CX- Automation, how recent is this phenomenon?

Contrary to popular perception, CX automation is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, consumer mass deployment of the discipline dates back at least two decades. Record scrutiny and archival research should clear the air on which industry: Telecom or Banking was the first, in the Indian market to go the automation route. Pieces of empirical evidence seem to suggest that it was telecommunication that pioneered the automation of consumer-facing processes. "Self-help" was the term that telecom donned to speak about all its cx automation initiatives. It was groundbreaking, massive in scale and so simple to use that it caught on like a kite takes to the wind. Mind you, these were being done in the pre-consumer internet era. Text Messages and USSD strings were the carriers of these pathbreaking innovations. From simple queries like balance enquiry to rather complex workflows like SIM replacements were fully automated by the corporations and very well accepted by the customers. Banking hasn't been far behind too: Who can argue against the impact that ATMs have had on mankind's relationship with money.

I must call out though, that how these wonderful CX automation initiatives of the days gone by were different from what we understand of the term today. It is the intent, infrastructure support and proliferation of the internet that has separated the expression of CX automation of the present day from what it used to be in the past. It has acquired a new identity, a new name. Early CX automation undertakings were purely motivated by 'cost saving'. Yes, it was marketed as 'customer empowerment' but everyone working in both telecom and banking in the early days knew that it wasn't the case.

The term "Self-help", in the present day, doesn't invoke the same kind of emotions. "CX automation" is in vogue now and rightfully so. There is a world of difference in the technology landscape, computing capabilities, and general acceptance of the 'digital way of life" among end-users.

CX automation is a multi-billion industry today, we have to thank SaaS for it. The spectacular success that Freshworks, Zendesk and Zoho got has renewed the interest of capital in products that promise to automate customer-facing processes across a variety of industries. Advancements in cognitive technology, conversational Artificial Intelligence, and desktop automation have completely changed the scene. The ecosystem is fully ready to cut over to the new: 750 million connected smartphones beaming in India alone, the internet load for a day is cheaper than a decent cup of coffee (of course at telecom's peril) and there is growing interest in the industry to go fully automated. Capital, like it, always does is honouring the mood of the market. As we know from our economics lessons: capital and growth follow each other in a circle.

This change will cause massive displacement of low/semi-skilled professionals. The problem is that less than 5% of customer experience professionals today, truly understand the ways in which the new beast is to be tamed. That I am afraid is going to push the customer services industry (BPOs) to relive what banking when through in early 1980-90 ties, when banking embraced computers and they had to send nearly 70% of their workforce home (early retirement) because they just couldn't keep up with the machine.

There is still time to learn and adapt - the question is, will the BPO industry act in time? Your guess is as good as mine.

Remote work and urban planning!

(Note: The changes that we speak of in this article is expected to happen in the course of the next 10 years!)

Workplace of the future (a part of which is already visible) is no longer going to be a 'physical space' but a 'network' that enables the staff to connect with the resources needed to carry out the affairs of the business, in a seamless and secure manner. Even before the heat from the Pandemic started burning us out, the bottlenecks that excessively centralised and vehemently urbanised operations force upon the ecological balance of the cities had begun to appear counter-productive. The health risk from the wretched virus has in a way fast-tracked much-needed change in the organisation of the modern economic hubs.

A survey found these startling facts:

• The commute for urban workers is getting 10% longer every year, 2/3rd of the respondents said that it was the worst part of their workday.
• Cost of living in cities was thinning saving capabilities of the working middle class, leaving them in a vulnerable position, with less than 30% having enough in the bank to run domestic affairs for a quarter without fresh influx.
• 70% of all things that cause Global warming originated from the cities. 

Modern cities, as we know them, were shaped by the Industrial Revolution; locations near ports became important distribution centres of goods, as a result of which accumulation of both people and properties followed. Back in the day, being physically present was the only way to make commerce happen and thus congestion in metropolitan centres was both natural and a conceded consequence. Thankfully, the advancements made in modern times have liberated us from those limitations; 'in-person supervision' is not the only tool available to humankind, today.

The Internet has already happened! 

Will anthropologists find considering the 'invention of the Internet’ comparable to the ‘discovery of fire’, outrageous? They may and I won’t dislike them for it nor does my assertion push their opinion any further from the fact than, it is. After all, they have studied life before ‘fire’ with whatever pieces of evidence that are still present, their shelves are full of books uncovering life after fire. The vantage point from which my contemporaries and I see the world, we find the impact of the world wide web just as staggering.  The conundrum of the internet is fascinating though, it brings people together, video call with someone sitting on the other side of the planet is an excellent example of it and it also tears people apart, the unsavoury impact of social media on human relationship and society is a piece of fine evidence. No tool, however, is inherently good or bad. It is the intention of the user that makes the outcome come out as noble or otherwise. For instance, gun on its own doesn’t kill anyone; those who point and pull the trigger do.

The Internet has democratised information, removed many a barrier and brought civilization to the advantage of functioning without physical contact with comparable and in many cases even better outcomes. Imagining a world tottering under a Pandemic without the internet would really be an exercise of picturing the devil. When the virus locked us all up in the confines of our homes, we turned to this very tool in our arsenal to accomplish everything that needed to be done: from schools to senates; everything shifted its operation ‘online’ (entirely in some sections and in parts in others). A world without the internet will impact more than just the running of business today, as it is now the lifeblood of human existence.

Ubiquitous ‘Work from home’ has changed more than our relationship with work. It is substantively altering run of the economy, urban planning, ecological balance and human mobility (both migration to and reverse migration from centres). A little over a year has already been lost to the virus, thankfully, we have viable vaccines now, but inoculation of 7.5 billion people spread across an entire planet is not an easy task. The most aggressive estimates suggest that it is not going to happen in less than 5 years, at any rate. The window of struggle is so long that that measures implemented as temporary modifications will become a part of our lives by the time we see the menace off, following the sheer rule of practice. 

Cities have undeniably suffered more than the rural areas from the mega virus breakout. The volume of economic activities that are conducted in these urban centre cause interest groups to invest in infrastructure to sustain the commerce: high delivery attracts higher resources and the accumulation keeps getting thicker. Heightened economic activities attract talent and thus workforce migrations happen. Cities provide better services to its dwellers, from education to health and sanitation - everything is a bit better, a bit nicer; and thus becomes a magnet to those who seek better standards of living. A virus that found its carrier in humans hit these metropolitan centres hard, congested spaces and high population density provided the perfect breeding ground for the virus. Growing scare and overflowing hospitals drew people in masses to leave for a safer place. Different segment of the population had different reasons for moving out of the city. Here a few.

• Migrant labourers: We saw millions track treacherous roads on foot, ranging anywhere between 100 and 1000 km, back home as the imposition of lockdown cast shadow of doubt over their paycheque.
• White-collar workers: Those who could work from home, preferred to be at their native places in Tier 2, 3 cities and villages with their families, instead of continuing at more expensive rented places in the city of their work.  Traffic woes and other difficulties that came out of congestion did little to dissuade people from abandoning the towns. 
• Urban Native Dwellers: With schools getting digital too, parents had little trouble in shifting bases. They welcomed the once in a lifetime opportunity to live in a greener, more affordable area, devoid of every suffocation that large city imposed upon them. All other compromises that were to be made in absence of modern amenities were happily embraced as the price of convenience and quiet of their new base location.
• Business: Leaders began to see how unimportant and wasteful are the office spaces of the city. They understood that they do not need to be present in the plush corporate parks anymore. The possibility of making substantial cost savings, by allowing workers to work in a distributed model, was greeted with an unabashed cheer.

Where do these changes leave our beloved cities? Will they siege to exist? The answer to that question is not a simple one. This proposition has many layers. A city is built not in a day, it comes about brick by brick, with centuries of investment, careful planning and infrastructure augmentation; not all facilities of which are portable. For instance, a super speciality hospital can’t be dismantled and thrown into pieces in smaller cities, at the drop of a hat. Government establishment, the core of it, are all in the cities, which means from litigation to other needs which can only be fulfilled by the state will be required to be performed in the city. What then happens to the future of the cities? To understand it, let us imagine that the entire population of all cities is that of 100 people. Let us assume that 30% can ride on the Internet (Cat 1) to get their business rolling from outside the cities and therefore will easily move. Roughly another 30% (Cat 2) of the population survives from the services that it provides to Cat 1. This shift will cause upward mobility for small % of people from Cat 2, as a reduction in manpower will increase the cost of manpower. What do the rest do? How will they sustain with their entire market migrating outside the bound of the cities? As a result, another about 20% will find the cities unviable.

With nearly 50% of the city gone, its ability to attract investment will also go down, one would assume in a larger proportion than the fall in the demand. The thing to note here is that disintegration is not going to be uniform, in the sense that the entire population will not move from city A to village B. We would see smaller clusters sprinkled across the country. These spread out earners will begin spending in their new localities and with that demand and supply equilibrium of the new places will get impacted, tipped for growth.  Mini-cities will start coming up in suburban and rural parts of the country. Open spaces in the city, the spaces vacated by 50% of its erstwhile dwellers will slowly began to repair itself, healing of sorts with begin. 

Studies show that 10% to 15% shift in demand in the real estate market is enough to cause revolutionary change, and in this case, we are speaking about a minimum of 30% of movement from city centres to the suburban and the rural areas; major changes are bound to come.

Some of which could be:

• Polly Centric cities
  • 15 minutes commute cities
• Distributed city models.
• The rise in the demand for co-working spaces as mini-city begins to rise. Corporates will much prefer disintegrating large offices in favour of small co-working spaces in the suburban areas.

Such a remarkable change will also have an impact on the social set up and living arrangement of those who would participate in this change. Cosmopolitan mini-city will become a thing.

We should talk about two of the important phenomenons.

• Lack of separation between work and life: Commute works as an active separation between work and home. For many, it provides for the much needed pondering time. A healing chamber of sorts, a time in which working population, adjusts the disorientations cause both at work and at home.
• Social and emotional separation: There is a range of emotion that we face at work, different from the offering of the home, therefore, response systems have also been developed in us differently. For instance, an employee hearing the music in front of his co-workers is not the same as he getting to face an uncomfortable situation with his family in the company. People essentially live different lives between their work and family - a merger of the two could cause an emotional imbalance in many and mental disbalance in some cases.

'Work from home' has taken that cushion away from people, now, there is no way for them to physically separate themselves from what is being said or done by their counterparts at work and life partners at home. But all is not gloomy and sad, because this system of survival has evolved through years and generations of practise, trial and error, hopefully soon, the human race will master the art of thriving in this new set up too. If not in this generation, at least the one after it will come out to be better prepared and perhaps by then complimenting infrastructure (both soft and hard), policies (both public and private) and procedures and ways of life alongside the technology would have gotten much better.

The future is certain to be different from our present and I am confident it will be better too. 

With that, I end this.. Bye-bye!

BPO : Yesterday, today and tomorrow!

 ‘Business process outsourcing’, expansion of a three-letter word, BPO: brings food on the table of millions of Indians. This industry employees people in scores and mostly from the segment of the society in need of dire uplifting, immediate infusion of funds to make survival possible. BPO in the last 20 years has successfully created a new breed of the middle class, a layer just above the poverty line; a zone of youth, energy, aspirations, and dreams. The socio-economic classes above this layer snort at this group of hardworking professionals mostly because they consider call centre workers less educated (70%+ are indeed not even graduates) and not particularly well off (60%+ make just about minimum wage). Social stigma and prejudice are associated with this group all too easily and all too often. I have spent a portion of my professional career in this segment, working alongside women and men who bear the cross of biases proudly.

You should know this though that the thing about stereotypes is that ‘not all of them are based in reality’.

In my experience, I have found this group to be enterprising, smart, hardworking, sincere and forward-looking. These assemblages are also uniquely liberal, vocal and willing to participate in the change: both societal and those that shape the contours of business and economy of the country. This constituency is often not given the credit it deserves for taking 'working nights' into the mainstream. Outsourcing service providers are also not given the accolades it merits for bringing in young women to the workforce - paving way for social equality and financial liberation of the gender neglected for far too long. This industry is also the reason why computing and smartphones could become popular in an otherwise technologically backward country, like ours. A first close look at a working computer happened in the training rooms of their employers, for these millions of Indians. So in a way, the groundwork of creating a country that is conversant with computing and digital way of working has been prepared by this industry too, to the extent of its numbers.

1st decade of boom, followed by fast-paced 5 years and then the last 5 years of transformation was punctuated by the pandemic in early 2020. Things began looking shaky. It, however, did not take too long, for things to change completely. Let’s take one metric - work from home.

• Before pandemic.
  • Less than 1/10th of the workforce was working from home.
    • Only about 4 out of 10 in these 1 out of 10 used to be from the front line.
• A year in the pandemic.
  • 56% of all operations (at the peak of the pandemic) shifted base from office to home.
    • The rest did not or in some cases could not, for:
      • Logistical roadblock - transportation of computing infra and broadband connectivity.
      • The willingness of the clients to operate in the slump.

A study conducted says this :

The industry saw a double-digit decline in managed services in the second quarter of this year, with total global spending down 16%. A Deloitte poll conducted in April 2020 showed that 32% of businesses believe the end of the pandemic will bring with it a reduction in outsourcing.

One would assume that with things stacked the way they are, this industry would have lapped the change and must be working hard to re-invent itself, while it is true for a small and progressive section of the industry, the majority are still prisoners of the past - and in this reluctance to change lies the biggest folie of this otherwise upbeat industry.

A survey was conducted to find out how the workers would like to continue work in the future?

• 46% of the staff said that they are willing to continue working from home, as it helps them do better and also gives them time and resources needed to take care of their stuff at home. A win-win situation they say.
• The balance, 54% wish to return to the office.

One might think that aggregation of how individual employees think may not be enough for us to conclude how the industry as a whole thinks; especially the leadership. And there comes another segment of the study which, for the lack of a better term is - Perplexing.

• Only half of the BPO leaders think that the delivery, infra, environments, objectives of operation will change after we would have seen the pandemic off. The rest which is another half of the industry leaders believe that as soon as it is over, it is going to be a return to yesterday’s years. People going back to brick and mortar, office-based production.

A half is a significant volume which is still not for the permanent change, therefore - it is safe to assume that, what we are going to witness will bear the semblance to a hybrid model.

The question, however, is that is this the right approach? Will the world be better served with it?

Well, I for one, believe that this industry has reached a breaking point. What do I mean by "breaking point", you might wonder?

Here, 

• Believers in BPO will continue to pump capital and also see a surge in volume in the medium term. The assignments that the large players leave, don’t drop dead right away it first goes to the smaller operator for some time and then moves to the automation assembly, if not to the bin. This in-between period can be confused as the period of growth.
• Powered by popularity and simplicity of 'digital and distributed operations', the cost of entry, a barrier, has evaporated suddenly, which is bound to result in a spurt in a number of small players, (less than 500 seats). They too will get business in the medium term, the same waterfall logic of the economy will support them.
• Shifting demands - will create the illusion of growth.

So then the question is that, will such a strong economic force, a force for the good suddenly disappear? Will BPO become extinct in the next couple of years? The answer to that question is no. It won't, it will exist for some more time but just as landlines survive today but they do not mean much in the grand scheme of things. Like Smartphone has taken the place of PSTN, cognitive conversational AI-based tech solution will oust the current phone-based BPO industry. I pray, that it should not be seen as a bad outcome, 3 decades of glorious run built on an army of semi-skilled workforce generating billions upon billions in revenue is not a mean feat but as with most things, we are at the cusp of massive change, witness the change as it is happening.

I believe that what will become of the BPO industry can be understood by these phenomena.

Business Offering

• Voice to Technology: Primary offering of the BPO service providers will have to shift from phone-based conversational service to Technology platform based servicing such as no-code augmentation of ChatBOTs to the maintenance of Voice BOTs. BPOs will have a role to play in the training of the voice BOTs and other RPA operations. From 100% delivery to 90+% Audit and training that is the domain in which outsourcing is to shift.
• Voice to data: Data cleaning, alignment and error correction in upload and running of data operations, will be a new line of business for the BPO.
• Frontend operations to backend: Backend controls to do with designing and maintaining workflow operation will be another source of revenue for the BPO of tomorrow.

Operating Model

• Outcome-based billing: Transaction-based billing is soon going to be a thing of the past, servicing will be measured by outcome. So instead of how many calls/email answered (AHT based billing) to conversion/satisfaction based billing will kick in. Organisations are going to come out of volume game in the near future and focus on the delivery of the business KPIs exclusively.
• Distributed work: Work from home is a reality that can no longer be suppressed. This change is destined to alter the very concept of business continuity planning and execution.
• Lag in operation: Service operation is going to shift from current 'real-time' arrangement to 'scheduled framework' which will reduce the application of strengths of labour arbitrage. The volumes will become more and more predictable rendering WFM less and less applicable.
• Consultative Solution: BPOs, are poised to play a key role in the design of processes and will be involved in operations related to processing re-engineering, identifying errors in automation and in training the Artificial Intelligence models. Service philosophy design is also going to become the forte of the high-end BPOs.

People and culture

• Low-end data work: Bulk hiring of people who can conduct basic data Ops, to do with learning from and training of data models will begin.
• Upskilling: About 30% of the current staff will be upgraded to work alongside the machines on either data cleaning or audit/training of the models.
• Openwork,: Gig economy, specialised roles in BPOs are no longer going to be full-time employment roles, subletting of work and employing talent on a project basis will become the compulsion of the cost model that BPOs will have to operate under.

Sooner the industry accepts the facts as they stand today, the better will the next version of the industry be. I am excited to be a part of this inspiring change.

Do share your views with me on lk@lavkush.co.in

Have a good Sunday!

Bets on the Future!

As of 20th June 2020, reported and recognised COVID19 figures by the GOI, are 4,11,773 infections, 13,281 fatalities. To put things in perspective, we're adding on an average over 13K cases, every day, for past few days, we're 3rd largest in daily caseload increase, 4th largest in the overall volume of cases in the world and hold the dubious 8th rank on overall mortality. All of this when India's ranking on testing is 147th among 192 countries, to give you some perspective, the tiny nation of Nepal is testing 2.7 times more than us on a per million population basis, as per John Hopkins university study. Many experts (Professor Jha, Harvard Medical school) believe that the actual number of cases in India must be anywhere between 4 to 6 crores.

The entire planet is reeling under this unprecedented crisis.

We as a country, however, are not so much in the same boat with the rest of the world as in the same storm, as far as the COVID19 risk is concerned, because our public health infrastructure is not among the best in the world! Two people hardly agree on the same thing in the current dangerously polarised times let alone nations, but a unicellular pathogen has effortlessly brought about consensus among people divided by nationalities, ethnicities, race, political affiliation and religious views, by and large. The world has dedicated its entire collective cognitive bandwidth towards observing and studying ways to get better of the virus or to learn ways to survive with it. I am gravitating towards conceding to the possibilities of a shared future with the virus. Finest minds in the world have been examining the pathogen closely and yet, a comprehensive study exhaustively covering ways in which the transmission happens has not come out. Between WHO announcement that ‘human to human’ transmission is not a thing to declaring humans as the sole vector, from 'mask is not necessary' to 'mask saves lives' from surfaces do not spread to they do to again they do not. Debate on whether the virus is aerosol or not has also not been settled, thus far. In conclusion, the human race still does not know much about the virus. Those of us who have avoided the outside world completely thus far are safe. We are hedging all of our future hopes on just this flimsy fact.

At this point, you must wonder, what is the point of it all? 

The world has been dealing with this menace for nearly 7 months now and it does not even know if we are in the beginning, middle or the end of the destruction cycle. Does that not say a lot about, how certain our world view has been? Lockdown made a great case for itself, political leadership across the world sold it on premium and ordinary citizens who do not have a way of knowing better lauded it. By the beginning of May 2020, the shine started wearing off the panacea of administrative isolation- lockdown, as the number of cases did not show any sign of slowing down, both at a global and the national level. Administrative restrictions may not have hurt the virus as much as it promised to but it surely nearly decimated economies around the world. I borrow from Mr Bajaj, who said in an interview to Rahul Kanwal (Right-wing journalist who works hard to appear neutral), "that we flattened the wrong curve". He was referring to the flatlining of the GDP. The sharp decline in revenue collection of the Government and the fear of resulting fiscal deficit shook it back into senses and it quietly introduced ‘unlock 1.0’. Revenue starved businesses in a heartbeat reopened, ignoring the fact that the risk of infection had gone substantially up, in the hope to see things resume, volumes return. Recovery, predictively, has been mixed, mainly on account of high unemployment causing severe lack of demand - but some business is better than no business. Hospitality, F&B, tourism and travel etc, still haven’t seen any respite and the outlook at least for next 8 to 10 months does not look promising for them, either. 

Geopolitics and societal structures are undergoing massive transformation, we do not know yet, for good or for the worse. But the change is visible. We can’t, however, say the same for the businesses around us. Do not get me wrong, yes ‘work from home’ has become the new excel macro. Big and small alike have lapped it with ease now, even the ones who were not in favour of it before, because it promises business continuity and cost-saving, among other things. Distributed and digitalised work in sectors that do not require congregation or special equipment, like let’s say in manufacturing - is gaining steam. Knowledge workers, who I also call ‘keyboard warriors’ have all acclimatised themselves to working in shorts from the corner of their homes. It is all good, if not for the health and mental well being of the workers then at least for the environment. Vehicular traffic and related carbon emissions have gone down and as a result, all of us are breathing better quality air- that is a clear win!

But apart from the superficialities, has the core business model shifted to anything different?

By and large, the answer to that question is a NO. Zomato choosing to also deliver grocery in the lockdown or call centres shifting to phone-based dialers hardly qualify, at max, it can be called mild manoeuvring. Has the rate of technology adoption been accelerated? When you look at the larger picture, the answer is no. 'Working from home' or calling one another on zoom all day, is not tech adoption, it is just a change of scenery. The tech backbone and the architecture for 90% of the organisations remain absolutely unchanged: 'same processes, same application and largely the same turnaround times'. In fact, if anything mega tech projects have been put on hold, some indefinitely for operating cash crunch that most businesses are having to face up to, these days. Serious degradation of value in the real estate sector is being noticed and that when coupled with -ve 4% GDP growth outlook, I suspect things will get worse before they get better. Where does that leave us?

The jury is out on the number of organisations that will actually survive to see the other side of the crisis, reports on the closure of 30% of MSMEs which contribute to about 37% of the GDP and 40% of Indian exports have already shut shop. Service organisations have seen anything between 30% to 50% loss of business. Buying capacity of the population has been severely dented with record unemployment about 42% when organised and unorganised sectors are clubbed. Those still employed in a paying job are earning, anything between 10% to 50% less on account of wage cuts. Which means there is lesser money in the market making the rounds. 

A wise man once said, "business is not a pond, it is a river". Resources flow from one end of the stream to the other, along the way those who dip in it collect some water for their consumption (both current and future needs), both by means of employment and investment. When upstream funnel size gets reduced, the downstream impact becomes pervasive. 

Running a business is hard!

Number 1 priority of any organisation is to keep afloat; so when value evaporates, costs have to be adjusted in proportion. Not all cost cuttings are done equally though, with varying degree of success, industries across the board have managed to get it right. Managing outflow of cash in the know of the quantum of inflow does not require much of anything. But steps that come after it are of critical importance, their complexities are immense. Mostly on account of how little that we know about the future that we should prepare for. Despite the operating cash issues and the slump in the demand investments in the future will have to be made, not pledging will mean forgoing the possibilities of future prosperity. 

What to bet on however is unclear. I might be naval-gazing here but, the economy of knowledge is the basket in which I would keep all my eggs, even if I could take just one shot at it.

Physical infrastructure: In the medium term the value of infra and real estate will see degradation but it will eventually pick up again in the long term. The rate of population growth is the reason why I say this. Irrespective of what people do, if we survive as a race, we will need space and physical infrastructure. Therefore, investing in it now for 'cash-surplus' corporations is not a bad option, especially because they stand to reap the benefits of acquiring the properties at price discounted by the recessionary spiral, the economy is unwillingly living through. One should, however, be prepared to remain calm in the prolonged period of hibernation induced by slow demand, the capital might appear to suffocate. But if you can hold on to your nerve, returns are going to be more than handsome, in a few years from now. Let’s say in about 4 to 5 years.

Manufacturing is another segment where we are about to witness a sea change. Industry 4.0 is going to be about connectivity and communication, a barrage of censors providing inputs to smart algorithms to facilitate real-time decision-making, all without any considerable human involvement. Powered by data and automation, digitalization is poised to transform every step of the manufacturing process, from supply chain and enterprise to the shop floor and end-users. Smart manufacturing will vastly improve throughput, uptime, and performance while reducing overhead, operating, and capital costs. Emerging tech like Industrial IoT, FOG computing, edge computing and advanced robotics will form the bedrock of change. Investments made in these technological platforms are bound to grow well. 

Logical infra: Solution augmentation happens to process needs of the market and the market is a microcosm of the society, a continued spell of the pandemic is bound to re-write fundamentals of the social contract that have existed for the last 4 centuries. Humans live in flocks too (we are intelligent sheep). We are a social animal, we access what we need in groups. Our needs and desires follow the principle of batches. One man gets wheels, all follow - 'Monkey see... Monkey do'. (We share our DNA with more than one species, let's keep it for another day)

Before, we conclude that the logical infra is a horse that we’d like to put our bet on, it is essential to take a cursory look at the changing landscape around us. 

We're a poor country, our per capita income is just about 2.5K USD. From this small pool, most of the expenditure happens on community building and survival, individual needs in most cases remain primitive and not too distant from the bare essentials, for a large part of the population. But when you contrast it with demographic, you’ll also notice that a vast majority of this country is at an age, which is considered a gold mind for impulse buying. When we see it in light of poor financial literacy in the country you’d understand that, if an ordinary Indian youth was left with last 100 dollars he is more likely to spend it on trends, then saving it for the rainy day. From that behaviour emerges 'aspiration' of the economy - From cloths to electronic to travel (Simplifying the behaviour to make this argument readable and concise)

Let me give you an example: 

87% of all tablet users own a computer, there is not one thing/operation that the tablet can do but a computer can’t. In fact, there are a variety of things that a tablet can’t handle, not nearly as efficiently as a computer can and yet people who already own a computer buy a tablet too, sometimes more than one. (I'm included in it)

Aspiration for the ‘new’ is a strong economic stimulus among the young people which is why all the young (Avg age of the citizens) countries are of special interest to the large consumer goods corporations. Electronics in India and China rock, for the same reason (Though China is 5 times the size of India's GDP).

Now that we have addressed the aspiration part of the demand. Let’s analyse how the pervasive internet is shaping social behaviours. The world that saw the internet as an alternative for information, before COVID19, is now convinced that the web is the primary mode of exchange, even in the third world societies, like ours. Real-time and reliable Instant messengers, quick and easy digital payment methods, convenience and price benefits of e-commerce retail, had educated people on how the alternative is the new mainstream, subtly, in last few years, but imposed social distancing brought that understanding to the fore. Deep penetration of smartphones in the company of wireless and cheap internet network has liberated consumers from the exclusive relationship that they had with physical retail stores.

Stores are on their way of becoming the new warehouse and retail stores are about to permanently become an application.

Google search for information has long replaced libraries for a lot of people, location tracking, the ability to compare prices from different suppliers gives the buyer the false (everything on the internet is curated, it does not exist organically) impression of being in charge. Consumers like when they think they are making the choices. The Internet has another distinct property: it is open 24*7.

From popularity, usefulness and adoption of the internet as the primary method of exchange and given special COVID19 circumstances below business opportunities emerge.

1. Tech Platform: From Advertising to lead generation to, informing the customer about the product and services, to getting on with the actual sign up to purchase to billing to delivery to post-sale query/complaint handling to return and refund; everything can be managed digitally. Not just that all backend processes, like demand estimation, we have touched upon manufacturing earlier in the article, supply chain to human resource management to finance and accounting - all of it can also be digitised. Pick whichever part of the customer journey that you are comfortable with and build a tech platform for it. The next trillion dollars in the Indian economy is going to come from platforms, as per the research conducted by the Boston consulting group.

2. Advanced data modelling: Digital wandering leaves data trail, even those expeditions that honour consumer data privacy, do enough for someone to catalogue a replica of your persona: your buying ability, your impulses, your likes and dislikes, your consumption rate, your refill propensity, down to the sec in which you are likely to make a decision. There is data on who you speak with, in what tone and what manner, what is it that you speak about and what is it you are wanting to convey. You may think of yourself as a private person but nothing about you is private anymore in the world of the internet.

Data set is used to create both descriptive and as well as predictive models. Principles of data science, behavioural economics, behavioural psychology, coupled with the capability of AI and machine learning are used in conjunction with market trends, capital and goods movement to exact future demands and way to fulfil those are appropriated too. Even if your model is 50% accurate, you are talking about getting it right once in 2 tries, that is way way better than sitting and hoping for a customer to decide in your favour. So if you have the stomach for data, get on with it and form a data product.

COVID19 induced human tragedy and capital erosion is disastrous and heartbreaking. But the only way to not lose to it completely is by preparing for the next frontier. History tells us that whenever a change disruptive and extensive enough gets forced on humans by nature. Humans adjust by eliminating or automating the items at the bottom of the pyramid, the most basic items are attacked first. Before World War II there use to be a job profile called, “Knocker Upper” job of this person was to knock on the door of the Europeans to wake them up in the morning. Alarm clock drove them out of jobs. Similarly, all the basic and unintelligent things that are today performed by humans will siege to exist, i.e - most over the counter retail interactions, simple bookkeeping, telephone-based reminders to customers to renew and recharge and pay are the kinds of job that will just disappear overnight.

"Are you investing today for your future security", is the question that deserves to have all your attention.

On that note, see you on the other side!

Future Outlook: Indian BPO Industry

The article “Outsourcing 2.0, the future”, that I wrote on 24th of Feb 2019, has been generating a lot of interest in the BPO industry as a result of which my inbox is full of requests for a write up addressing the specifics of the Indian BPO/BPM industry, so here I am! I’ll link the article towards the end of this one for those of you who would want to read it. Before we talk about the future of the BPO/BPM industry, I think it is vital to dwell upon its history a bit to understand, broadly, how it came into being and why it is important to a large section of the society, beyond the economic circuit. Outsourcing started as a cost-saving major, developed economies started shipping non-core, low-value jobs to destinations which had labor skilled for the job available in large numbers. India became a popular destination, thanks to its colonial past which indelibly impacted the creation of curriculum for primary education in the country, even post-independence. English is taught as one of the three languages that all Indian students study. We’re also a country with a good supply of human capital (one of the few benefits of out of control population bust). For a little over 3 decades, the business of outsourcing has been blossoming here.  A democratic, aspirational, developing economy that had just got liberalised, made a perfect breeding ground for the service industry to thrive. This business model brought with itself prosperity, it created billionaires, millions of jobs as direct benefits, indirectly too, this new phenomenon in the post industrialised world, gave an unforeseen boom to the real estate industry, among others. Cities like Gurgaon, Hyderabad & Bangalore owe all of its development to this single industry. The story has not been one with all positives though, it has seriously dented spread of higher education in India, a significant portion (68.32%) of those who started earning in this industry before completing their bachelors did not complete their higher education. As a result of which their long term growth prospects got stunted, but then it also boils down to personal choices that people make and it will be unfair to blame the industry for this entirely. Business standard says and I quote “The IT-BPO industry grew by 8 percent in 2017, leading to an aggregate revenue of $154 Billion. Further, in 2017, the BPO sector contributed 7.7 percent to India’s GDP”. I pull this stat up to familiarize you with the enormity of its economic spread.

The rationale behind sustaining large workforces emerged from the difference between wages in the US and in India; for a certain set and category of jobs, the delta was so huge that even if an inflation of 8% were to be applied on annual Indian wages it would’ve taken more than 3 decades for it to become comparable, in the days of early germination of the Industry. Right at the base of this rationale was the confidence that the wages will grow stronger in the US also, at least at the rate of 2 to 5% year on year. Reality did follow this plan but for a duration a lot shorter than what was expected at the beginning. Let’s just say progress happened rather swiftly. I know you are tired of hearing of ‘technology, the devil’, but I’m here to tell you that it is not the only contributor, it certainly holds most of the chips but there are other factors too which can’t be ignored if the goal is to understand it clearly and should I say comprehensively. Without getting into too much detail, let me quickly outline a few factors, which are noteworthy.

Global Recession: It taught corporate America cost-cutting, non-core tasks got axed first. Optimization becomes very core of running a business, post the meltdown.

Smartphone : Post Blackberry, both Apple and Android smartphones opened up the floodgates of application that ran comfortably on handheld small-screen, always-connected devices, people learned to do basic stuff themselves. Popularisation of self help as a cultural imperative in the west akin to modernisation propelled industry-wide restructuring of customer education/support organisation and cost.

Internet: Proliferation of internet reduced lag, empowered people to access information in massive quantity and mostly free of charge. It enabled the culture of comparison, making decisions informed, calculated and in many cases swifter than before and most importantly independent, in an unassisted manner. 

Automation: Robotic process automation, text to speech, AI-powered BOT, advance analytics, computer vision, OCR, virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, internet of things: these changed the game completely. A structured task which does not require cognitive decision making or understanding of context can be automated at an astonishing speed and at a surprisingly thin investment.

Job crisis in the west: Economy in the developed world slumped, jobs that were being sent outside to developing countries to save cost suddenly started getting perceived and then projected as the reason for natives losing livelihood. Political movements around the world gained momentum which forced legislators to regulate offshoring.

Geopolitical shift: Politicians around the world submitted to ostensibly right-wing stance to solve job crisis that they were facing in their countries. Public opinion on imposing penalties for sending jobs outside gained ground. Crashing domestic consumer demands exerted additional pressure on the governments. 

Territorialism: Rise of protectionism, opened the world to Trump's America and Brexit in the UK.

All of these factors started stressing the growth of the outsourcing industry hugely. Voice-based businesses, the cash cow of Indian BPO majors started growing pale. Majority of high-value voice business in a matter of 4 years got converted into backend jobs; there too, whatever the tech at the moment couldn’t accomplish accurately comes to countries like ours. It won’t be wrong to say that the BPO industry of today is surviving on the breadcrumbs, quite literally. Large players because of their size they are able to aggregate more, and given the fact that the size of the western economy is still huge when compared to ours, the leftover is satisfactorily satiating the hunger of the big guns. But writings on the wall is unmistakably legible now which has forced progressive organizations to look for greener pastures elsewhere. We’re at the beginning of the end!

Organizations are not ideal, we do witness them facing up the challenges in ways that they think is best. Let’s try and briefly touch upon how the industry is preparing to answer the question that is questioning its very existence.

Large corporations: They have the luxury of wealth, geographical presence and size, intellect and prominence, they are smartly diversifying into newer arenas; Data, digitalization, process re-engineering & consulting being a few of them. They are making a significant investment of time, effort and money in upskilling their manpower in technologies of the future. Some of them have even shown the courage to shed low margin business and focus only on high-value contracts. It is all about operating cash and PAT now.

Mid Sized Organisations: This is a rather volatile segment in which some still see light at the end of the tunnel. The game of valuation at the moment seems lucrative in pockets. Consolidation is in progress in this segment, all the work that the large ones are not interested in doing for they either being low value or thin on margin is effortlessly flowing to organizations of this segment. Much like water flows from higher to lower planes, they are happily grabbing new businesses at the cost of margin, sometimes ignorant of the fact that what is flowing to them is not work that requires the real application of mind, most of it is basically two to five-step process. It with a small investment can be automated. Let me give you an example here, many companies have invested in the large establishment for the digitization of physical forms: jobs. The ubiquitous smartphone is digitizing the data at the very source, eliminating the need for forms to travel to the digitalization centers. This has wiped an entire industry away, in a blink. Love of fading times is not lost on them as yet. 

Small Player: The least said about them the better, they are running modern-day cruel body shops, disgusted with their business they are in it because they do not know any better and are willing to give an arm to anyone who can promise them a way out of the rut. Things have become so strange that even the champions of efficiency have lost their way quite literally. They are urging to be bailed out. 

So is it all grim and sad? Not exactly It is yet another cusp playing itself out. Outsourcing as a concept is not going to end, there will always be, ‘core and non-core’ jobs and there will always be a need for people to do things. But it is certainly the end of the road for those who are unwilling to move up the value chain, romantics of the past will soon become history, the forgettable part of it. The future belongs to those who are willing to experiment and wish to disrupt. 

Domestic players are in graver danger because they do not even have the cushion of exchange rates, extinction is staring at them in the eye. Single-digit PAT, which gets even weaker and uninteresting when depreciation is applied on it. It just does not make financial sense, to keep all your eggs in the basket of voice. It is bound to end, in less than a couple of years.

Please understand, you can’t make an omelet without breaking the egg!

The future in the outsourcing/service industry belongs to those who know to deliver intelligent end to end solutions and for those who have the wherewithal to make existing systems aware of context, efficient, accurate, reliable, secure and sustainable. Let me say again, the ‘old’ is progressing towards a demise at a dangerous pace. So what does the future look like? Simply put one of the two things.

1. Product ( tech or otherwise)
2. Data 

Tech products will get the job done and not humans in the days to come, the kind of work that does not require imagination and complex context-based cognitive decision making, as the first input. So, what should you do? Take a good hard look at what is it that you understand really well? Or simply which part of the entire business that you have existed thus far it should be automated, not as a work unit or set of tasks but a complete role. Let’s take the example of what Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung are doing with their voice assistants. They are trying to replace that person, whose sole job role was to hear the needs of the master and then go search for information and then come back with relevant details. What do these digital assistants do? You give them the same instructions that you would give to your human assistant but the output is so much better in areas that it has its command over; you get the results without discernible lag, so you prefer it. Not only does it make things simpler, quicker but also accurate - you get the point. 

Apply your mind, invite intellect to study what should you build to solve and then go for it. Due diligence that you would apply before making any important decision must be conducted here as well. Try to be objective about the whole thing, always remember that you have to accept change and that even when you do not accept it, it still happens, so no point, not accepting it. Remember, if you do not build it someone else will and you will be left to survive in the shrunken ground. First-mover advantages those who know how to pull off a great show, though. 

A for Analytics; yes this is the world that we are headed towards. Data is the new gold, new oil and everything else that makes sense. Data makes decision richer and those who know to model data in ways that make decision making better will see acceptability and will rule the next upturn. The science around statistics-based prediction is invaluable. Data is being used along with understanding from behavioral psychology and neural sciences to predict customer buying and consumption behavior. The ecosystem is currently not completely ready but is coming together at a great pace. The future belongs to those who can work with data & understand human behavior. 

In the same breath, we must also acknowledge that this change is not going to be a cakewalk or easily comprehensible to all but then we know from history that old makes way for the new. Unless some lose, others can’t win, so in that spirit it is ok! The bigger picture will still be just as heterogeneous, vibrant and happy as always; with or without people and business models and practices from the past. 

Towards the end, we must also spend a little bit of time in understanding what causes delusion, indecision & inaction? Why are these dying sectors not reacting with the sense of urgency that is warranted? Let me take you to that old frog experiment in which the psychologist turned the temperature higher at a rate slower than frogs ability to adapt as a result the frog died of heat but did not feel the need to jump out. Businesses also become comfortable with the status quo, they block their own sensors sometimes with over-confidence, comfort, or plain incompetence that surrounds them dressed as top executives ( brainless leadership team). Conduct a small experiment: for the last 30 years, pull top 100 organisations in any segment and then compare the list you will see only 8% survive beyond 1^st decade in the leadership position, the story at the end of the 2^nd decade is less than 5% and after the 3^rd decade the number comes down to 2%! 

Why? 

Because they did not change and thus perished!

I hope you, do!

Till we meet again, goodbye!

Link to: Outsourcing 2.0, the future!

http://www.lavkush.co.in/2019/02/outsourcing-2-0-the-future/

Decluttering ​:​ WorkPlace of the future!

I have to admit this, I was tempted to begin this write up with dictionary definition of ‘modern workplace’, a cup of tea and a few biscuits later, I did overcome the juvenile urge. And decided to define it the way I understand it. There isn’t a scientific definition to tell the accurate comprehension from otherwise descripts of this subject, so in that sense, it is lucid and open to interpretation. No one definition is absolutely right, so if you happen to disagree with my views on it, I wouldn’t count that against you, nor will you be wrong.



Back to the definition, a modern workplace, in my view is an intelligent, intuitive and integrated ‘set up’, one that lives by the principle of liberalisation, democratisation, collaboration and creative imagination of the future and that of the current time. Let me borrow from a great CEO and modify it by adding a few of my own words (trivia, find out who said this) here to say that, “work is no longer a place that you go to but a thing that you do, at a time, place and platform of your choice”, choice has to accommodate business realities, economic sense, and mandates of the stakeholders. We have every right to choose to live in the past and in sharp denial of present realities but ‘change’ as a constant doesn’t really need consent of the people involved; it will on its own keep transforming itself relentlessly and if you choose to not run with it, you will witness it run ahead of you for some time and then it will go past your sight. Let’s do a little study, pick up top 100 corporations of 1900 and then see how many of them exist today? And then see of those that exist today, how many continue to hold the same prominence in the marketplace?  A quick 15 minutes research will tell you that no more than 8% of the organizations have survived and effectively transformed themselves in keeping with time. Let’s ask ourselves, what did they not have? Were their balance sheets not swell enough? Were they not men and women of great character and grit? Did they not dream big and build an organisation, a brand that was admired? Answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES. They were all successful companies with all the money and the might that one could wish for but yet they did not succeed the test of time and finally succumbed owing to their unapparent inability of welcoming change.



Why? With a lot of ease and in an almost unthinkable way one can, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be wrong, say that the conglomerates that went down did not innovate. But isn't that the eventual output that one desires, sadly, in most cases, without providing for enablers that create the ground for innovation, we bake it, consider that it will happen anyway. Desire to create a plush and green garden, quality seeds, best fertilisers and state of the art irrigation supplies are all useless without the company of adequate sunlight and fertile soil. No amount of dreaming will ever sprout a flower out of a concrete marble floor. And there I say, what has been said in many books and case studies, one such book is “Rebuild by Ramya Ramamurthy’ that I would recommend you read, that before you target to innovate, you’ll need to create grounds that will foster such outcomes. Therefore the two top hindrances that I gather are below.

Lack of imagination.

Resistance to change.

Modern workplace is one such essential ingredient that makes way for free and fearless thinking, creative problem solving and solidifying sustained urge to keep transforming the ways of doing business. It is important to constantly re-imagine the tangibles of business to reinvent ways of doing it better.



The advent of technology and the ecosystem powered by ubiquitous internet has at a maddening pace changed the face of commerce. Back in the day, linear thought process prevailed, in which designated spaces and set designs ruled the way people conceived and conducted business, but that is no longer true. Physical boundaries are disappearing, templates are no longer relevant and precedents are being challenged like never before.  We’re at a classic cusp of time, what was once considered a shining knight in the armour is now a heavy and ineffective piece of metal that is best not carried. A great man once said that there is a reason why we look ahead when we walk, because what is behind is going to fade, look for what is ahead of you and prepare to get there, if you want your journey to be a long and rewarding one.



We’ve tried defining a modern workplace and also established how it is an important and effective enabler. It is time to look at some the principles that we must take into account when creating the sketch for a modern workplace.



Before we get into the specifics of some of those principles, I must say these examples are a  few of many tools available for deployment, you can choose whichever one you like. What is important here is to be accepting of the progressive principles of creating an obstruction free environment in which no time is wasted in waiting or finding the ‘spot’ or the ‘condition’ needed to create (deliveries/solutions/outputs/work). It is about creating an ecosystem that frees people and gets them to a state where they have everything that they need to work at all times within their comfortable reach so that they use it seamlessly to create spectacular results. It is also about eliminating all practical frictions that come in the way of productivity, making use of the best and most secure of the technology/infra that is available today.



Liberalisation: There can’t be a dispute on the fact that people make organisations and for people to deliver their best, they must be allowed to concentrate on the most important business problem by eliminating distractions of conformities. In a tier one city, an average person spends 3 hours on the road commuting ‘from and to’ work. 3 hours is 12.5% of your day! Preparations to get to work takes another 40 minutes on an average day: you dress in a certain way, get your tanks full, car cleaned, fix food to a deadline and then get onto the road. Nearly 4 hours of the day devoted to an exercise that generates no value for anyone. I’m not even counting the carbon emission and the irreversible environmental damage that we unknowingly invoke upon mother nature. 73% of all vehicular traffic is generated by work routine related commute. Imagine what would a world be like if these cars were not on the road? Better air to breathe and faster commute on events of travel. We’ve spoken about time, let us look at the cost burden on organisations to maintain and create offices? You pay for spaces which are vacant 16 hours a day. Is that an efficient system? I know some of you are saying that design of some business is such that people have to gather at a place, sure, they have to, but have you looked at ways to minimise it as much as possible? If no, then you have work to do. Studies say, that only 30% of the spaces that orgs occupy are actually needed. So if you have an org of 100 people, your real estate should have not more than 30 seats, people can in a planned manner come and meet each other in person, work together and yet have a great sense of space. 70% of your org can be on a work from home on any given day, on a rotation basis. It is a win-win situation for all stakeholders: Employee save on travel, work from comforts of their home, no one is ever getting late to work, better work-life balance, less friction among colleagues and benefits of disintegrated centre of deliveries and companies save on cost erecting and running the infra, lesser housekeeping and upkeep needs, lighter electricity load. Do not worry, there are tools available to measure which employee spent how much time on work. Apart from measuring core output, you can should you wish to even measure cursor movement even keystrokes, with ease, while passing the flexi hour benefit to employees. Surveys suggest that 87% of employees will happily elect to work an hour extra if they had to not travel.



Collaboration ( Digital and otherwise) : Wisdom of the crowd must not be lost, modern day organisations are a truly heterogeneous group, people from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds, academic disciplines, social skills and personal beliefs come together to create solutions for customers. In 2019 a well-coloured wall comes second to stronger and snappier data connections, there is a need to smartly move investment into digital infrastructure. Hardware agnostic platforms should win your attention, you need to be able to eliminate barriers of space, formfactor, time and group to enable your staff to work, from wherever they are. To conduct a meeting, there is no need for people to look for the meeting room, they can use their excellent phones/computers/tablets to connect with you digitally, anytime anywhere, thereby bringing the lag to a virtual zero. Appearance for long has been a hindrance to productivity, practices of compensating for poor delivery with great rapport has been prevalent for a long time. People sometimes just want to be seen with the right people and at the right time and to make sure of that, waste a lot of time. In a digital workplace, all of that is eliminated, people are always connected so they reach out to one another in need and not just because they don't have anything better to do. Because employees are not physically crossing path, they would make up for it with their superior delivery, because, remember, all of us want to come out as the best. Who wins in the process? The organization and the staff: both. Organisations spend crazy amount of money in securing hardware, to create computer surpluses. Imagine having to spend 1K dollars in getting decent computer for your staff as option one and another in which you give 500 dollars and the employee and let him put whatever extra he would like to and own a hardware of his choice to conduct your business? Your cost has gone down by half, you’ve given the employee the choice that he will love and the hardware is anyway going to become obsolete in 3 years, so why not? If the staff already has a set, give him 200 dollars and onboard him. A case for cloud is not even required to be made if data is on the cloud, it is secure and at the same time always available on a data connection. The point being, that you wrap your organisation in software and not essentially hardware or physical dimensions. Deploy real time collaboration tools ( cloud based office suits), have project management tool implemented so that governance on the work is as real time as the work itself. For every lag,wait and re-do  that an inefficient infra creates the burden of additional unwelcomed and indirect cost piles up on the organisation, which you can and must avoid.

Transition from output to outcome : For aeons measurement method deployed to gauge efficiency has been largely output based, it is time that we graduate to an outcome-based system. Let me share a simple illustration, the judgement should not be based on how complex or comprehensive the backend is but on how simple and intuitive the user experience is. In the context of an MIS or a developer, length of code or syntax of formula is not a measure of hard work, but the flawless output is. We must move as far as practically possible from measuring clock hours and start considering, how the final outcome has been impacted. For instance, for a customer service agent the metric should not be how many customers did an executive handle but how many did he satisfy. I hope you get the Idea.



Well Being: Clinical researchers have proven beyond doubt that poor lifestyle practices substantially reduce cognitive capabilities, therefore it is imperative that designs are well thought of to nudge people to live better and healthier lives. Before I give you a few cases to ponder on, let me share with you that, India loses 21 billion dollars to absence from work on temporary health issues, every year, that is a lot of money!

Here are the options.

Come to office on time, work for 8 hours and get marked present.

Meet your objectives and get marked present.

Meet your objectives get marked present and walk 10K steps each day to earn coins needed for better than average appraisal?

A PMS that considers health goals around weight, waist sizes, too with KRA outputs?

When you engage with your staff on well being you create a bond far more personal than just professing how your organisation has to offer better professional future. When you encourage, your people, in a structured manner, to adopt a healthier lifestyle, you are helping them as much as you are helping yourself. There will be fewer sick leaves and even attrition will get impacted positively because employee value everything other than salary more than they are worth in the real world when handed in good faith. Quality health and accidental insurance and saving schemes not only give the employee a sense of protection but goes on to create the brand as a prefered employer. Remember you’ve only created 30% workstation, in the rest of the spaces you can create collaboration spaces, reading corner, exhibition centre, gyms and wellness spot. That infra will any day be appreciated more. The basic principle is to create hooks by offering meaningful engagement opportunities to the employees so that they see a lot of value in sticking around for long. I do not think that there is a need for me to make a case for how the cost of hiring and leakage of attrition impacts overall revenue objectives. So it makes perfect business sense to care for your employees.



I hope that with this article, I’ve given you reasons to believe in modern workspaces.



Many May day wishes to you.



Till we meet again bye bye.