Genpact commenced operations in 1997 as GE Capital's BPO arm and became
independent three years ago. With around 35,000 employees at various centers in
India and abroad, Genpact is one of the largest BPO firms in the country. The
company recently acquired GE Money's delivery center in Guatemala City, and is
also looking at acquisitions of companies in the US and India in the range of
$50 mn to $400 mn. The company posted a net profit of $25 mn in the last fiscal.
We spoke to SV Ramana, chief technology officer, Genpact to know more
about the technology map of the company. Excerpts
What kind of IT infrastructure do you have at Genpact?
We have a huge voice infrastructure, as well as a large networking
infrastructure. We are using the Oracle ERP suite, in which we use applications
like HR, payroll, inventory procurement, and LMS. We do all the project
management ourselves.
We also have various productivity measurement tools, which are all in-house.
These tools help us measure efficiency, quality of voice, and then give feedback
to our employees so they work on increasing productivity. The monthly incentives
of our employees are based on this.
For call recording we use all the three major products available in the
market-Nice, Variant, and e-Talk. It mainly depends on customers specifications
on what is ultimately used.
For voice infrastructure, currently we are using both IP and TDM. Mostly we
use Avaya for voice infrastructure. We don't have any immediate plan to move to
IP, though in the future we might. There is also a huge TDM infrastructure. We
feel that IP uses more bandwidth and since the cost of bandwidth is high, we
have continued to use both IP and TDM. When the cost of the bandwidth comes
down, we will shift more toward IP.
In voice we are using Blue Pumpkin, which helps us in optimum deployment of
staff, according to the number of calls.
In telecom we offer full redundancy and operate from different gateways:
Mumbai, Kochi, and Chennai. We have different SPs and paths. For instance, there
was a huge outage in January 2008, and a number of BPOs were affected but there
was no impact on our business and we didn't suffer any downtime.
We also use an IT management system called Sun Waveset. It basically
addresses the entire value chain from getting an employee on-board to his exit.
What kind of technology spend do you have at Genpact?
On an average, we spend around 5% of our revenue as opex for our technology
requirements, which includes AMC, bandwidth, SW development, etc. Further, we
are continuously investing in a lot of technology and our infrastructure is one
of the best in the industry.
What kind of technological upgradations are you looking at?
Broadly, we are moving from TDM to IP technology and are also adding more
modules of Oracle ERP. Apart from that, we use videoconferencing very
extensively since we are spread across the globe. Currently, we are evaluating
telepresence for two sites initially and most likely will finalize it before the
end of the current year. We also use in-house audioconferencing very
effectively.
We are in the process of launching virtual expertise, which is basically a
platform to participate in best practices. We are also planning a simultaneous
launch of both the internal and external platforms, where employees can give
their ideas.
There is also a planned upgradation of our backup technology for faster
back-up. We are using the BLADE technology which uses less space and power. We
have also done encryption of our data.
Further, we are working on consolidation and virtualization in three arenas:
server, network, and desktop virtualization. In server, we have VMW and a proof
of concept from HyperV, which is a MS product. In desktop we are evaluating
Citrix, MS, and VMWare products.
There is a considerable interest in UC in the outsourcing industry. What
are your plans regarding the same?
We are looking at unified communication as a collaboration tool. Currently,
we are evaluating products from Cisco, MS, and Avaya, and have received proof of
concepts from all of them and shall finalize by the end of the year. The only
criterion is that we should be able to protect our investment. We also want to
see how the regulation will evolve in this arena.
The government recently gave a go-ahead to agents working from home. What
are the technological challenges for the same?
The government has allowed home agents and we are actively looking at this
opportunity. We are already doing a pilot regarding this, but as of now, we are
only giving data-related work to home agents. But now we are considering voice
as well. We believe that this has a large scope since there is a big pool of
employable resource. There is a saving of at least 10% by getting home agents.
However, it depends on reliability and penetration of broadband. We want to
go about this in a big way and want almost 10% of our employees to work from
home. However, we have to get client sign-offs as well.
The system was that employees were connected to our VPN and could not access
the Internet or take printouts. Basically, they were able to access the
applications, which we permit or want them to. However, as soon as he enters the
office, their office profile gets activated.
How do you think the role of CTO has changed over the years?
Earlier CTOs were supposed to be IT savvy but now it is different and the
role is evolving. It is much more business driven now than it was earlier. We
have to be totally business savvy.
We also have to continuously focus on productivity, in the sense that we need
to focus on reducing our input cost and transaction productivity, and on
automation to increase productivity.
Gagandeep Kaur
gagandeepk@cybermedia.co.in
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