I have now visited several companies that are KPO service providers. The evolution from IT services to BPO to KPO seems quite obvious now. In the earlier days, Indian IT vendors simply provided the IT services and the clients worried about how the IT investment provided productivity gains via improved processes that created better services, products and competitive capability. Once the vendors realized that IT supports a process these processes came into focus and this launched the BPO industry. In the earlier era vendors focused on the data that these processes generated and helped the clients capture and store this data. Ultimately, this data reveals what is going on with the client’s business. This is where KPO comes in. Vendors realized that they could provide services that would provide insight into the business by analyzing the data and interpreting that to provide advisory services on how to improve/change the process and improve competitive positioning. This has created a demand for statisticians, modeling experts and people with deep knowledge of the domain. In a later posting, I will try to show how these services provide leverage points for both providers and consumers of these services.

As the major vendors expand and grow, I see and hear about their plans to recruit technical talent. What about managerial talent? Is the supply from existing business schools sufficient? Are the business schools providing the necessary skill sets to manage technical projects and resources? I have heard about companies influencing the technical curriculum to get the talent that they need. If this is not happening already, I think it is time to influence the managerial curriculum and get the required talent pool. Some of the western theories and case studies have to be contextualized to India and the IT sector. I see an opportunity for business schools to differentiate here.

As the major vendors expand and grow, I see and hear about their plans to recruit technical talent. What about managerial talent? Is the supply from existing business schools sufficient? Are the business schools providing the necessary skill sets to manage technical projects and resources? I have heard about companies influencing the technical curriculum to get the talent that they need. If this is not happening already, I think it is time to influence the managerial curriculum and get the required talent pool. Some of the western theories and case studies have to be contextualized to India and the IT sector. I see an opportunity for business schools to differentiate here.

As the major vendors expand and grow, I see and hear about their plans to recruit technical talent. What about managerial talent? Is the supply from existing business schools sufficient? Are the business schools providing the necessary skill sets to manage technical projects and resources? I have heard about companies influencing the technical curriculum to get the talent that they need. If this is not happening already, I think it is time to influence the managerial curriculum and get the required talent pool. Some of the western theories and case studies have to be contextualized to India and the IT sector. I see an opportunity for business schools to differentiate here.

Last Friday we were hosted by the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) in the TVS Electronics office located in the Guindy Industrial Estate. We had representatives from Nokia, Dell, Motorola, Salcomp and Lenovo there. After our discussions, I left with the impression that manufacturing was quietly flourishing in Chennai. Furthermore, the ecosystem was well developed there, with players competing and cooperating to succeed. I am not quite ready to say the same about the ITES ecosystem. The other big difference was that these manufacturers are mainly serving the Indian market. This requires them to be very innovative to meet the cost and pricing considerations of the Indian market and, hopefully, create products and services for the non-domestic markets. These sectors can learn from one another. Manufacturing can teach the ITES industry about process control and lean techniques. The ITES sector can teach them about customer focus and innovation in products and business models.

Thomas Simon, VP HR at TCS, has once hired 2500 people over a weekend. This statement caught my attention. I finally got a chance to hear him talk about how he does it at TCS. They have a a very sophisticated process for qualifying schools to participate in their recruiting activities. Many variables are factored into the selection model -- things like prior experience with the school, quality of their student body, content taught there, etc are used to filter our schools. Once the talent is located they are tested and screened by TCS resources. After this, their are inculcated into the TCS culture by their training programs. Performance evaluation techniques dictate an employee's future within this organization. Talent sourcing is indeed a core capability within TCS.

In our meeting with N.K. Venkatnarayanan (Bobby) at TCS, he made an interesting observation. BPO is the human intervention part of IT services. As I think about it more, it makes sense. Most IT tasks have human touch points. It could be simple data entry, use of heuristics or rules or exercising judgement on a task. As the level of expertise required from the person goes higher, the margins increase for the company and the retention levels improve.