, “Green practices like air quality enhancements and external green belts help create an environment-friendly workplace.”

Further, initiatives such as recycling programs can help in reducing all kind of wastes, including hazardous and non-hazardous, resulting in a healthy ecosystem. Adoption of green practices helps in improving productivity by increasing energy efficiency within the system.

We have to look at the way we do our business and understand whether there is something we can do better which is environmentally supportive. This might be in choices around the products and consumable we use for energy conservation, recycling, waste and disposal, says Patrick David, executive VP, global resources and corporate communications, HTMT Global Solutions.

The outsourcing industry is realizing their responsibility to protect the environment, which supports their commercial goals. Adopting green as a strategy helps BPOs reduce the cost of technology, transportation, infrastructure, human resources and enhance operational effectiveness in their processes while supporting environmental benefits.

Greater Adoption
Cost might be the initial driver for the outsourcing boom but with the changing times environment protection is becoming a much more important factor. Just by sensitizing employees to use natural resources prudently, BPOs can go a long way in reducing their carbon footprint.

Genpact has been investing in green initiatives. It has planned its own SEZ campuses, which are in the pipeline, to be LEED certified green buildings.

It has also completed carbon footprint mapping for its centers in India The company is also encouraging its employees to use video-conferencing facility to stay in touch with stakeholders to cut down on travel.

Some of the major inititaives adopted by Avaya in its operations include:

• Enabling unified communication tools for its employees-remote worker solution and empowering employees to deliver continuous responsive service to business and customers, reducing additional travel and transportation, increasing higher availability to business and customers.
• Leveraging the 'work from home' concept for its employees and encourage people to work from home during most of the weeks/months.
• Other initiatives include energy conservation focus encouraging employees to reduce power consumptions in the infrastructure, switching off lights, laptops, reducing paper-print consumptions and more.

BPO should lead, as an example of how effective and important it is for any organization to adopt green practices. Commenting on the same Rinku Wadhwani, MD, Cipher Dynamics says, “to begin with we are considering reducing paper and power consumption. In the long run we will adopt viable and innovative ways to reduce overall carbon footprint”.

HTMT Global solution is introducing a waste segregation initiative which allows recycling, power conservation and eradication of use of materials which are not bio degradable with assistance from an NGO.

Infosys BPO is also very bullish in the green revoluion of BPOs. The firm is also designing green buildings, promoting green energy procurement, and promoting rain water harvesting.

All new buildings at Infosys BPO are being designed according to LEED framework. The company is also launching incentives to encourage car pooling and use of video conferencing, telepresence and onlinemeetings to reduce business travel. It is also recycling the waste paper and reuses it as note pads.

Patni, an IT services and BPO company, is also committed to the environment. In tandem with its commitment to green initiatives, Patni is coming up with two new green buildings built on green architecture in Hyderabad and Pune. The designs of these buildings strikes a balance between environmental responsibility, resource efficiency, occupant effort and community sensitivity by passive solar architecture.

Recently, Patni has launched its green IT/BPO knowledge centre in Delhi. The state-of-the-art environment friendly facility complementing the organization's green intiatives around efficient utilization and conservation of energy, water and natural resources as well as creates less waste.

Patni's new center also employs effective waste management strategies such as ensuring 100% recycling of sewage and using recycled water for cooling tower make-up, gardening etc. The company also prefers car pooling facilities.

Green vs Cost
Understanding of green initiatives has now matured. BPO could leverage higher savings and reduced costs of their operations and processes from adoption green technology initiatives. The overall cost can only be reduced through using recycled materials and reducing energy costs.

Commenting on the impact of green practices on the overall cost Ketan Shah of Avaya says, “Green practices surely helps to achieve higher saving and reduce the overall cost. Every step taken to conserve energy converts it to direct or indirect savings and reduced cost.

Going green is not only a question of environmental responsibility, but also a means of greater productivity and competitiveness, resulting in reducing waste and increasing efficiency.

Some of the prominent ways to reduce the overall cost includes:

• Home agents and working from home, thus reducing travel and transportation cost
• Deploying green certified hardware and components-reduce power, UPS and electricity cost
• Encourage technology solutions-that reduces business travels using video conferencing, tele-presence, audio conferencing, collaboration and unified communication and mobility applications
• Going paperless and recycling waste materials
• Carpooling reduces the cost involved in recurring or long distance drives
• Designing green building

Going Green and the US Recession
The best antidote for any recession is a revolution. Green revolution will certainly help BPOs in their fight against US recession through new job creation. The green initiative is directly helping BPOs to enhance their competitiveness and get better equipped to current economic challenges and US recession.

“While the challenging economic times prevail, the pressure forces organizations to explore new avenues to improve productivity, reduce cost and enhance process effectiveness to support the challenging times. Adoption of green practices enables BPOs to have new and innovative ways to conserve energy, reduce waste and reduce cost”, says Ketan Shah of Avaya GlobalConnect.

Future of Green
The concept of 'Go Green' will gain momentum because it can give huge productivity benefits through energy efficiency, water recycling and waste reduction.

According to Anirudh Patni, senior vice president and head of strategy and corporate development, Patni says, “Indian IT and BPO companies have all embraced the green brigade and are all doing their best for energy conservation. This is the way to go and in the near future it is hoped that all large building complexes in India will be green.”

The future of green BPOs seems to be very bright and sunny. Every measure that could help achieve Green compliance and its benefits in reducing cost and increased productivity is been explored widely.

With TRAI allowing home agents as the first step and relaxing some of regulations for BPOs, we see BPOs could take good benefit of this to help solve some of the larger issues including escalating real estate and transporation cost, attrition and, gain access to lower communication cost.

Arpita Prem
arpitap@cybermedia.co.in