Faced with the not so bullish economic scenario, BPO companies are leaving no stone unturned to ensure increased efficiencies while cutting down on error rates.

A key change that they are working on relates to splitting multiple-step processes carried out by more than one person into a single-step task done by multiple resources.

A report in the Economic Times suggests that BPO companies are taking a leaf out of the processes on the automobile shop floors. Jobs are broken down into minuscule tasks and processes demarcated step by step, something that one sees on the assembly lines.

Now BPO companies in India are experimenting a similar idea by carving out a complex activity into numerous simple chores, to be easily performed by even high school dropouts.

Though still in its pilot stage, this may well be the industry's answer to the problem of attrition and could also create a huge opportunity in the tier 3-4 cities. At present BPO companies are concentrated in the six metro cities that account for over 90% of the operations.

Nasscom vice-president Ameet Nivsarkar was quoted that despite being in the initial phase the results of the experiment are encouraging. Some of these pilots are being conducted in rural areas by GramIT and Comat Technologies, a Bangalore-based e-governance player that operates 800 rural business centers in small towns. GramIT, which has 500 people working from four villages in rural Andhra Pradesh, deals with a variety of processes in the areas of HR, administration, finance and helpdesks.

Generating any bill includes three basic steps -- typing the name, the address and the amount of the bill. What the experiment suggests is that instead of one person doing all three, the would be three people doing only one of the three tasks. One would enter only the name, the other only the address and a third only the amount.

Though this may lead to better managed processes it needs to be seen how long a person can carry on a monotonous task of entering meaningless names day after day.