'Specialization is the key to success'

Despite all negative sentiment about outsourcing, some BPOs have performed outstandingly well. WNS Global Services, which notched up $165 million revenues at 60% growth, has emerged as the country's No.1 BPO firm (NASSCOM-ITES rankings 2004). CEO Neeraj Bhargava outlines the reasons behind the company's success:

What is your view on the negative perceptions that have been created about outsourcing?
Despite negative comments, there is near unanimity in the view that offshore outsourcing will continue to grow. Every complex execution has its challenges. But for one bad case, there are five good ones and people tend to ignore them.
How does one explain an industry growing at over 40% a year, a pipeline looking better and existing customers adding more business. At least three prospective clients visit us every week. Where is the negative perception?

What are the factors that have helped your company's success?
The key to our growth and success is our specialization in a few key industry verticals. Both our largest industry verticals, i.e. travel and insurance, grew exceptionally well last year. We added nearly 3500 associates to our operations and over 32 new customers.

Does that mean specialization is a key in this industry?
Specialization is healthy and the best approach to ensure long-term viability. But in businesses with long sales cycle, one also needs some controlled diversification. Scale also matters when you bid for big business. Companies focussed on a single niche will find it hard to survive.

Considering that you have operations in multiple locations, how does your global delivery model work?
We have operations in four Indian cities, apart from Sri Lanka and two locations in the UK. Each location is mostly specialized. For example, Colombo focuses on high-end finance work, Mumbai largely on the travel sector and Nasik on healthcare. We have an advanced communication network that combines all these and some of customers' locations.

How does your company address the issue of talent management?
The issue is not finding good talent but of developing people continuously across the board. This is the biggest challenge for our industry. Our industry will need 40,000 to 50,000 people managers in the next two years. And they have to deal with demanding world-class customers. Investing in leadership development is the key because no other people intensive business in the history of Indian business has seen such numbers before.

Could you highlight some of your key HR policies in this regard?
We use a combination of some plain good people management and some structured processes, which are very important in a company like WNS that is scaling up so rapidly. People management in our view is all about identifying and developing good leaders and empowering them. Leadership development is one of our most important corporate values. We also focus on running formal Predictive Index procedures for people selection and Competency Assessment practices for identifying leaders early. Finally, in line with our industry focus, we invest in e-learning to rapidly enhance an associate's contextual and industry knowledge. We are also setting up our own learning academy in three locations.

Your expansion plans…
We will continue to grow our travel, insurance, healthcare and knowledge services BPO businesses. Mortgage and retail are the next two segments that we are targeting and we already have traction there. We continue to add 200-300 associates every month and yes, a 10,000 people WNS is looking real now.