Since he founded eSys Technologies in Singapore seven years ago, Mr. Vikas Goel, Chairman & MD of the company, has strived to bring innovation and efficiency in the way business is done. He has been commendably successful in making eSys a US$2-billion company in such a short span of time. Once again, remaining ahead of the curve, he has pioneered a unique concept called TBO, in which various business processes of a company are carried out from multiple locations which offer low-cost and required skills for a particular function.
TBO is different from BPO as it is not just outsourcing of one function, but a whole set of functions including services, software, manufacturing, etc. The key innovation is in the seamless integration of all such backoffice processes. Such integration results in cost efficiencies and reaction time that cannot be achieved with multiple unrelated BPO vendors. TBO is a ONE-STOP SHOP.
Explaining the concept, Mr. Goel said, “The business environment is changing very fast. Now, it does not make sense to have all the functions under your control at higher costs when someone else specializes in those jobs and can do them at a fraction of the cost without compromising on quality.”
In the current global business environment, technology innovators or brand owners are focussing more and more on their core capabilities (which lie in R&D, Design, Innovation, Branding and Marketing) and are outsourcing non-core peripheral activities which are transactional in nature to get higher efficiencies.
He added, “With TBO, we are offering big global companies a unique service where we take over their non-core functions and carry them out in an integrated fashion much more efficiently. In the process, we bring value in two ways: one is clearly the cost advantage; and the other is they just have to deal with one interface rather than multiple vendors.”
With TBO, eSys offers unique outsourcing proposition with a comprehensive set of services, including global logistics & warehousing, transactional services, sales support, reverse logistics and online B2B & B2C operations, to be delivered with a combination of backoffice capabilities and global infrastructure, including factories and warehouses. TBO enables companies not only to outsource processes one by one, but a complete non-core business function is outsourced. eSys plans to leverage its global footprint to offer some of the services like logistics, delivery and transaction processing which require local presence.
TBO is the need of the hour. Before the flux of globalized business era, countries had created artificial barriers for labour movement, which made the skill sets immobile. In the current globalized business environment, new-age technology has broken these barriers and made the businesses mobile. Now, instead of getting the human resources to cross the borders and perform a certain function, whole business functions and in some cases whole business is brought to a place where skill sets, competencies and resources are available.
TBO is a structured way to approach offshoring of such business functions in an integrated manner which, unlike BPO, are not just software related but involve physical logistics, technology platforms and financial transactional services also. In fact, the concept of TBO can be extended to services like litigation, where high-skilled, low-cost lawyers can work on global litigation projects; and to concepts like virtual receptionists and warehouse security where using VoIP and video technology multiple locations can be catered to by a far less number of personnel at much less costs, thus giving companies multiple level cost advantage.
Large global organizations can take care of their core competencies in Branding, R&D and Specialized manufacturing and outsource other non-core functions. These non-core functions constitute significant part of cost (G&A), which can be up to 25 per cent of the total revenue of the company. What eSys has pioneered is that it optimizes each and every cost component and brings down total cost reductions to as much as one-fourth. This is all attributed to the integrated approach of TBO where various business functions are carried on a strong global backbone. The total amount spent by global companies on such non-core activities comes to trillions of dollars. The concept of TBO can actually help reduce this cost significantly for these companies.
Also, economic value-add from TBO is much more than BPO as now you are not just getting cost savings out of IT budget but out of total expense. eSys has set up a nerve centre in India to carry out this concept. It is building six acres TBO facility in Rajeev Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park (RGCTP) in Chandigarh. In the first phase, this facility will have a workforce of 500, which will be scaled up to 2,000 and then 5,000 by 2011.
