Location Strategy Archives - Page 4 Of 5

Which Call Center Agent Model Is Right for Your Business during and after COVID-19? | Blog

February 25, 2021

Today, most companies have staff working from home due to the pandemic. Although customer experience management (CXM) agents aren’t essential workers in the truest sense, consumers sheltering in the safety of their homes for months on end have relied on them so heavily for wide-ranging reasons that they might as well have considered them so. What those consumers probably don’t know is that the call center agents assisting them are most likely working from home. In fact, our recent research report, Customer Experience Management (CXM) State of the Market Report 2021, found that the percentage of CXM FTEs working at home grew from less than 10 percent in 2019 to as much as 80 percent during the health crisis. While we expect that there will be some movement back towards the brick and mortar model in the coming months and years, many service providers and in-house contact centers will continue to utilize Work at Home Agents (WAHA) as a key component of their service delivery strategy.

Two WAHA models are currently in use. One is employee-based (E-WAHA), wherein the agents are on the service provider’s or company’s payroll. The other is contract-based (C-WAHA), wherein contractors are leveraged and only paid for the time they work for the organization.

In recent years, GigCX has emerged as an alternate approach to CXM staffing and is being utilized by the likes of organizations such as eBay and Microsoft. GigCX includes the use of freelance or self-employed workers to handle specific interaction types, leveraging an AI-powered technology platform. They are recruited for their existing knowledge and passion for the product and service.

Initially, GigCX was utilized for very simple work; however, those interactions are increasingly being eliminated or automated. Now, growing use of this model is for more complex query types that require a level of brand affinity and awareness, which can be a differentiator many GigCX providers are publicizing.

GigCX, which is often seen as another strain of the WAHA model, should not be confused with WAHA, as there are some fundamental differences in how the models operate.

When considering which approach is best to meet a set of business requirements, organizations should understand the following differences in the two models:

While we have seen both WAHA and GigCX being effective models for handling customer interactions, there are some stark differences in their operation. Any company considering using either model should assess the positives and negatives of the approaches and factor them into their operating model design. Both models are highly effective when utilized appropriately to handle the right interaction types, especially if all the limitations and dependencies are considered early in the design process.

For more information, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

New India Department of Telecom (DoT) Guidelines for Remote Delivery Are a Game Changer | Blog

November 19, 2020

One of the key factors that has helped maintain service delivery levels in India – even during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown – has been the government’s temporary relaxation of various legal, regulatory, and compliance frameworks to allow remote delivery via a Work From Home (WFH) model. In an effort to continue to increase the ease of doing business, especially with a remote workforce model, India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) has issued new guidelines for the IT-business process (BP) industry.

These guidelines should significantly reduce obstacles for companies adopting a WFH delivery model. In the post-COVID-19 era, scaled WFH adoption will be inevitable for IT-BP organizations as we highlighted in our previous blog. In our conversations with industry stakeholders, organizations have called out uncertainties around long-term legal and regulatory support to WFH as a key challenge to sustainable and scaled adoption. The new guidelines can be the steppingstone to assuaging some key business concerns, making these organizations truly bullish on WFH adoption.

The new guidelines allow IT-BP companies in India to use a “Work From Home (WFH) facility” to deliver global services as an “International OSP” (other service providers) for a period of three years (with provisions for further extensions). Provisions within the new guidelines that will make it easier for companies to adopt the WFH model include:

Freedom to set up remote centers anywhere in India: This allowance supersedes various local restrictions and empowers companies to hire and operationalize employees independent of their current/future location
Clearer legal status for WFH employees: This provision treats WFH roles as extended / remote agent positions with rights and responsibilities better demarcated than before, effectively treating employees’ home offices as extensions of the organization’s office, easing regulatory and security hurdles to access data outside office premises
Relaxed registration and financial requirements: Eased restrictions include the removal of the lengthy registration process and a bank guarantee to set up a facility
Reduced reporting burden: The new guidelines offer more streamlined and less stringent regulatory and compliance reporting obligations for organizations
Relaxed tech and infrastructure requirements: These changes include the relaxation of technology and connectivity infrastructure requirements to enable WFH, as well as the easing of the requirement on static IPs and pre-defined locations-based networks

The intention behind the changes is to remove the unnecessary bureaucratic restrictions that were preventing organizations from exploring the full potential of WFH. Beyond some of these relaxations, there are provisions to retain security-related obligations to protect against unlawful content and usage, for example, empowering organizations to set up their own security mechanisms. These guidelines balance the key trade-off that organizations need to contemplate when they consider integrating WFH in the delivery model: the feasibility/ease of remote delivery versus the additional risk assumed when moving work from the office to employees’ homes. We expect these changes to be a win-win-win situation for IT-BP organizations, employees, and the overall India delivery market.

For IT-BP organizations, beyond reducing the compliance burden, these guidelines will:

Expand their access within the talent market, as they can hire the best-fit talent regardless of location
Increase access to new talent pools; for example, they can hire talent from tier-2 cities without setting up new physical offices (pre-COVID-19, 75-85% of IT-BP employees worked out of tier-1 locations, with a vast majority of them having migrated from non-tier-1 locations)
Drive a next wave of cost optimization. Refer to our playbook for details on the business case of WFH adoption

For remote employees, these guidelines will strengthen their rights, lay the foundation for the legal status of WFH in India’s labor laws, and ease concerns relating to health and safety in the workplace.

With various countries still struggling to ease remote delivery, we expect India’s overall competitiveness to improve (especially for organizations that are bullish on the WFH model), push growth and job creation in non-tier 1 location, and improve the overall ease of doing business.

All of this is likely to result in greater efficiency in the service delivery model by removing restrictions that allow a desirable level of WFH model adoption. A recent Everest Group survey found that adoption of WFH (complete WFH or hybrid) within India based IT-BP players will be significantly higher (65-75% FTE equivalent) than pre-COVID (less than 10% FTE equivalent), but lower than the adoption rate at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown (80-90% FTE equivalent).

These are all welcome changes. However, it is important to understand the limits of these guidelines in pushing sustainable and scalable WFH adoption. Beyond the domain of the DoT, there are various other regulatory and compliance bodies that need to make similar forward-looking policies. For instance, there are still uncertainties related to:

Labor laws for WFH employees: WFH-specific regulations within India’s labor laws still do not give official status to WFH, creating uncertainties around various employee benefits and rights
Tax regulations: Tax incentives and deductions for employers/employees remain unclear
Free trade zone-related regulations: Most of India’s IT-BP organizations are based in Special
Economic Zones or software technology parks. There is still no long-term view on temporary relaxation on import duty and mobility across these zones

We continue to track this market and expect many of these uncertainties to clear up soon. Be sure to look for updates from us soon.

If you have any questions or comments on the WFH model, reach out to Akshay Pandita.

Biden Impacts On H-1B Visas And Outsourcing | Blog

November 9, 2020

From a services industry perspective, the main impact of a change from the Trump Administration to a Biden Administration in January 2021 will be the allowed degree of movement of global talent to meet the huge talent deficit in the US. As US businesses eventually come out of the COVID-19 crisis, we will see a more frantic appetite for IT modernization and digital transformation programs, but the US lacks enough talent pools with the skills necessary to deliver those outcomes.

Read my blog on Forbes

Choosing Your Best-fit Cloud Services Delivery Location | Blog

August 27, 2020

While enterprises around the globe began their steady march toward cloud services well before the outbreak of COVID-19, the pandemic has fueled cloud adoption like never before. Following the outbreak, organizations quickly went digital to enable remote working, maintain data security, and ensure operational efficiencies. Globally, first quarter spend on cloud infrastructure services in 2020 increased 39% over the same period last year.

Given the new realities, as firms make long-term cloud investments, it is vital for them to understand the cloud landscape and how various regions and countries fare in comparison to each other as cloud destinations. In this blog, we evaluate and compare the capabilities of different geographies in delivering cloud services.

The Americas

North America is among the most mature geographies for cloud services delivery. The US and Canada offer excellent infrastructure, a mature cloud ecosystem, high innovation potential, a favorable business environment, and business-friendly rules and regulations. The US is the most mature location in North America, offering a large talent pool and high collaboration prospects due to the presence of multiple technology start-ups, global business services centers, and service providers. However, the cost of operations is significantly high, primarily driven by high labor and real estate costs.

In contrast, most locations in Latin America (LATAM) have less mature cloud markets and ecosystems. While they provide proximity to key source markets in the US and considerable cost savings as compared with established markets (60-80%), they offer low innovation potential, a relatively small talent pool, few government policies to promote cloud computing, and limited breadth and depth of cloud delivery. Mexico is a standout location in LATAM, scoring better than others on parameters such as quality of cloud infrastructure, size of talent pool, and business environment.

Europe

Europe provides a good mix of established and emerging locations for cloud services. Countries in Western Europe have a fairly robust infrastructure to support cloud services, with high cybersecurity readiness, sizable talent pools, high complexity of services, and robust digital agendas and cloud policies. England and Germany are the most favorable locations in the region, driven by a comparatively large talent pool accompanied by high innovation potential, excellent cloud and general infrastructure, and high collaboration prospects due to numerous technology start-ups and enterprises. However, high cloud-adoption maturity has markedly driven up operating costs and intensified competition in these markets.

Countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) offer moderate cost savings (in the 50-70% range) over leading source locations in Western Europe. While they offer a favorable cloud ecosystem, talent availability, greater proximity to key source markets, and lower competitive intensity, they score lower on innovation potential, complexity of services offered, and concentration of technology start-ups and players. The Czech Republic is a prominent location for cloud services in the CEE, while Poland and Romania are emerging destinations.

Asia Pacific (APAC)

Most locations in APAC have high to moderate maturity for cloud services delivery due to the size of the talent pool and significant cost savings (as high as 70-80%) over source markets such as the US. For example, India offers low operating costs, coupled with a large talent pool adept in cloud skills and a significant service provider and enterprise presence. However, it scores lower on aspects such as innovation potential, infrastructure, and quality of business environment. Singapore is an established location that offers well-developed infrastructure and high innovation potential but also involves steep operating costs (40-45% cost arbitrage with the US). The Philippines, a popular outsourcing destination, has lower cloud delivery maturity given its low innovation potential and talent availability for cloud services.

Middle East and Africa (MEA)

Israel is an emerging cloud location in the MEA that has achieved high cloud services maturity, but that benefit is accompanied by high operating costs and low cost-savings opportunity (about 10-15%). Other locations in the region have moderate to low opportunity due to small talent pools and lower maturity in terms of cloud services delivery.

Choosing your best-fit cloud services delivery location

Our analysis of locations globally reveals that, while different locations can cater to the increasing cloud demand, there is no single one-size-fits-all destination. Instead, the right choice depends on several considerations and priorities:

If operating cost is not a constraint and the key requirements are proximity to key source markets and a favorable ecosystem, the US, Canada, Germany, England, Singapore, and Israel are suitable locations, depending on the demand geography
If you are looking for moderate cost savings, proximity to source markets, and a favorable ecosystem, with the acceptable trade off of operations in a relatively low maturity market, countries such as Mexico, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Romania, and Spain are attractive targets
However, if cost is driving your decision and proximity to demand geographies is not a priority, India, Malaysia, and China emerge as clear winners

The exhibit below helps clarify and streamline location-related decisions, placing an organization’s key considerations up front and identifying acceptable trade-offs to arrive at the best-fit locations shortlist.

Key considerations for choosing your cloud services delivery location

To learn more about the relative attractiveness of key global locations to support cloud skills, see our recently published Cloud Talent Handbook – Guide to Cloud Skills Across the Globe. The report assesses multiple locations against 15 parameters using our proprietary Enabler-Talent Pulse Framework to determine the attractiveness of locations for cloud delivery. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us at Hrishi Raj Agarwalla, Bhavyaa Kukreti, or Kunal Anand.

Africa: On the Frontier of IT-BP Services Delivery | Blog

August 11, 2020

In the last few years, for a number of reasons, there’s been a major uptick in global services delivery from Africa. The most significant driver of growth is Africa’s emergence as the next frontier for small-scale delivery centers. Another is strong government support that enables global services delivery. But there are a variety of other key forces that are making Africa a destination of choice for companies of all sizes, including some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Accenture, Daimler, Google, Microsoft, Standard Chartered, and Teleperformance.

There is less competition for talent in most locations in Africa compared to key offshore/nearshore talent hubs across leading geographies. Expansion into African cities helps organizations diversify their delivery location risk, as most locations have the ability to serve as Business Continuity Planning (BCP) locations to nearshore/offshore centers. Moving services to Africa also helps organizations differentiate themselves by capitalizing on early-mover advantage.

Other factors, such as an attractive talent-cost proposition, strong domestic demand across East and West African countries, and improving infrastructure capabilities (including rapid adoption of Work From Home (WFH) / remote working models), have improved the business case for new center set ups. For example, there’s been an increase in services maturity for delivery of key services across the region, including voice- and non-voice-based BPS services, IT services, and engineering/R&D delivery. And while most locations have low operating costs, ongoing currency depreciation and lower attrition costs across leading countries like Egypt and South Africa have helped bolster overall growth.

Trade-offs and risks

As market players prepare consider options for service delivery from Africa, they need to be cognizant of the key tradeoffs and associated risks for operating in the region, including:

At present, Africa is best suited to deliver transactional services. Companies seeking to support more specialized operations or judgement-intensive processes may find it difficult to operate, or they may find that they need to make substantial investments in the talent market
There’s a limited pool of experienced talent. Companies will need to invest in growing and developing talent locally, by training recent graduates and building a recruitment engine from the ground-up, among other options
The region poses potential challenges with delivery enablers (including utilities, transportation, meals/catering, and stationery providers), low quality office infrastructure, and comparatively poor connectivity to domestic/international locations
The business environment in East and West African countries is less favorable than nearshore Europe locations, including infrastructure quality, digital readiness, and safety and security
Given low talent availability, language support beyond English is limited and commands high premiums
The presence of key players supporting global services is limited in most African countries; the entry of a few large companies could easily congest the market and quickly increase costs

Most leveraged African countries for IT-BP delivery

Here’s a quick look at the top four global services delivery locations in Africa, by market size – largest to smallest.

#1 Egypt

Companies leverage Egypt as a hub location for multi-lingual delivery to the EMEA region, as well as delivery to the US, UK, and Australia markets. It offers an attractive cost and talent proposition to support to a wide range of functions – including voice- and non-voice business processes, IT application development and maintenance, and digital services – and high availability of talent to support English and some European languages. While it offers a favorable business environment, it has some geopolitical stability challenges.

#2 Morocco

Companies largely leverage Morocco as a spoke location for multi-lingual contact center and IT services delivery. It provides extensive support to the North Africa markets. While organizations extensively leverage Morocco to support IT services delivery, it also increasingly supports business process delivery as well, including sales, client support, HR, and F&A. French and Spanish language services continue to be in high demand, and are the most widely used for services delivery. The country offers a favorable business environment but has some geopolitical stability challenges.

#3 South Africa

Organizations continue to leverage South Africa as a global hub to support the UK, US, and Australia markets, and – in many cases – South Africa serves as a regional hub for Africa and Middle East countries. It offers an attractive talent proposition to support both transactional and judgement-intensive processes, including customer analytics, actuarial modelling, fund administration, HR, and procurement. IT services delivery has gained traction over the years, and the country boats a large talent pool to support English and multiple European languages. It has a favorable business and operating environment with no significant challenges.

#4 Mauritius

Organizations primarily use Mauritius as a spoke location to support French language delivery and a suite of services including IT services (application development, maintenance, infrastructure services), voice and non-voice transactional business processes (e.g., F&A, HR, and procurement), and analytics. French language talent availability continues to drive overall demand. The country is highly favorable from a business and operating environment standpoint and has no significant challenges.

While the global services market in Africa is relatively less mature than leading offshore geographies such as India and the Philippines, there is significant potential to tap into the domestic market across the top locations. Industry verticals including BFSI, telecommunications, and IT services continue to drive overall domestic demand. Further, with the strong government support, offshore advantage, growing talent pools, and infrastructure capabilities, several African countries offer a multi-pronged value proposition to enterprises seeking an IT-BP services delivery destination.

To learn more about the dynamics in the region, please read our recently published report Africa: Emerging IT-BP Delivery Force, which highlights the relative attractiveness and talent-cost proposition of key African locations to support global services delivery, based on our holistic and multi-faceted assessment across 10 key parameters parameters.

For more information on Africa as a global service delivery location, please contact us at [email protected] or [email protected].

Service Delivery Location Factors to Consider for WFH Model Adoption | Blog

July 1, 2020

Before COVID-19, most organizations were reluctant to adopt Work From Home (WFH), viewing it as a hard-to-govern delivery model relevant only for limited functions and employees. However, the pandemic has made WFH a requirement, at least for the short term, for most enterprises. Despite the massive disruption, we believe most organizations will make WFH a business-as-usual component of their “next normal.” But that means they’ll have to take a long, hard strategic look at the locations they use for services delivery, whether they operate in a shared services environment or leverage a third-party provider.

COVID-19 has challenged conventional thinking about location selection parameters

Historically, most location portfolio decisions were based on an evaluation of traditional factors including the talent landscape, market attractiveness and competitiveness, cost of business operations, and the business and operating environment. Now organizations need to factor in and evaluate a location’s business case for WFH adoption, including the interplay of additional drivers like infrastructure, restrictions for remote delivery, presence of strong governance mechanisms, employee security, data protection, intellectual property safety, and determination of additional benefits that can be tapped into.

We’ve developed a framework that assesses 20 additional factors that we have categorized into three buckets: viability, security, and potential benefits.

Each of these parameters plays a crucial role in an organization’s selection of services delivery locations for a WFH environment.

Understanding a given location’s WFH viability will not only help enterprises carve out their next wave of growth, but also help them tap into the additional benefits offered by the location.

Here’s a look at each of the three overarching buckets.

Understanding overall viability

This category is all about evaluating a location’s business ecosystem through a new WFH lens. It involves:

Having a detailed view of the overall WFH infrastructure, like broadband speed and penetration, power/telecom outages, network readiness, and reliability
Understanding nuances for local WFH restrictions as imposed by the law, such as regulatory concerns, data privacy issues, SEZ norms, and number of working hours
Assessing the overall ecosystem for WFH adoption, e.g., social/cultural acceptance and working from an established location as opposed to a greenfield location.

We believe all organizations should assess each location on these factors as they will play an essential role in WFH success.

Fighting security concerns

Another critical factor enterprises need to evaluate in each location they’re considering is the overall security of their employees and their data. Here, organizations need to look at the robustness and effectiveness of local data protection and cybercrime laws across each location. Understanding local governance mechanisms and laws will help bolster viability for each location and help organizations map suitability for each function. Further, as their employees will be working from home, organizations will also need to understand the nuances around crime rates across employee neighborhoods, civil unrest, and natural hazards, as these can potentially increase the business cost for crime and violence, and also disrupt operations.

Reaping potential benefits

Adopting a WFH model will not only help organizations drive the next wave of cost optimization (significant savings over leasing real estate infrastructure and utility expenses) but also will help them overcome challenges related to availability of real estate across leading talent hubs in tier-1 locations.

WFH adoption will further help organizations establish additional satellite locations, or tertiary sites, in which talent works remotely, either permanently or part-time, with or without a corporate physical presence in the location. This will not only help reduce travel time, but also help improve employee productivity and reduce overall attrition for organizations. Based on a recent survey we conducted with leading enterprises, more than three-quarters of the respondents said their organization’s overall productivity has increased in the current COVID-19 period. The average improvement in productivity was just over 13 percent, as compared to before the pandemic period.

The WFH business case is a win-win proposition for most organizations as they adapt to the “next normal.” While there are multiple factors that potentially sweeten the business case for WFH adoption, taking a detailed view by each location will be an imperative as organizations progress and evolve on this journey. An iterative and continuous thinking approach will further help organizations overcome some key challenges including employee and organization development, legal, and regulatory concerns. Watch this space for more updates.

For additional details on this topic, reach out to us at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

Scaled Work From Home Inevitable for GBS Organizations Following COVID-19 | Blog

June 10, 2020

GBS organizations have traditionally been reluctant to adopt work from home

Before COVID-19, most Global Business Services (GBS) organizations have been reluctant to adopt a Work From Home (WFH) delivery model, viewing it as hard to govern and only relevant for a few work types and employees. As a result, organizations primarily used WFH for Business Continuity Planning (BCP) purposes – and with less than 5% of organizations deploying WFH at any scale (i.e., 20-50% of the workforce working from home), there was limited/no focus on building an enabling ecosystem to support remote working.

COVID-19 has redefined the art of the possible

COVID-19 led to widescale (and forced) adoption of WFH in GBS organizations across verticals and geographies, as organizations were compelled to scale up WFH quickly to ensure operational continuity and prevent large-scale absenteeism. After initial challenges to ensure home infrastructures were optimal, robust, safe, and compliant with service delivery standards/regulations, most GBS organizations found that productivity did not suffer. In fact, several organizations have reported productivity gains, though the volume of these gains remains debatable. As of May 2020, more than 90% of GBS organizations were delivering services in a WFH model. COVID-19 has redefined what’s possible, truly changing global leaders’ view of WFH, as Exhibit 1 shows.

Exhibit 1: Blueprint for scaled WFH adoption in GBS – the next normal

When we find ourselves on the other side of this pandemic, there will be a growing appetite for more WFH adoption, with many organizations considering it a permanent model. Leading organizations, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TCS, and HCL, have already announced plans to adopt WFH. We expect WFH to emerge as an imperative for GBS organizations, with more than 30-40% of GBS organizations adopting scaled WFH even after lockdown restrictions are lifted.

WFH – a strategic lever for GBS to evolve delivery and operating models

Even when there is no pandemic or other external threat forcing organizations to engage a WFH model, there is a strong business case to scale it. Our assessment shows that WFH can help drive significant GBS operating cost savings (anywhere from 5-15%), improve the talent model, lower risk in the location portfolio, strengthen the GBS value proposition, and provide societal and environmental benefits, as highlighted in Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2: Business case for WFH

Adopting a WFH model can drive the next wave of cost optimization for GBS. WFH can directly impact and reduce costs related to real estate infrastructure, transportation, and consumption. WFH can also reduce people-related costs by lowering attrition and increasing employee productivity. To support these gains, GBS organizations would have to invest in technology-related infrastructure such as equipment, tools, platforms, and technologies. Detailed Everest Group analysis indicates that GBS organizations can save up to 15% of their annual operating cost with 50% of the workforce working from home. They can further increase savings potential by:

Increasing process standardization;
Reducing permanent real estate;
Increasing cloud adoption;
Creating remote sites in low-cost locations;
Employing automation; and,
Using digital collaboration tools.

WFH can help GBS organizations improve talent acquisition and engagement. For the current workforce, WFH can improve GBS employee retention, improve employee productivity due to reduced stress (such as eliminating the commute) and office-based distractions, and help strengthen branding as a socially conscious organization. For the future workforce, WFH allows the GBS organization to improve the speed and effectiveness of talent acquisition, accessing talent far from its physical site locations, as well as by leveraging the gig economy.

Beyond these benefits, WFH reduces GBS concentration risk without necessitating a change in locations portfolio. Some GBS model features, such as greater control and governance, better protection of IP and domain knowledge, and ease in driving long-term transformation, may be better suited to the WFH model. Thus, GBS organizations can leverage adoption WFH to further strengthen their value proposition to their parent enterprises.

Such a strong business case seems to indicate that WFH is a win-win-win for enterprises, GBS organizations, and the workforce. As a result, it seems inevitable that WFH will become an integral part of the services delivery model.

However, before scaling WFH, organizations must understand the interplay of various decision drivers to determine overall potential to scale it. WFH adoption does not come without challenges, such as its implications for employee development and expectations, social capital, leadership development programs, the role of front-line managers, and work-life balance. Further, there are several regulatory aspects – such as data security, labor and employment laws, SEZ norms, and current limitations of the Shops and Establishment Act or telecom departments – that may hinder scaled WFH. Stay tuned – we will cover these aspects in our subsequent blogs.

For more details on this topic, see our “Playbook: Integrating Work From Home in the Global Business Services (GBS) Delivery Model.” Or reach out to us with your perspectives and experiences, write to us at [email protected] and [email protected].

Leveraging Tier-2 and -3 Locations to Strengthen Business Continuity Planning | Blog

May 19, 2020

It’s time for a fundamental rethink in the way companies approach their Business Continuity Planning (BCP), in general, and their locations strategy in particular. More than 70 percent of enterprises leverage only a single – usually tier-1 – location in one country for global business services delivery, according to our analysis. And even for companies that leverage tier-2/3 locations, deployment is the highest at their tier-1 location. This deployment model not only limits the full value they can achieve from location diversification, but also significantly increases their BCP risk. Let’s take a deeper look at this.

As our recent blog on unlocking value from tier-2/3 locations pointed out, with tier-1 locations fast maturing and saturating, enterprises may soon have to factor in tier-2/3 locations to minimize risk, capitalize on the cities’ advantages, and ensure business continuity. Leading co-working players are also expecting a rise in real estate demand in tier-2/3 cities, and planning to expand to these locations.

In India, in particular, a leading global services delivery location, companies that deliver Global Business Services (GBS) and have leveraged tier-2/3 locations as part of their location strategies (such as IBM and Tata Consultancy Services) have benefited significantly from a BCP standpoint by successfully diversifying their:

Concentration risk: Multi-city location strategies, coupled with workload flexibility across delivery centers, have helped minimize prolonged disruption during the pandemic.
Delivery locations risk: Tier-2/3 cities help diversify the location risk and also face lower macro-economic and political risk than tier-1 locations, which adds to their viability.
Functional risk: Many firms, such as Capgemini, leverage tier-2/3 locations as spoke or support centers in a hub-and-spoke delivery model network. In fact, they don’t shy away from distributing highly critical services and processes across tier-1 and -2/3 locations to reduce the functional risk.

And it’s not just the risk diversification advantage – our client interactions have revealed that leveraging tier-2/3 locations across India can help facilitate business continuity during the pandemic in the following ways:

The spread and impact of the virus is concentrated in major tier-1 locations, which account for ~40 percent of the total cases in India. In contrast, most tier-2/3 locations are largely unaffected, and only about 15 percent of them are classified as red zones, or areas with high active cases of COVID-19 and a high doubling rate. Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi in Kerala, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Bhubaneshwar in Odisha, and Trichy and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu are some of the tier-2/3 locations designated as orange/green zones. Thus, restrictions are likely to be relaxed or lifted earlier in those areas, with a faster return to business as usual.
The resilience and back-to-work rate for tier-2/3 locations are higher, as they’re easier to traverse, and employees typically live near offices, unlike in most tier-1 cities, where employees typically rely on public transport to go to work
Most firms that operate in tier-1 locations have a considerably large pool of migrant employees who have returned to their native towns/cities in the light of the lockdown and might not be willing to return to work immediately, given the risks.

At the same time, to unlock the full scale of BCP benefits from tier-2/3 cities, firms need to ensure certain baseline factors to facilitate business delivery:

They need to make sure they have ready, skilled, and trained staff for all critical processes in secondary locations, as it’s difficult to transfer employees from one city to another in the event of an emergency.
They need to establish leadership representation in these locations to better govern and manage the increasing workload.
They need a seamless communication system to facilitate data accessibility and transfer.
They should simplify and redesign their processes to reduce handoffs, decision points of contact, and people dependence.

We’d love to hear about your BCP experience with tier-2/3 locations and thoughts on the viability of these locations in the coming years. You can also read our blog on “The Coming of Age of India’s Tier-2 and -3 Service Delivery Locations” to understand the key drivers and challenges inherent to tier-2/3 locations to develop your own locations strategy. Please share your inputs with us at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

The Coming of Age of India’s Tier-2 and -3 Service Delivery Locations | Blog

May 12, 2020

India is widely regarded as a preferred service delivery location for global companies, given its attractive low-cost proposition, skills availability and scalability, and mature global services ecosystem. Until recently, the country’s tier-1 locations shouldered the weight of the services delivery agenda. However, with increasing maturity and saturation, enterprises and service providers are expanding their footprints across tier-2 and -3 locations throughout the country to take advantage of lower competition, cost savings, and better living standards, as well as to diversify location risk.

Read on to learn about the tier-2/3 global services delivery market in India and their accompanying advantages and underlying trade-offs, as well as what it takes to successfully operationalize a tier-2/3 delivery center in the country.

Understanding tier-2/3 locations’ value propositions

Tier-2/3 locations currently account for 18-20% of the global services workforce in India. Unlike most European countries, where a small clutch of cities offer services delivery, India offers a plethora of tier-2/3 location options, including: Ahmedabad, Gujarat; Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu; Jaipur, Rajasthan; Kolkata, West Bengal; Kochi, Kerala; Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh; Chandigarh and Thane, Maharashtra; Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala; and, Indore.

Delivery of global IT services is more mature than is global business process services (BPS) in most tier-2/3 locations, but the share of global voice and non-voice-based BPS is on the rise. Service providers occupy a larger market share than enterprises’ Global Business Services (GBS) organizations in most tier-2/3 locations, facilitating transactional work, servicing incumbent clients and fixed-price projects, and, at times, supporting complex workstreams.

Multiple factors enhance the tier-2/3 locations’ value propositions:

Lower compensation and facility costs translate into considerable cost savings of 10-20% versus a typical tier-1 location
Relatively low competition allows the scope to differentiate, create a better brand image, and attain leadership in talent markets, and provides access to a largely untapped talent pool with relevant skills
Tier-2/3 locations also experience 10-15% lower attrition than tier-1 cities, resulting in better service delivery and lower hiring and training costs
In contrast to most tier-1 locations, which are experiencing increasing traffic congestion, worsening quality of life, and health-related issues, tier-2/3 locations offer a better standard of living at a lower cost, making relocation an attractive proposition
Various state governments have started offering incentives such as single window clearances, ease of land allocation, stamp duty exemptions, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) relaxation, and capex/interest subsidies to further increase the attractiveness and viability of tier-2/3 locations

All these advantages have driven companies already to open centers in tier-2/3 cities or at least to begin to explore the viability and value. For instance, a leading telecommunications services firm employs over 40% of its Indian workforce at its tier-2 delivery center; a leading professional services firm is looking to scale its overall GBS headcount at existing tier-2 locations; and, a leading e-commerce firm is evaluating multiple tier-2/3 cities to support customer services delivery. Many service providers are also showing keen interest in expanding their tier-2/3 footprints to support both transactional and complex workstreams.

But, of course, tier-2/3 cities aren’t panaceas, and both enterprises and service providers must be fully cognizant of the realities of establishing a center in one of them and address challenges quickly to unlock their maximum potential.

Key challenges in supporting service delivery from tier-2/3 locations

Scalability, especially beyond 1,000 FTEs, can be a challenge in some tier-2/3 locations (such as Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, and Coimbatore) with limited peer presence and better opportunities in nearby tier-1 locations. Given the relatively low market maturity and paucity of adequately skilled talent, companies would have to invest in training recent graduates and/or building a recruitment engine from the ground-up. Additionally, the entry of a few large companies can easily congest the market and increase costs quickly.

Challenges with infrastructure and delivery enablers like utilities, transport, meal/catering, and stationery providers, as well as inferior connectivity to domestic/international locations, also pose hindrances. Thus, it might be difficult to relocate experienced talent at the managerial and leadership levels. Further, most tier-2/3 locations primarily deliver transactional services, and companies that want to support more specialized operations would have to make substantial investments in the talent market.

At the same time, we believe that a sound understanding of the location and its advantages and challenges, coupled with a nuanced strategy, can help companies establish successful delivery centers in tier-2/3 locations and integrate them into their portfolios.

How to successfully operationalize a tier-2/3 location delivery center

To extract maximum value from their tier-2/3 centers, we believe that companies should undertake the following steps:

Capitalize on the early-mover advantage to access benefits beyond cost savings, such as footprint diversification, lower attrition and competitive intensity, and wider access to talent
Create a distinctive employee value proposition, such as defined career paths, exposure to leading technologies, and financial benefits, to ensure better positioning
Invest in talent development and revamp the existing operating model to support complex workstreams. A case in point is a leading BFSI firm, which is betting big on its tier-2 delivery center in Thiruvananthapuram to move up the automation and analytics value chain and support new processes
Play a talent shaper role by working with the local academic and government bodies to influence educational curricula, training infrastructure, and programs, and reskill/upskill talent or seed talent from other centers. A leading service provider, for instance, has opened one of the largest corporate education centers globally in Mysore, Karnataka, helping it attain leadership in the regional talent market
Enhance the relocation proposition for existing talent by providing adequate monetary and non-monetary incentives, especially those that alleviate some of the problems associated with tier-1 locations, such as congestion, pollution, safety, and security

Are you currently leveraging or considering tier-2/3 locations for your service delivery efforts? We’d love to hear your thoughts on including tier-2/3 locations in your portfolio, and/or your views on how the tier-2/3 delivery landscape will evolve in the coming years. Connect with us at [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

And keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming blog on how tier-2 and -3 delivery locations can support organizations’ business continuity planning efforts.

Strengthening Your Global Services Delivery Location Strategy for Unprecedented Times | Blog

May 11, 2020

The global services market experienced lower revenue growth in 2018-19 than in the previous year due to the global macroeconomic slowdown, the tightening legal/regulatory landscape (GDPR and Brexit, for example), and volatility in currency fluctuations. The COVID-19 outbreak has further aggravated the slowdown, pushing the global economy into recession and slowing enterprises’ decision-making.

Given the current situation, organizations must rethink their global services delivery location strategies to help ensure long-term success.

Our just published report, Global Locations State of the Market 2020: Moving Forward in Turbulent Times analyzes the ways the global services market has evolved in key geographies/locations, and how sourcing models/functional delivery has shaped up. Here we are sharing a few of the emerging location trends in the global services industry that may help companies strategize their location portfolios/delivery model.

Location portfolios evolving to nearshore and onshore – Nearshore Europe has experienced growth due to the proximity of customers to Western Europe, demand for multi-lingual support, and availability of high-skill talent. Ireland, Poland, and Scotland are the top delivery locations in nearshore Europe, followed by Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Romania. There has also been an increase in onshore delivery presence due to stricter data security regulations, the US government’s conservative approach to offshoring, increasing work complexity, and greater pressure from buyers to grow their onshore presence for ease of coordination.

In-house sourcing models gaining prominence – GBS organizations are surpassing service providers in new center setup activity due to increased insourcing. Enterprises are extensively leveraging the GBS model to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, provide a better customer experience, build niche capabilities, and drive operational excellence. In fact, almost two-thirds of the companies that established GBS centers in 2019 were new entrants with no existing offshore/nearshore GBS center. And most new GBS organizations were set up in APAC due to cost arbitrage and high talent availability.

Shift in delivery to digital and engineering/R&D services – Enterprises and service providers are increasingly focusing on digital and R&D/engineering services delivery, with APAC and nearshore Europe setups leading the way. In APAC, India continues to be the largest delivery location for digital services delivery, followed by Singapore and China. Growth in India has been primarily due to high cost arbitrage and strong talent pool availability across digital and engineering/R&D services. The increase in digital delivery setups in nearshore Europe has been driven by high growth of setups in Ireland and Romania. Digital center setups in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) have also picked up pace and even surpassed the number of setups in Latin America and the Caribbean. The majority of center setups in MEA were led by technology and automotive players, and Israel turned out to be the location of choice in this region for delivery of advanced engineering/R&D services, primarily to support the US and Europe.

The road ahead

Onshore delivery will further increase in 2020 as digital delivery and remote work gain prominence. Further, rising unemployment in key demand geographies like Italy, Spain, Germany, and the US might result in protectionist sentiments, which could lead to less offshoring. Enterprises will increasingly embrace the GBS model, as it will enhance their ability to deliver additional business impact in these turbulent times. Enterprises and service providers will both focus on rapid digital transformation and accelerated automation adoption as they struggle to thrive amidst myriad disruptive forces.

To learn more about the global services locations landscape and locations-related developments, and to get an update on locations activity by region and country and trends affecting global locations and locations portfolio strategies, please read our recently published report Global Locations State of the Market 2020: Moving Forward in Turbulent Times. The report is based on deep-dive, first-hand discussions with investment promotion bodies, leading shared services centers, service providers, recruitment agencies, and other market participants.

Relatedly, we’re hosting a webinar on Tuesday, May 19, that will cover topics including:

How COVID-19 has impacted enterprise workforce strategies to date
What the next normal is for locations and delivery strategies in this unfolding economic environment
How organizations can make their Business Continuity Planning (BCP) strategies simultaneously resilient and responsive.

Please click here to register for the webinar.

Announcing our inaugural conference: Everest Group Engage, The Pragmatic Edge: Designing Your Future. Learn more.

Category: Location Strategy