BPO Handbook launched

The launch of the book ‘BPO and Sourcing Dictionary’ at the Dialog Auditorium on 26 April was welcoming news to all who are and will be involved in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in Sri Lanka.

BPO globally is in the ascendancy and is a multi-billion US dollar industry. India has already captured a larger share of this market with its early mover advantage and through their vision in advance on resource capacity building programs. Today, India’s BPO earnings are in the range of around 14 Billion US dollars and growing steadily.

Sri Lanka BPO industry in comparison to India is a mere novice and are looking to grab a small share of this growing and lucrative market. Sri Lanka as a preferred outsourcing destination is slowly but surely is looking to gather momentum. The evidence is clear.

A T Kearney in its recent Global Services Locations Index (GLSI) ranked Sri Lanka as 21st. It also ranked Sri Lanka as the 5th in terms of financial attractiveness ahead of countries such as India and China. Gartner announced Sri Lanka within the top 30 outsourcing destinations in the world amongst which Sri Lanka was ranked 9th within the Asia Pacific countries.

A recent IBM survey ranked Sri Lanka as 12th in the top ranking destinations in their global locations trends report. The Global Services magazine that performs annual outsourcing industry analysis globally has ranked Sri Lanka amongst the top 10 emerging global destinations.

The vision of SLASSCOM (Sri Lankan Association of Software and Service Companies), the over-arching body that acts as the catalyst to grow the Sri Lankan IT and BPO industry is to become a 1 billion US dollar earner by 2015.

To this affect, one of the key obstacles that Sri Lanka needs to overcome is building of the Human Resource Capability to take on the BPO related work (Capacity Building Program).

A book such as the ‘BPO and Sourcing Dictionary’ is an invaluable learning aid to accelerate this process further.

It is a handbook that must be given to every single employee by the BPO companies HR and learning divisions, so that it provides enhanced knowledge to existing employees in the BPO industry to further in terms of understanding the industry specific link language.

The book will also be a great asset to students who are looking to embrace a career path in this lucrative industry. As part of their learning process of the BPO industry, they will now have the ability to learn the related “lingo”, so that their initiation to this industry could become somewhat seamless.

This kind of learning aid not only supports the supplier side of the outsourcing industry, and is a great knowledge source for the clients who are looking to set-up their own Shared Service Centres (SSC) or looking to outsource their non-core processes either locally or internationally to a third party outsourcing supplier. The employees involved in this process will be able to understand the various industry related “jargon” used when communicating with the suppliers.

This book also carries valuable outsourcing contract terminology and their definitions, which would be of extreme use for Managers dealing at contractual levels both on Supplier and client sides.

It is in essence a handbook that has been catered for everyone involved in the outsourcing industry, all executives and non-executives alike.

It has catered for a gap in the market and extremely well put together in terms of both content (Alphabetical order of definitions with ease of finding as well as simply worded “laymen” definitions) and the “look and feel” (in terms of its pocket-size with ease of carry and non-intrusive nature).

It is the first of its kind, with over 850 definitions related to BPO, sourcing and outsourcing contractual level definitions in a single collection of printed publication.

It has already attracted various interests from international book sellers to market the product both via the web and in their respective book stores.

The author of this handbook is a Sri Lankan, IT & BPO Professional and a business writer to various local and international  magazines.

 Ajith as the Vice President of IT and Projects was instrumental in setting up one of the largest BPO’s in Sri Lanka back in 2004. The BPO Centre of global outsourcer WNS was set-up in Sri Lanka in 2004 to cater for AVIVA insurance and today has over 250 F&A (Finance and Accounting) staffs providing outsourcing services. Subsequently Ajith worked internationally with various outsourcing clients on a freelance basis, advising them on their outsourcing strategies and transition related activities.

“Back in the days when I first moved in to outsourcing, had I come across a compilation such as this, it would have helped me ease in to my BPO role immensely” he says. “We learnt on the job as we dealt with the client and built-up the related vocabulary as we went along”. Ajith says that this is what inspired him to put this book together. “The idea of putting such a collection of definitions was born back in 2004 and 8 years later, I have finally been able to convert this vision in to reality”.

Ajith’s BPO experience to put together such a collection of BPO definitions has been well rounded. “I was fortunate enough to not spend time in the BPO industry on the supplier side alone, but was subsequently able to spend time on the client side also. Therefore, I was able to fathom the psyche of how it works from either side of the fence on outsourcing scenarios. I was able to understand the expectations from both client and the supplier. Some of the definitions in the book reflect this”.

Why a launch of such a book in Sri Lanka? Ajith says “As a Sri Lankan, I owe it to launch it in my own country and help the “Capacity Building Program” that has been initiated by SLASSCOM. Beyond that I will look to market the book in other countries too”.

Ajith is currently the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Hayleys Group. He has over 25 years industry experience gained globally that includes the eight years BPO experience. He has a 1st class honours degree and a MBA from UK, where he was the prize winner for MBA of the year in 2006.

Ajith says, “I wish the reader the best in gaining BPO industry terminology knowledge and hopefully this publication will play some part in ramping up our BPO knowledgeable workforce in the country and thus accelerating the growth of our country as a preferred BPO supplier in the world.”

The book ‘BPO and Sourcing Dictionary’ will now be available in most book shops in Sri Lanka (distributed by Vijitha Yapa) as well as through [email protected] by specifying order quantity, contact details and delivery address (for cash on delivery basis). At a cost of GBP £ 4.99 it is an essential and worthwhile investment.