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!

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.

You need Omni-channel & More!

The relationship between a customer and a brand revolves around a multitude of interactions that happens between them in the course of their journey together.

Customers expect to get all that they have signed up for and more without having to pay extra and the brands wish to make use of every possible opportunity to serve to the best of their abilities and resources, they create products, services, and related loops for the customers to keep coming back to them when in need & even otherwise. These objectives may appear conflicting from a distance but they actually are complimenting in nature. Companies spend a lot of time and money in preparing the foundation, as it were, for them to give prospects and customers a tour of their capabilities, educating them on the entire range of products and services is vital to gaining a larger share of the customer wallet. Investments are made in creating soothing, easy-on-the-eye, and nearly omnipresent digital footprint, from good looking, responsive &  intuitive websites to active social media participation. More traditional, brick and mortar establishments are also brought into the play, from choosing the right real estate to designing and erecting swanky showrooms: companies do it all. Not to mention that maintenance of both digital and physical assets come at a cost.

The question then is, is it enough to deliver an excellent customer experience? Do customers care about better or smarter solutions? These questions are important, no matter how complete a solution might appear to its creator if the customer/ end users do not see the considerable value and/or cozy comfort or both in it, it is not of good use and often will deliver less than ideal outcomes.

To understand this better, let’s take two examples.

Scenario #1

Customer: Payal Singh.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events :

1. Payal goes to the website, logs in with her credentials.
2. Provides her search criteria.
3. Makes to the relevant selection of the airline.
4. Provides passengers details.
5. Comes to the payment page.
6. Keys in the banking details.
7. Is greeted by transaction failure.
8. She tries one more time only to face a repeat of the error.
9. She goes back to the home page and starts her search for the ‘contact us’ page.
10. She finds the customer support number and calls up.
11. She is greeted by the IVR and a never-ending list of irrelevant options.
12. After spending, longer than she had expected to, she reaches the agent.
13. The agent greets her and waits for the customer to share her reason for calling.
14. The customer by then is already frustrated but keeps her cool and explains the entire story to the agent.
15. The agent places the call on hold, checks the information.
16. Comes back from hold and tries to authenticate the customer one more time because, in his book, it is customer account-specific information and must only be divulged to the right party.
17. Post +ve verification, says that the payment gateway is down and she must try another time.

The customer bangs the phone feeling absolutely frustrated, infuriated & disheartened. Despite putting in much effort and time she is still without a definitive resolution, she doubts if she should give the brand another chance. She tweets about the horrible experience before the agent finishes his shift her entire followers have read about it: some have liked and retweeted the incident too, causing the brand a lost sale and tarnished online reputation.

Net-net nothing has been achieved so far, neither by the customer nor by the organization. Both have had to face negative experiences and are displeased with the way things have turned out.

Let’s look at another example.

Scenario #2

Customer: Iqbal Ahmed.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events: Identical till step number 7.

8) Is greeted by transaction failure alert.

9) Right after the failure message, the pop up saying “ Allow us to help you” appears.

10) Iqbal clicks on the pop-up and reads,

1. Would you like us to call you back?
2. You can chat with us too.

11) Customer clicks on the chat option.

12) Agent “Ram” greets the customer and says, apologies for the error, allow me to check it and get back to you.

13) Iqbal feeling exasperated scrolls up and hits on the “Would you like us to call you back?” button.

14) Chat window gets updated, Ram will call you on your registered number “9835098350” in 2 minutes.

15) Before the customer could pour himself a cup of coffee, his phone rings.

16) The caller, the same agent he had initiated his chat with, greets him with a solution.

1. The agent from his integrated CRM was able to see the stage in which the customer had invoked the chat.
2. He had studied customer history and was aware of the complete profile.
3. There wasn’t a need for the customer to repeat the issue.
4. The customer had the option to choose between chat and voice support.
5. Both channels were instant.

17) He offered the customer an alternative and guided him through the steps.

18) Flight tickets were done.

19) The agent from the customer history could find out that he was looking for his wedding anniversary and then suggested, below options and offered additional & special anniversary discount to him.

1. Airport pick up
2. Options for beach facing hotel room.
3. Candlelight dinner in perfect settings.
4. Private musical show.
5. Florist Options.
6. Tour of the city
7. Photographer on call.
8. Suggested a variety of cakes to choose from.
9. He also presented to the customer with the option to visit the famous state museum in the city on the day of his return.

20) The customer was delighted and took a few options suggested.

1. The agent had access to his past bookings and the profile of the customer.
2. His integrated CRM suggested smart related bundles.
3. Given the size of the booking, he could provide the customer with a pre-authorized, on the spot discount.
4. Planned the entire holiday and not just flight tickets.

21- The agent also took permission from the customer and blocked his calendar and provisioned for auto call reminders for key activities.

22- The call ended with a happy customer and a happier business.

Which is going to be the most likely seen in your organization?

Scenario 1 or 2?

If it is 1, you most certainly need to urgently deploy an Omnichannel support layer integrated smartly with the CRM/order management system. It will not only prepare you to provide customers with instant resolution but will also make you present at whichever mode that the customer would like you to assist him on? Intelligent integration with the order management/CRM tool as depicted in example 2 will also enable the service agent to help the customer make logical choices related to their need, resulting in bounty upsell/upgrade opportunity for the business and desirable convenience for the customer: resulting in a stronger relationship between the two.

When presented options of upgrade/upsell are contextual in nature those options appear meaningful to the customers and they are more likely to buy from you again. In the entire process, we saw how a potential deal-breaker “transaction failed” turned into a delightful customer experience in scenario 2; and it achieved a great experience without making the customer toil, like in the first undesirable case that we looked at. Customers love being spoilt with pleasant options but at the same time, they hate having to work for it. It is therefore important that when you design your systems, you keep the customer effort index in mind.

If you do all the work for your consumer, your consumer will love you more. Most organizations have all the tech, people, and other infrastructure that is needed to create scenario 2 like a rich experience. What they lack is omnichannel and supported intelligent integrations. They do not use customer profile/ purchase history data intelligently to create circumstantial product bouquet, which makes them incapable of churning out products that can be upsold at that right instance quickly and they most certainly do not have a single screen for their support agent, which makes responses appear fragmented, ill-informed and mostly random to the customer, causing poor memory of the brand.

Integrate your CRM/order management system with a capable Omni Channel solution, keep all options open for your customers to choose from, restricting your customers either to only voice or only data ( ChatBOT, email, form-based interaction, etc) is not a wise choice to make. Use data analytics to create a meaningful product/ service bundles and most importantly have a single screen set up, so that the support agent without sweating is able to give the most accurate and the most relevant information to the customer, thereby reducing customer effort.

Omnichannel is a good choice to make, invest in your systems to elevate the quality of customer interactions.

Happy serving!

Outsourcing 2.0, the future!

It is impossible to attempt predicting the future without taking history into account; the posterior view of linear time. The history of outsourcing is intensely integrated into the history of the growth of the modern business enterprise, many believe that it rose in the second half of the 19th Century. Historians and economists in the past fifty years have helped us to understand this sudden and prominent phenomenon of growth, one such legend is Mr. Alfred D. Chandler, do read his work. Much has been said regarding outsourcing in the past couple of years. This business practice has suddenly grabbed center stage attention and is now the focus of politicians, the press, companies, and workers alike. Organizations in the outsourcing space are also constantly applying thought to understand how should they reinvent themselves to remain relevant, as they face their toughest challenge in the present era. A business that found its existing space between the value difference of a rupee and a dollar (speaking strictly in the Indian context) initially and in not too much time became a darling even on a transaction that was between the same currency, faces an existential challenge now. The rationale for the rupee to rupee transaction came from the differentiation of core and non-core tasks for an organization. Offshoring, mainly from stronger currencies to the weaker ones flourished for the first decade, almost fanatically. India gained immensely from this fad that was catching up. IT and ITES provided employment to over 3 hundred thousand people, major businesses,  houses came into being: Wipro, Infosys, Concentrix, HCL, Tech Mahindra, and many others. Companies in the western world saw value in saving money and at the same time dealing with a race that was hardworking, ambitious, hungry for growth, and also particularly skilled for doing the job just right.

The growth and meaning of outsourcing are increasingly getting flatlined; cost pressures are driving the value down, from the perspective of the service providers. The political scene around the world is not helping either, mass protests in favor of keeping the jobs onshore have become common. Major political events in the recent past have revolved around it, the rise of President Trump, the ill effects of Brexit; the mounting of obscurantists and protectionists ideologies around the world have hurt the prospects of the thriving outsourcing industry in our country. Both IT and ITES have suffered immensely, we do not see too many new players making a move. But thankfully, all is not lost. India is growing, one could argue that it could have grown faster had a few things not happened, but then those are hypothetical arguments; we remain among the fastest-growing economies in the world. A new breed of entrepreneurs have come into the fray and are solving real issues interestingly applying technologies that are now available at a much cheaper cost, than it would have been let's say a decade ago. The eco-system is ready. Would Ola or Flipkart have become such spectacular successes in 1980ties in India? The answer to that question is a clear no. Now is the time for it and it is a great thing to happen to us as a country, society, and also the economy.

If the political climate was unfavorable and stunting the growth of outsourcing agencies vigorously, the advent of technology: penetration of internet, the rise of automation, AI and ML are together making it almost impossible for small players to exist. Jobs that required humans back then are being done in a few taps a lot more satisfyingly and swiftly. ITES providers are dying a slow death, many are bleeding profusely with no real sight of a breakeven, let alone profit and prosperity. Many renowned businesses have done away with their domestic business or are in the process of walking out, Sutherland &  Mphasis are classic examples. More than 40% of small and medium domestic BPOs had to shut shop, in the last 6 yrs. The scene is not all that good for those who aren’t comfortable with being on their toes all the time, either. There are organizations like Aegis, Karvy DigiKonnect, connectQ, 1point1, Megus, etc who are trying to walk in the opposite direction of the wind and have created for themselves results that are not bad, if not all that encouraging, in all the quarters of the year. But there is hope. And that is exactly what we are trying to discuss here.

A workforce that began with handling transactions on prescribed SOPs have in these years become rich in experience and now have valuable insight into how various businesses are conducted, not only have they mastered their game of efficiency but have also educated and trained themselves on the craft to a degree that they now carry invaluable perspicacity into the world of the consumers and deep understanding of the technology that makes the customer experience come about. Cross-pollination of talent has graduated the industry into a formidable group, one that is capable of rewriting the rules of the game. This development is part evolutionary and part forced and therefore, not easy for everyone to get to.



The time has come for the outsourcing industry to shed its dead weight of unskilled manpower, onboard forward thinkers, and retain only high performers; the average and the below-average must go. This industry has to prepare itself to walk out of the shadow of the transaction and shine in the light of experience. It is apt for the service providers to fight for increasing their share of influence, the only way for them to exist is if they muster the courage to secure a seat at the thought leadership table. A transition from a low value, labor-based output to a high-value intellect based outcome will have to be made. Service providers will have to become providers of knowledge and acumen and not just efficiency.



Doing the job, quicker, better, and at low cost is no longer lucrative, there is a need to invent ways to do them differently, trying different business solutions. The construct of the ‘different’ is in making the delivery consultative, one in which the providers do not only bring manpower but also industry acumen, knowledge of framing service philosophies, the capability of defining experience, designing its machinery, and then delivering results which are second to none. Technology is here to stay, providers will have to befriend the trend, work towards creating the capabilities of automation in-house, start offering a data first, and voice second service offering. The conventional mode of isolated support on voice, data, and chat channels will have to be united into an omnichannel environment, flexible enough to extend the customers the choice to choose: voice or text, self-help or assisted guidance, with solid CRM integration, one that is capable of building context and providing for predictive customer behavior. Service providers will have to become solution architects. The change will have to be welcomed into the organization and the way of its inner working. If I may borrow from Robin Sharma;



All change is tough at the beginning, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.



Here are a few things that service providers should do to transform.



De-age your leadership team - All of those 25 to 30 yrs + experience folks are good, they bring a lot of value but if they are made in charge of driving transformation, it wouldn't come about just as swiftly or effectively. You need to bring in a fresh perspective, bright and young people with the required skillset to populate your leadership team. Studies have shown that after a certain age and getting certain success in life the fire in the belly goes off for 98% of the people and that alone is a reason for you to look at your leadership team to see if you have such satisfied people around? If so, it's time for you to get people who relate to the change and have a better handle on contemporary settings and above all are willing to walk that extra mile and have the desire and the determination to make their mark.

Alter your service offering - Your service offering has to be a happy marriage between technology, business acumen, skilled manpower, and growth infrastructure. You’ll need to modify your solutions for them to make sense to the market and the customers that you wish to service. You need to be able to partner with the organization with which you are doing business with offerings, creating service strategy, forming the budget, laying the logical and physical service infrastructure, sourcing, training, execution - all of it. You need to take a leap from business process outsourcing into the realm of experience outsourcing.

Responsible billing model: Try to slowly move away from transaction billing to outcome-based invoicing. It is not going to be easy. Today you bill for transactions (calls/email/chat) you handle tomorrow you’ll charge on outcomes, let’s say a threshold of customer satisfaction, first, call resolution, churn %, repeat purchase, etc,  keeping the service cost below a certain limit for the exchange of x% of profit. I’m just saying. Commercial viability will have to be worked out but if service providers have to grow in the value chain they will need to value outcomes more than a transaction. And in the process will come into effect a high-performance culture because then the substandard outcome will mean substandard billing. Focus on performance will be much higher. And because it is a high-value job .. service providers will get to command much better prices.

Driving innovation as a core product: Organizations will have to increasingly invest in a thinking workforce, currently, the focus is only on doing (executing) which is why you have a mob of the unintelligent and the uninspiring, who are satisfied doing what they have always done, without thinking of finding different and better ways of solving the issue. Service providers will need to get creative, run of the mill thought processes will have to be now killed, deliberately. For the culture of ideation to thrive within the organization, leaders will have to reward thinkers, demonstrate a willingness to accept the nonnormal and above all, they will need to give the message that they value thinking as much as they value doing, if not more. Take up a few high-value high impact ambitious projects and run them so that the workforce has something to relate to.

Decentralize work (WFH): Cluttering the real state in today’s world is not only ineffective but also inefficient - the outsourcing industry will have to learn to ‘work from home’. A model that is a mixture of on-premise + Work from home has the capability of bringing the billing cost down with leaving larger room for service providers to expand profits, alongside creating a more independent, flexible, and happier workforce. I’m not even counting the environmental benefits of reduced vehicular traffic or saving of travel time, here. For far too long leaders have seen the outsourcing industry set up to be like manufacturing, that must change NOW!

Diversify into Tech Products: Voice can and should not be your only stream of revenue. You’ll need to create a 1st party tech platform/solution to survive.

Gartner says that by 2020 85% of the transaction will move to the unassisted category, the machine will take over man, we already see that reality manifesting itself in our day to day interaction with the world. If service providers do not invest in this critical adaptation now, they will soon be extinct.



On that note, I end this .. until we meet again.