I’ve spent the better part of my professional career in the technology and technology-enabled services industry more by accident than by design. I had a chance to see the evolution of the BPO industry in the late 1990s during my time at Citigroup much before the term BPO took shape. Since that time, the industry has been through several trials and tribulations from offshoring to lean and six sigma, global business services, automation and RPA leading up to where we are today. Through all these phases while the BPO sector has grown and perhaps even thrived, the industry has been incremental at best from an innovation perspective if I end up being generous. With the advances in AI and automation over the last few years, we have an opportunity to disrupt and throw everything that this industry has known out of the window. Take learning – the BPO industry has prided itself on linear learning. An associate joined, went through 10 or 12 weeks of training before they hit the floor and supported customers. Have we wondered why that is the case? Learning has never been linear for as long as we have known yet we have put old, antiquated practices on the way we work. AI has only amplified the same that learning is non-linear and that is just one illustration of the how this industry has evolved.
There’s the old adage – what got us here won’t get us further and that couldn’t be truer in an AI-driven, fast-changing future. Incremental shifts won’t cut it anymore. BPO is not dead, traditional BPO thinking is. History bears witness that shifts in an industry tend to favor the upstarts. Larger incumbents and larger publicly listed players will struggle to challenge the status quo and will play on defense as they are afraid to disrupt their own business besides the difficulties in transforming a larger labor-based business. At the same time, smaller, undifferentiated players of which this industry has a long tail, will struggle to continue to remain relevant. In the world we are living in, size and scale are not important, relevance is.
The world is more uncertain than ever, and AI is here to stay—and evolve. To truly help clients navigate this dynamic landscape, we must stay ahead of the curve. That’s why I’m excited to introduce UnBPOTM—@Firstsource’s bold new approach to business transformation.
UnBPOTM is not just an evolution; it’s a revolution. It’s about throwing away the age old ways of working in the BPO sector and introducing new rules for newer times. And mind you, this is not the technology itself. Over the years, enterprises and service providers alike have accumulated enough culture, talent, location, skills and technology debt. What if you could build a business to stay ahead in uncertain times. UnBPOTM is an opportunity to create building blocks to navigate an uncertain world. UnBPOTM is not a tagline, it is a mindset shift.
- It’s no longer about front office or back office, IT or BPO. The traditional boundaries are blurring between each of these areas. Enter “service as a software” coined by my dear friend Phil Fersht
- Labor arbitrage is table stakes – everybody expects it and should bake it into their business. Technology arbitrage is the next frontier of competitive differentiation. Technology arbitrage is not about cost, it is about leverage.
- Understanding your customer has never been more important. Deep domain expertise is going to be key to ensure competitiveness. It is imperative to be an inch wide, mile deep so that you can bring technology that is “fit for purpose” to the domain.
- Organizations who pride themselves on their location dispersion are going to be saddled with “location debt”. In the new world, AI Centers of Excellence with abundant talent will be key to meet and exceed customer needs. Less is more.
- The future of work has been here for some time. Through the pandemic, remote working became a lot more mainstream. However, the future of work is still evolving and will continue to evolve in the years to come. Redefining Who (does the work across full time employees, gig workers and AI agents), How (tasks get allocated across each archetype), and What (skills are required) will be critical to succeed in the new world.
- Deep rooted hierarchies are a thing of the past. Identifying roles that create disproportionate value in an organization is going to be super important. Networked organizations are going to be imperative for agility and speed. Silos don’t scale, collaboration does.
- To succeed in the new world, it is going to become imperative for organizations to create programs that drive hyper-personalized skilling & reskilling. Personalized pathways and navigations will be key to chart individual futures. The traditional middle management mindset driven by age old proxies of power (number of people you manage or amount of revenue you control) are a relic of the past. We must address the “messy middle” and how we allow them to flourish in the new world and equip them with skills to remain relevant.
- While AI is front and center on our minds these days, it is not about the technology. Creating an AI-first mindset, integrating AI into the fabric of everything you do and democratizing AI for everyone will be key to ensure you can continue to remain ahead of every advancement in technology that will come in the months and years to come.
- We cannot do it all ourselves. Leveraging the partner ecosystem is going to be an important component of success. We see ourselves as an orchestrator of a symphony of partners to drive the right value for our customers.
- About 50-60% of the work that gets done in the sector is still time and material/ headcount based. This is the time to challenge traditional commercial models that have outlived their utility. Non-linear commercial models driving business outcomes for customers are here to stay. It’s time to have skin in the game and push the boundaries of innovation.
These are exciting times and at Firstsource, we are glad to lead the charge and be the UnBPOTM company. Stay tuned as I dive deeper into each of these principles outlined above in the coming weeks.
#UnBPOTM #AI #FutureOfWork #BusinessTransformation #WeMakeItHappen