Ritesh:<\/strong> I think a lot of innovation that is out there can come from the business and operations mandate in one industry and how you reflect and imbibe that in another industry sector is something that\u2019s a very important question. For instance, today you look at the marketplace; we are focused on basically a few strategic themes to an organization. We believe these seven strategic themes cut across industry sectors.<\/p>\nThe first one is centered on what we call the power of one. Our belief is that our clients\u2019 customer is increasingly getting micro segmented and therefore you need to have specific product offerings, which are geared towards that particular consumer. How you actually create offerings which are addressed to that particularly individual rather than treating everyone in a uniform way is something that is going to be extremely critical. I think that\u2019s a common challenge that a lot of our clients across industry sectors are facing.<\/p>\n
I think the second piece of it is the changing demographic of the work force. The fact that you have a lot more Gen Y people coming into the work force is creating a lot of challenges in how \u00a0people orient themselves to a new work environment and the fact that people are used to doing things in a different way. That\u2019s a common challenge that we end up seeing across industries. The third one that we are seeing out there is centered around the impact of social media.<\/p>\n
How do you monetize the impact of social media? I think it\u2019s again a common challenge that a lot of our clients across industries are facing. \u00a0While technology is buildings various solutions to address this, our ability from a BPO standpoint to monetize information through the complex social media space helps \u00a0clients drive deeper industry understanding or analyse diverse stakeholder feedback. That knowledge \u00a0is critical to drive business impact enabling differentiation in the market place.<\/p>\n
The fourth one is mobility. Again, if you look at the impact of mobile technologies today, you can do all kinds of transactions whether it is using the iPhone, the iPad, the Internet, any medium that allows access remotely. How do you create applications and solutions that are geared for that is something of a challenge that a lot of our clients are facing across industry sectors. (We may want to add seamless mobility into this. For instance our ability to load on applications that can impact business not only from our customer;s point of view but also enhance client;s brand experience )<\/p>\n
The fifth one is that as organizations have grown, they have become more complex and not as smart as they ought to be. How do you actually simplify these organizations from an operations, process and technology standpoint? I think that\u2019s a challenge that a lot of our clients are facing.<\/p>\n
The sixth one is centered around what I would characterize as the potential of emerging markets and the ability of clients to penetrate and create relevant differentiation in these markets.. This is where a lot of our clients today are looking to operate given that the rates of growth are slowing down in the more mature markets The requirements in emerging markets BRIC countries \u00a0are widely different from the more mature markets. There are also industries in the BRIC countries that are growing not just at the GDP level at the seven to nine percent rate, but also every company that has its operations out there is growing at 30 to 40 percent. I was with a client recently in Sao Paulo and that client has grown in the last three years in the Brazilian market at 40 percent compounded and they expect their business to grow to being a ten billion dollar business from one billion dollars in the next ten years. That\u2019s the kind of potential that\u2019s there and providers need to be able to modify their solutions to build scale and account for locational business complexity\u00a0 We have built solutions that allow them to tap into the specific needs of emerging markets<\/p>\n
Last but not the least is the entire question on sustainability.\u00a0 Every organization is trying to say \u201cHow do I do all of these themes, yet be environmentally conscious, in a manner which is sustainable in the longer term?\u201d I think we have got solutions that are addressed to that.<\/p>\n
These are the seven broad areas of focus that we believe will address the question on, \u201cHow can we take practices from one industry sector to another, and be able to apply them successfully to enhance the business value of the equation.<\/p>\n
Phil:<\/span><\/strong> Are you getting more involved with your clients\u2019 customers?<\/span><\/p>\nRitesh: <\/strong>The nature of outsourcing has evolved to being very strategic especially in conversations that we have been having with clients where either the duration of the relationship has achieved considerable length or where there are large areas of business operations being outsourced . This I believe is the second level of innovation, in that that we find ourselves a lot of times at the center of the ecosystem. For instance, you may be working with a consumer goods package company, but that company has a bunch of retailers who are its customers. We end up finding ourselves supporting both the consumer package goods company as well as the retailer and, therefore, be at the center of the ecosystem. We can see supply chain inefficiencies on both the consumer package goods side as well as on the retailer side. How do we actually tie these together being at the center of the ecosystem and how do we get them to talk to each other? So we can be in a very unique position today from an industry standpoint because we are working with our customers and their customers at times, especially in a B2B context. We may have visibility having worked on applications and processes at both ends that a lot of our clients may not be able to directly see.<\/p>\nThat, in turn, raises different states of innovation that might become visible. So those are some of the things that we are working on very well, very consciously with our clients. We believe that there may be opportunities out there for benefactors sharing across industries as well.<\/p>\n
In the third and final part of our interview, Ritesh expands on communication, networking through social media, and career advice for those entering the industry. Don\u2019t miss the conclusion.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ritesh Idnani is COO for InfosysBPO<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ritesh Idnani is COO for Infosys BPO. During his time with the firm, the BPO business for Infosys has scaled ten-fold from a $40m business in 2005 to a $400m+ business in 2010 (the forecast is for Infosys to report revenues anywhere between $405m-$420m by end of current fiscal). He has led two of Infosys’s largest acquisitions in the last 4 years, McCamish Systems, a leading provider of life, annuity and retirement services products in 2009, and the shared service centers of Philips in 2007.<\/em><\/p>\nPrior to Infosys, Ritesh has held exec roles with PwC and Citigroup. \u00a0He lives in Basking Ridge NJ with his wife and twin boys. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ritesh Idnani is Chief Operating Officer for Infosys Airways When last we left Infosys BPO COO, Ritesh Idnani, in Part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,51,835,838,88,836,91,832],"tags":[],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-process-outsourcing-bpo","category-cloud-computing","category-f-a","category-kpo-analytics","category-outsourcing-heros","category-procurement-engineering-supply-chain-outsourcing","category-saas","category-sourcing-best-practises"],"yoast_head":"\n
Up in the air with Ritesh Idnani... Part II - Horses for Sources | No Boundaries<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n