The country is witnessing rapid growth in the ITES sector, especially in the call-center business. This growth presents a plethora of opportunities for the channel to explore. Be it as suppliers or users of call-center technologies to improve services; the channel partners has the business cut out for them.

A lot has been said about India being a hot spot for offering IT-Enabled Services (ITES). Indeed! ITES, especially call-centers, are a huge opportunity for Indian companies to make a mark at the global level. Every time industry analysts talk about the growth potential that lies in this industry, all those involved in this segment get excited. However, the channel community is yet to fully explore the business potential in this segment.

There are two major ways in which partners could cash on the increased call-center activity. The first, channel partners acting as a suppliers to the call-center business, and the second, as users of various call-center technologies to make service and business processes more efficient.

OPPORTUNITIES UNEXPLORED
ITES industry which grossed Rs 2,400 crore in 1999-2000, touched Rs 7,100 crore in 2001-02. And the figure is expected to touch Rs 20,000 crore by 2007-08, as per a study conducted by Nasscom. Estimates show that employment in the ITES sector has gone up from 45,000 employees in 1999-2000 to 1,07,200 employees in 2001-02. It is further estimated that by 2008, this segment will create employment for 2,70,000 people. Currently, over 750 ITES companies operate in India and industry experts hopes that this market will grow at a CAGR of 45 percent for the next five year.

What all these figures also indicate is a gradual increase in the ITES-related infrastructural requirements. This essentially translates into a huge business opportunity for channel partners to fulfill these requirements. These are essentially in terms of supply of servers, ACDs, EPABX, LAN/WAN, routers, IVR systems, Fax-on-demand systems, clients/desktops, headsets, application software, database software, storage, and desktop agents among others as well as their integration.

A simple calculation for desktop PC requirement can be done by estimating the number of employees who will work in this industry because every user will have a PC on his desk. Besides, every ITES company will require a large number of servers (for CTI, IVR, e-mail, voice mail, Web, database, CRM, etc), with an equal number of machines for every equipment as backup. Backup machines at the server level become a must because this industry operates 24x7 and cannot afford to be down even for a minute.

WHAT GOES IN
Let us start with how a typical call-center operates. (figure 1). There are three components associated with a typical call-center infrastructure: Hardware, software and service components. All of these present business opportunities for different channel segments and more specifically for systems integrators.

But it is not as easy as pushing boxes, like many channel partners do. The role of channel partner as a supplier for ITES infrastructure requires a lot of expertise because it involves systems integration on a large scale. High level of expertise becomes a must for channel partners interested in exploring the business prospects.

Feedback from various ITES companies indicates that they prefer a single systems integrator to provide the complete solution rather than many SIs setting up the infrastructure in bits and pieces. However, there are very few companies in India with such capabilities, and hence ITES companies invariably end up taking the help of more than one SI.

According to experts, the cost involved by a typical call-center can vary between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 7 lakh for a single seat. The setup can include just an EPABX and an ACD (Automatic Call Distribution unit), or even a very sophisticated setup with EPABX + ACD + IVR (Interactive Voice Response) + CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) + CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as the main components. Let’s take a brief look at different components required towards setting up of a full fledged call-center:

CONSULTANTS:
When a company decides to set up a call-center, the first thing it does is to get in touch with a consultant to get opinions and direction on the nitty-gritties of setting up the business. Which means, as a supplier, to be in the good books of consultants surely pays. Alternatively, channel partners may also choose to become a consultant by acquiring the required expertise.

TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE:
A good telecom infrastructure is the backbone of an efficient call-center. An important component of which is a leased line and/or a VSAT connection.

EPABX: All calls are received by the EPABX system and sent to the ACD system.

ACD: ACD units are used to route the calls received from the EPABX to the CTI server/IVR mechanism/Voice recorder/Fax-on-demand server. Some of the latest call-centers have done away with the use of ACD, by replacing it with a server using software that can handle distribution of calls.

IVR system: IVR looks at all the routine tasks like product information, shipping information, customer information, order booking, or any other basic information. A carefully categorized IVR can handle most of the routine tasks very efficiently.

Voice recorder: Voice recorders are used to give customers an option to leave a message or wait for a customer support agent to attend to his call.

Fax-on-Demand (FoD): Some call-centers give the caller an option to receive information through FoD.

DESKTOPS:
If a caller chooses not to use either the IVR, voice recorder or FoD, the call is diverted to the agents, where a trained staff attends to one’s queries. The agents are equipped with robust desktops with multimedia capabilities, headset, mic and alternatively a telephone. These desktops may not have a hard disk drive, floppy disk drive or any other drives in it, but will have all other hardware of best quality.

SERVERS:
CTI server: Apart from the above-mentioned devices, the CTI server intergrates all desktops with an application and gives provisions for screen pop-ups on the agent’s desktop terminals.

CRM/ERP server: For the screen pop-up to work in tandem with the customer information already existing with the company, a CRM or an ERP integrated in the network does a neat and efficient job.

Database server: Some companies link the entire call center network to its client’s database server, which could be anywhere (either at the client’s premise or at the call-center premise or even at a third location). These databases are well integrated with the applications that run on the agents’ desktops.

NETWORKING:
Like all other networks, a call-center setup requires a LAN or a WAN, with routers, switches, structured cabling and so on. Supply of all these equipments and their consequent integration offers an attractive business proposition for the network integrators.

SOFTWARE:
The software component that goes in to the making of a call-center starts from the basic networking OS to CRM/ERP to the complete call-center application suite. For channel partners there is also a scope for selling application tools, which are software that design applications for the call-center setups.

There is a lot more that goes into the making of a call-center. But, briefly the above explains it most. A call-center could have seats anywhere between two to 1,000 or more. So, don’t be surprised when somebody tell you that he owns a call-center! It could be true!

CHANNELS AS A USER
The other way partners can cash on the call-center activity is by using the call-center technologies to make their own business processes more efficient. In order to ensure cost-efficiencies, tier-1 and tier-2 partners need to automate their business operations, which at present is done largely in a manual way.

Taking into consideration the cost of setting up a call-center, partners need not own a full-fledged set-up of their own.

However, they can surely use appropriate call-center technology, say IVR or FoD to their benefit. This one-time cost could be easily recovered in few months with increased productivity and hence better revenues.

Worldwide, many vendors are looking at VARs for providing service on their behalf. And effectively, many VARs have begun operating call-centers for their principles. An effective call-center can help build better relationship with customers despite the fact that half the job is handled by machines.

REGAIN LOST OPPORTUNITY
If the budget is a constraint and the volume of out-bound calls at partners’ end is not very huge, the call-center activity can be limited to an effective IVR. According to a study conducted by Avhan Technologies, a company involved in call-center applications and tool design, a call-center agent can handle up to 160 calls in eight hours while an IVR can handle nearly 2,560 calls in same duration. Therefore, companies gain even without involving manpower. Manpower is required only in non-routine tasks, where a machine may not do the work effectively. For everything else an IVR or a voice messaging system can do the job.

Channel partners as users of call-center technologies, can ensure that their routine tasks are handled efficiently in an automated manner. Some of the routine tasks that an effective setup can handle are: General customer complaints, AMC-related issues, order booking, shipping information, product information, order tracking, technical support, warranty support and so on.

Call center gives 24x7 service and can handle several transactions in a day. Compare this with a human’s capacity to work and the advantages would be more than obvious. Of course, the personalized touch may be missing, but there exist ITES consultants who do their best to humanize technology by smart implementation of the CTI applications.

Similarly, an IVR can do a lot more than an agent can do. Faster response time, reduced employee cost, higher traffic-handling capacity, investment recovery in about a month are just some of the benefits that partners can receive by using an IVR system. "A Call center is meant for ensuring increased customer satisfaction because it increases efficiency," says Anand Awasthi, CEO, Avhan Technologies, giving the example of Dell’s success worldwide, which employs around 1,20,000 agents through 16 call-centers in comparison to the 75,000 seats that India employs for the entire ITES industry put
together.

NELSON JOHNY