Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

6
Vol. 1 August 2009

description

Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

Transcript of Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

Page 1: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

CORPORATE HEADQUARTERSAegis LimitedEssar House

11 K.K. Marg, MahalaxmiMumbai – 400 034

INDIA

Phone: +91-22-6660 1100Fax: +91-22-2495 4490

Contact Information

India : +91 40 6616 6220Philippines : + 63 2885 8000South Africa : + 27 829 040 234UK : +44 207 408 8704US & Costa Rica: + 1 877 892 3447Email : [email protected]

Vol. 1 August 2009

Cop

yrig

ht 2

009,

Aeg

is L

imite

d. A

ll rig

hts

rese

rved

www.aegisglobal.com

Corporate HQ Country HQ Aegis Centers

US:- Irving, TX (Z)- Port St. Lucie, FL- Elkins, WV- Joplin, MO- Sienra Vista, AZ- New York, NY- Tamarac, FL- Burbank, CA

Costa Rica:- San Jose

UK:- London

Kenya:- Nairobi

South Africa:Johannesburg (2)

India:- Bangalore (2)- Hyderabad- Pune- Coimbatore- Gurgaon (3)- Delhi- Noida- Kolkata- Hazira- Mumbai- Ahmedabad- Lucknow

Philippines:- Baguio- Cebu (2)- Makati City (2)

Global Footprint

Do write in with your feedback on Insight to [email protected]

Page 2: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

Dear Customer,

Aegis is pleased to present the first issue of Insight, our periodical customer newsletter. Aegis has beenexcelling in the Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) space for over three decades. With over 37,000 employees in 34 locations in India, the US, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Australia, South Africa and Kenya, the company has forayed into Engineering, Technology and Spend Management services. Insight brings you perspectives on the latest trends in outsourcing, as well as news on the latest and most exciting developments at Aegis.

In this first issue, we converse with Prof. Alok Choudhary of Kellogg School of Management, on maximizing the value of customer relationships, in Think Tank.

This issue also features a case study of our engagement with vTech, for whom we developed a comprehensive CRM model that resulted in significant cost savings and enhanced client satisfaction. Read all about it in Case in Point.

The Buzz Factor section will bring to you views and predictions of analysts and industry monitors.

With a dash of information and lots of points to ponder, we hopeto make Insight an effective communication vehicle. This will enhance our partnership to make processes efficient, customers happy and your organization profitable.

Warm Regards,

Aparup Sengupta CEO and Managing Director

Awards Events

2008 MVP Quality Award from Customer Interaction Solutions® magazine for proven excellence in taking and improving quality measures.

NASSCOM Innovation Award forBusiness Innovation 2008 for Five 9s - a scientific process that facilitates smooth integration of an acquired company.

GESIA Award 2009 for HighestEmployment Generator: Non-Gujaratbased ICT Company.

Aegis was a Silver Sponsor at NASSCOM BPO Strategy Summit 2009.

Aegis participated in the prestigious NAB show held in Las Vegas in April 2009.

Aegis also sponsored Cornell University School of Hotel Administration's first annual Icon of the Industry Awards Dinner. About 500 leaders from the hospitality industry attended.

40 C-level executives from the hospitality industry attended the Aegis-sponsored Annual Cornell University Hotel Executive Summit on Entrepreneurship hosted at the United Nations in New York.

Aegis Speak

2

Page 3: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

3

Gartner report: Indian BPO industry’s revenue to increase two-fold by 2010-end

According to a recent report by advisory firm Gartner, the economic downturn and protectionist measures of Western countries notwithstanding, the market share of the business process outsourcing industry will likely increase two-fold over the next couple of years. The report also said that Indian vendors in the BPO sector would experience growth, owing to factors like dependable service delivery, sustained acquisitions of Europe and North America-based shared service centers, as well as revenue growth from continental Europe by way of partnerships. The market share of India's cost-effective BPO industry would rise to 10 percent by the end of 2010.

West Asia and North Africa are emerging as key offshoring regions because of their large, well educated population and proximity to Europe. India retains the top BPO destination tag

India continues to be the most favoured back-office of the world, but the West Asian and North African regions are slowly emerging as promising offshoring destinations, stated A.T. Kearney, the global management consulting firm.

According to A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI), India, China and Malaysia have retained the top three spots since the last five years.

The survey said that West Asia and North Africa are emerging as key offshoring regions because of their large, well educated population and proximity to Europe.

Leading research company Everest says South Africa emerging as a credible alternative offshore destination

The Everest Group, in a recently released report, has said that South Africa is one of the few global sourcing destinations beyond India and Philippines that can offer sizeable and good quality English language skills at a low-cost. There are eight established delivery locations in South Africa, with the key ones being Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Industry Buzz

South Africa offers a 50-60% operating cost savings potential over western markets. The low inflation levels in South Africa combined with the lower attrition make South Africa an attractive destination. Other positives include a large experienced talent pool with service delivery and domain skills in the domestic FS industry and availability of scalable, high quality English skills, and cultural affinity with countries like the UK. The study estimates the total entry-level talent pool for BPO in South Africa to be around 470,000 annually, including high-school graduates. Other advantages include robust physical infrastructure and a good expatriate quality of life.

Aegis acquires UCMS group

Aegis has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Australian contact center company UCMS Group for A$54 million. This acquisition would enable Aegis to extend its reach into the high growth markets of Australia and New Zealand. This is the twelfth company acquired by Aegis in the past four years. Aegis has an internal ‘mergers and acquisitions’ team that works on a unique strategy that revolves around integrating an acquisition within 99 days.

Aegis makes strategic investment in South Africa

Aegis recently acquired 100% equity of CCN Group PTY Ltd., one of the largest privately owned BPO companies in South Africa with revenues in excess of USD 19 million. The investment is a significant part of Aegis’ overall planned investment of USD 60 million in South Africa. Through this latest acquisition, clients will benefit from greater scale, deeper domain expertise, comprehensive and flexible solution offerings, robust financial strength, and a rich international talent pool.

Aegis Buzz

Buzz Factor

3

Page 4: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

On the idea of 'customer as an asset' and why Customer Lifecycle Management is imperative for an organization

A business exists to serve customers; all products or services become relevant only in the context of a customer who uses the same. Thus, the customer is an important organizational asset and every customer who does business with a company adds value to the company. Now, having said this, the longer customers stay with you, the more valuable they become; not just from a transactional stand point, but beyond. For example, by analyzing customer behavior patterns over time, an organization can derive important insights that can help predict and plan for the future.

Thus, one can attribute a value to the customer relationship equity which transcends the transactional value itself. In addition, as the old adage “a penny saved is a penny earned” goes, a customer retained is equivalent to a new customer won.

On some ways to enhance customer lifetime value

The first is to ensure the right customer experience. There could be multiple touch points between a business and its customers and the quality of these interactions play a pivotal role in the way a customer views the company. Thus, the quality of resources deployed to manage these touch points, and processes and metrics become relevant.

For example, consider a sales person in a retail outlet handling a young mother who is buying a variety of baby foods. Since the sales person is measured on how many customers she services within a time period, and the price of different varieties of baby food (of a particular size) is the same, she would, while billing, show the purchase as 12 numbers of one variety rather than take the trouble to put down each individual item. This serves her purpose as she completes the billing process quickly. But what also happens at the same time is that the retailer has lost valuable information on the baby food buying preferences of that young mother. Imagine this happening over multiple transactions, and you end up with inaccurate information on customer preferences.

This happens because the incentive mechanism for the point-of-sale person is not aligned with the business objective of maximizing customer lifetime value.

And this leads us to the subject of building a customer centric culture not only among the front office employees but across the organization, if one takes the view that the raison d’être of a business is to serve its customers. A customer centric organization would be more clued in to changing needs of customers as they progress through their life cycle and be prepared to address them. This in turn enhances customer lifetime value.

On how analytics is a potent tool in Customer Lifecycle Management

Analytics is a powerful tool a business can leverage; technology is a great enabler for today’s businesses to enhance customer lifetime value. For example, by mining historical customer transactional data, one can make predictions on how your current customer set may behave. Two, using data about customers over time, analytics can help identify changing needs of customers over their life cycle. Businesses that understand and address these changing needs are those that will be able to retain their customers and hence be more successful.

Needless to say, analytics can help segment customers better as well as assess future potential of customers. This is an important data point to decide on which customer segments to pay more attention to; clearly if you target the right segments, you would get better returns. And that’s not all. You can compute the cost of doing business (which should go down over time for the right customer) and prioritize your profitable customer relationships.

Thus, the right analytics can give multiple inputs in devising a company’s strategy to maximize the value of its customer relationships.

Prof. Choudhary can be contacted at [email protected]

Alok Choudhary is the Chair and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a Professor of Marketing and Technology Industry Management at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He is the founding academic director of the Executive Program on "Managing Customer Relationships for Profit" in the Kellogg School of Management's executive education program. Prof. Choudhary was a co-founder and VP of Technology of Accelchip Inc., in 2000, which was eventually acquired by Xilinx. He also serves, or has served, on the Board or Technical Advisory Board of several companies. He has consulted with many companies including several Fortune 100 companies. He has published over 300 papers, and has received numerous awards and honors.

Prof. Choudhary is keenly interested in the area of customer relationship management and talks to the Aegis editorial team on how companies can maximize the value of their customer relationships.

4

Think Tank

4

Page 5: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

Chris MadsenDirector Customer Support Operations“ Aegis assisted us in a highly complex transition that

included processes, people and technology. The entire process was completely transparent to our customers. It was an amazing experience.

Case in PointAegis CRM Service

THE CLIENT

VTech is a leading provider of telephone equipment. The company also manufactures electronic learning products (educational toys) and has additionally made a foray into contract manufacturing services. Headquartered in Hong Kong, VTech has a presence in 10 countries and an employee base of more than 30,000.

CUSTOMER CHALLENGES

VTech had outsourced its customer support to a provider in the Philippines. However, the customer satisfaction results delivered by the incumbent were disappointing. Hence, VTech solicited Aegis’ assistance with process improvements to enhance its end-customer experience and improve visibility into customer support processes. Aegis’ challenge was to effect a rapid transition without disrupting service to VTech customers. A secondary objective was to reduce costs.

AEGIS SOLUTION

To redesign VTech’s customer support processes, the Aegis team studied the existing process in great detail to identify areas of improvement and eliminate steps that provided little business value. Following this study, the team developed a custom support solution that was completely integrated.

The custom solution encompassed:

◆ A world-class IVR application which enabled self-service

◆ A comprehensive CRM platform integrated with the IVR to achieve a personalized view of each end-user

◆ A natural language knowledge base that could function as an online self-service platform for VTech’s customers

◆ Redesign of the agent training program and incorporation of new processes and support tools

Aegis succeeded in ramping up 140 agents within 90 days.

RESULTS

Aegis met the aggressive deadlines set by VTech and completed the initial implementation of the new support processes in less than 10 weeks.

VTech derived many benefits from this exercise:

◆ Rapid transition to the new process without disrupting customer service or affecting quality of service

◆ 20% reduction in call volume with the addition of the new online self-service platform

◆ Improved customer satisfaction as a result of a reduction in customer complaints

◆ Improved visibility into support processes with reporting on data such as understanding the reasons for customer calls

◆ Significant cost savings with the outsourcing partners as they are now operating below budget projections

5

5

Page 6: Aegis Insight Newsletter Vol. 1

CORPORATE HEADQUARTERSAegis LimitedEssar House

11 K.K. Marg, MahalaxmiMumbai – 400 034

INDIA

Phone: +91-22-6660 1100Fax: +91-22-2495 4490

Contact Information

India : Philippines : South Africa : UK : US & Costa Rica: Australia :Email : [email protected]

Cop

yrig

ht 2

009,

Aeg

is L

imite

d. A

ll rig

hts

rese

rved

www.aegisglobal.com

Global Headquarters Country Headquarters Aegis Centers

US:- Irving, TX (2)- Port St. Lucie, FL- Elkins, WV- Fairmont, WV- Joplin, MO- Sierra Vista, AZ- New York, NY- Los Angeles, CA

Costa Rica:- San Jose

UK:- London

Kenya:- Nairobi

South Africa:Johannesburg (2)

India:- Bangalore (2)- Hyderabad- Pune- Coimbatore- Gurgaon (3)- Delhi- Noida- Kolkata- Hazira- Mumbai- Ahmedabad- Lucknow

Philippines:- Baguio- Cebu (2)- Manila (2)

Australia:- Melbourne

Global Footprint

Do write in with your feedback on Insight to [email protected]

+91 40 6616 6220+63 2885 8000

+27 829 040 234+44 207 408 8704+1 877 892 3447

+61 (3) 9256 5000