Arnab Chakraborty is the Director - Global Analytics at Hewlett-Packard Company (since 2005). Arnab is responsible for partnering with senior executive leadership teams within HP and leads a team of 500+ practitioners for deployment of analytics solutions across sales, marketing and supply chain domains to HP’s business groups across the Americas, EMEA and APJ regions

Prior to joining HP, Arnab has over 14 years of experience in Management Consulting and Business analytics. Arnab has held leadership positions at GE Capital, KPMG Consulting and Wipro Technologies.

Arnab holds an MBA from National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela, India. He is also Certified in Production and Inventory Management from APICS (The Association of Operations Management)

Arnab is a regular speaker at various international conferences and industry platforms and contributes thought leadership articles on business analytics in various journals.

Big Idea / Statement

Shared Services paradigm is making some big shifts in recent times. The game is changing from cost arbitrage to value creation and innovation for driving competitive advantage. Shared Services providers need to constantly evolve and innovate to remain relevant as a strategic partner to businesses. As shared service providers, both captives and 3rd party drive excellence in managing transactional processes, the data that is getting created around the process, it presents a unique opportunity to the players to leverage the field of data analytics to mine structured and unstructured data across the enterprise and provide actionable insights to drive business outcomes. Shared services providers would need a compelling vision, robust data platforms, scalable analytical capability and thought leadership to achieve the transition from a transactional process to a knowledge based value contributor to the businesses. With the explosion of data and information and the advent of cloud and connected devices, providing analytical solutions in the hands of business stakeholders is going to be a very powerful differentiator for corporations. Shared services organisations can play a very critical role in institutionalising analytics across the enterprise business process and making them more agile, responsive and effective and helping to drive top line and bottom line growth for the corporation.

Manish Vora serves as WNS’s Head of Sales for the Asia Pacific and Middle East region. Manish played a pivotal role in establishing WNS as a leader in the Finance and Accounting BPO space in the Americas before moving into his current role. He was also instrumental in setting up WNS’ operations in Costa Rica.

With a background in finance, Manish has over nineteen years of experience in outsourcing, consulting, risk management, investment banking and audit. Prior to joining WNS, he worked with Accenture, Outsource Partners International and ICICI. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Information Systems Auditor.

Nimish Soni joined Xchanging following Xchanging’s acquisition of Cambridge Solutions Ltd. Prior to his current role, Nimish held the position of Managing Director for the BPO and ITO divisions of Xchanging India.

Nimish brings entrepreneurial experience and deep knowledge of the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry and Indian market. He founded Cambridge BPO (formerly known as ProcessMind) in 2001. Prior to founding ProcessMind, Nimish set up a captive centre in India fro American Financial Group. He started his career with a five year period with Capgemini in the USA.

Nimish holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from UVCE, Bangalore and a Master’s degree in Manufacturing Systems from the University of Cincinnati, USA.

Keshav Murugesh is the Group Chief Executive Officer of WNS Global Services, a NYSE listed leader in the offshore Outsourcing (BPO) business. He is also Co-Chairman of NASSCOM’s BPO Forum in India.

WNS is a global BPO Firm employing over 22000 people serving a number of blue chip clients across a diverse set of industries.

Prior to joining WNS in 2010, Keshav served as CEO at Syntel Inc, a NASDAQ listed global provider of IT Services and KPO businesses with around 11,000 employees.

Between 1989 and 2001, Keshav held several senior management posts at ITC limited an affiliate of BAT plc., in the areas of Treasury, Investments & Diversifications Planning and Financial Services.

Keshav supports organisations involved in educational outreach projects in partnership with business across the globe. He is also a Board Member of WNS Cares Foundation that focuses on the community in WNS locations globally.

Keshav is a Fellow of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). Keshav is married to Shamini and they have two children Mithuna and Tejas.

Ideate. Incubate. Innovate

It will be the generation of ‘I’s. Despite economic instability and complicated business dynamics, the ‘I’ quotient in most individuals will rule supreme. Next-gen will be driven by a passion for entrepreneurship more than ever before.

Companies that can provide entrepreneurial opportunities, give room for innovation along with funding are the most likely to nurture talent and succeed. Turning the ‘I’ (me) into Innovation for the organization will be a challenging but successful journey. Therein lies the ability of companies – especially providers ─ in the outsourcing industry to leverage their centers of excellence, understand client requirements and use technology to enable the next generation of outsourcing solutions.

Manish Dugar is the Global Head of Wipro BPO. In his earlier position, he was the Chief Financial Officer of Wipro IT Business. He has been instrumental in building a world class FP&A process, initiating cost and profitability consciousness across the organisation, supporting the transitions in the organisation and driving key operating parameters. The Business Partnering approach of his, helped in meeting organisational goals on winning and becoming more profitable.

Manish started his career with Larsen and Toubro in the Eastern Regional Office, where he worked for three years before joining Coca Cola India. He was subsequently with Reckitt Benckiser as their National Commercial Manager, Sales and Marketing.

Manish then joined Wipro as the CFO for its Finance Solutions division, He then moved to become the CFO of the BPO business with additional responsibilities as the Head of Infrastructure, administration, Technology and Procurement. Under Manish's guidance, both Finance Solutions and BPO business recorded significant expansion in profitability. In 2007 Manish was elevated to the position of CFO for Wipro's global IT Business.

In addition to his finance role, Manish has been involved in various cross-function assignments in the areas of Human Resources, General Management and Leadership Development. He has served on various committees of NASSCOM, ASSOCHAM and IMA. He is an active participant of the CFO Forum.

Manish holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta. He is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) and the Institute of Companies Secretaries of India (ICSI).

Manish is not new to Wipro BPO where he played a critical part in supporting strategic initiatives on operations, transaction processing and creating global footprints for the group. Manish was also responsible for Corporate Strategy & Planning, Quantum Innovation, technology & Infrastructure and Central Procurement. These were instrumental and crucial in supporting the turn around of the BPO business to become the growth and profitability engines of the company.

With his strong knowledge of both Strategy & Operations, Manish will help drive the new BPO charter by enhancing Wipro's positioning in the market and thus garnering greater market share.

Milind (popularly known as 'MG') brings Minacs 20 years of rich and varied experience having driven excellence in strategy and service delivery, while managing complex and large scale operations in IT, mobile telephony and BPO. At Aditya Birla Minacs, MG is responsible for executing business strategy and directing the overall performance and growth of our organization in the Asia-Pacific region.

MG was formerly the Chief Operating Officer of MphasiS (part of EDS, an HP company) where he was instrumental in growing the business from 10 individuals to a team of 13,500+ through a well designed transformational delivery engine, which helped clients address their business needs. He served on the board of MsourcE India. He has worked with Fortune 500 clients across various industries in the United States, EMEA, and India to implement successful business process optimization strategies.

Milind holds a master's degree in electronic engineering and business administration, with a specialisation in sales and marketing.

Big Idea / Statement

The Impending double dip recession in United States, contentious presidential elections of 2012 & potential euro zone crises may temporarily taper BPO growth rates – however globalization is here to stay and the world will continue to get flatter.

The emergent sophistication that we will see in the coming years is going to drive disruptive change to existing outsourcing models:-

• “Front office and Back office” business have moved to transaction based and Outcome based contracts. Service providers are expected to invest more “skin into the game”. Understanding the client business, their customers and translating data intelligence in to robust and constructive actions will be key to the successful partnership and ever changing market dynamics.
• ‘Mid Office’ outsourcing which never had an outsourcing roadmap will emerge and gain prominence. The volume play word will abolish and integrated service offering will be the new Buzz word.
• Domestic BPO market in developing economies will grow multifold. Technology & Analytics based solutions will play a pivotal role for the customers in this segment given the absence of wage arbitrage. BPO will acquire a new definition,” Business Process Optimization”
• Businesses will outsource core activities looking for greater agility and sustainability through strategic partnerships. The delivery models in such scenarios will be geography agnostic “Business solutions”.
• Non-dedicated Shared Services ‘utility’ based delivery model will gain prominence. Platform as a Service & related cloud based solutions will help drive business differentiation and stickiness.

In essence – the business landscape is going to change rapidly and Indian BPO industry leadership needs to be ready for the next wave of outsourcing Tsunami which will appear on our shores by 2013!!!

Raman has played a pivotal role over the last 16 years in promoting Indian BPOs and proving that India can be a preferred location for Remote Processing. Raman is a pioneer four times over, having successfully led the BPO initiatives of American Express, GE (now Genpact) and Spectramind (now Wipro BPO) before starting Quatrro in mid 2006. Raman was the CEO of GECIS, the Business Leader for American Express’ BPO business and the Founder and CEO of Spectramind. Raman is now the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Quatrro. Raman conceptualised and implemented the BPO and business strategy for all four companies. Raman launched Quatrro to focus on high end BPO services with a mix of incubation and acquisition led strategies. These have been targeted at the underserved areas with a focus on the uncontested market spaces.

Quatrro has successfully built businesses in Analytics, Risk Management, Interactive Entertainment Services, Knowledge Management, Legal, Mortgage, Finance and Accounting and more. Quatrro has also launched a branded technical support service targeted at mid market and the end customer.

Raman, with a guiding philosophy of enhancing the success rate of nascent businesses, is a founding member of the “Band of Angels,” a group of investors which has a passion to enable these businesses to create, scale and add value, while also addressing the acute shortage of funds available for start-ups.

Raman is deeply involved in shaping the future of the BPO industry in India, Mauritius and other geographies. He is a member of the Executive Committee of NASSCOM, Chairman of the BPO committee of ASSOCHAM, in addition to being a member of various committees formed by the central government and state-level governments. These include committees formed by various industry associations such as NASSCOM, CII and ASSOCHAM. Raman was also appointed to the high powered Working Group formed by the Indian Prime Minister’s Office for making recommendations on improving the supply of suitable talent to the IT & BPO sectors.

Raman is a rare example of a living practitioner of the BPO industry having created many successes and overcome many challenges. As a tribute to his contribution to the creation of the BPO industry in India Raman has been awarded the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award in 2002, the 2006 CfE Management Development Institute Award for Corporate Entrepreneurship and the Trailblazer Award for individual achievement at the Shared Service + Outsourcing: 2007 Global Conclave. Raman has also been awarded the Indiatimes BPO award under the category “Most significant contributor to the industry” and felicitated by the Institute of Economic Studies with the “Udyog Rattan 2007” award. Raman has participated in directly creating 35,000+ jobs in India and indirectly enabling the employment of over 700,000+ people by his pioneering efforts that led to the creation of the BPO industry.

Raman is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Management Accountant with a doctorate in Management Accountancy. In his career spanning 30+ years, he has handled roles in Finance, Consulting, Operations and General Management with equal ease. He has a very hands-on approach to business and has first-hand experience and rare insights into servicing markets as diverse as North America, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific and Australia.

Sakuntala Rao (Saku) is a Director in IBM's Growth Markets Global Process Services (GPS) Practice and is based in Bangalore, India.

She joined IBM in 2003, and is currently responsible for growing our Finance & Administration (F&A) Practice in our Growth Markets Unit. She has been with IBM since the early days of its foray into GPS in India and was instrumental in the creation of a global solutions centre of excellence for IBM in India across all process areas.

Saku has over 26 years of experience in F&A across India and the Middle East in Industry, Consulting, Assurance and Process Outsourcing. She has worked with organisations like Coopers & Lybrand, KPMG and Infosys before joining IBM. She has also been CFO of an Oman based group. She has extensive experience in GPS and has worked on several re-engineering and strategy assignments across multiple industries.

Saku qualified as a Chartered Accountant (FCA) from India in 1984. She also has CIMA and MBA qualifications from the UK. She has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions over the years including a special prize from the Prime Minister of India and recognition from the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Big Idea / Statement

Indian companies are now ready to embrace alternative delivery models - whether outsourced or hybrid - in the non-CRM space. Question is - do Indian companies know what to look out for and how to proceed?

Sriram is head of the GBS India and leads a culture of delivery excellence coupled with customer focus and people engagement across the organisation.

Prior to HP, Sriram was the Vice President, Global Infrastructure Services & Consulting, CGI for the India Center.

Prior to CGI, Sriram worked with HP in various positions such as being Director of the Supply Chain Operations in GBS and as Director Trade BPO for the Asia Pacific Japan region. Sriram played a key leadership role in setting up the Chennai center for HP GBS operations and established several GBS verticals.

With his deep knowledge of the BPO industry, coupled with his long experience in driving both process and service excellence, Sriram is a key leader in driving the HP GBS vision of becoming a trusted business partner of the customer.

Sriram has a rich, multi-faceted experience spanning 30+ years covering almost all organizational aspects spanning customer support, business development, manufacturing, software operations and BPO delivery.

Sriram has provided leadership in many start-ups as also having managed very large workgroups in IT and ITeS domains.

Sriram has done his Engineering in Electronics & Telecommunication from University of Delhi.

Big Idea / Statement

In the next couple of years Business Process Shared Services will broadly get redefined around Commoditisation and Specialisation.

Just like IT Applications and IT Infrastructures Services (ADM & IMS) have started moving towards Cloud and getting redefined under SaaS and IaaS, BPO will be offered as PaaS (Process As A Service) and thus commoditised. This will naturally encompass outcome based pricing or transaction based pricing. Paas can cover standardised processes in Procurement, Billing/Invoicing, Payroll and the likes. As an example, Procurement related outsourcing will move towards strategic procurement as a specialised service aligned with the corporate supply chain strategy to improve overall supply chain performance.

Then there will always be a need for specialised services which cover specifics of an Industry or Segment, like Order Fulfilment, Compliance Assurance etc. which becomes industry specific. Automotive and Pharma will have different needs for order fulfilment as well as compliance.

Big Idea

Many service providers in the BPO industry are now truly differentiating by partnering with clients in transforming the clients business from the earlier position of just executing transactions right/on time and every time. The moment of truth for the service providers is when then make their clients look great in front of the client stakeholders - be it the client's customers or the client's vendors or the employees of the clients. The service providers win only when their clients win. The service providers will need to tweak their global delivery and operating models in such a manner that it drives a true strategic and competitive advantage to their clients.

The way ahead for the BPO industry is to stay ahead in this pursuit of impacting the business metrics of their clients positively rather than just the operational metrics. The service providers should be able to demonstrate to their clients quarter of quarter that because of their partnership the clients' acquired more customers/retained more customers/ revenues increased/ cost of products and services sold decreased etc. It will be imperative for service providers to impact the Gross and Net margin of the clients positively and not just Net margins without impacting gross margins in which case it is not true transformation !!!

BPO service providers will need to execute projects smartly . They will need to enhance their GDP all the time - G for Growth by growing the business of their clients - D for Differentiation by eliminating work through technology and process reengineering - P for People through continuous learning and training programs and providing opportunities for people who can build career for life.

Swami has over 30 years of experience in General Management, finance and accounting, sales and marketing and human resources management. He has performed multiple roles in sales, marketing and operations leading global teams in the manufacturing and services industry and also has been associated with infrastructure projects in India and abroad. Swami joined Infosys BPO in 2004 and took over as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director in January 2010. He also heads the Executive Council in Infosys BPO.

Prior to this, Swami was Senior Vice President and Head of Global Delivery and Horizontal Practices. He provided leadership in building some of the key industry verticals, international centres, horizontal practices, and managing corporate functions such as business transition, quality and risk.

Swami is a great believer in processes and metrics and has made operations excellence a key strength of the organisation.

Under his leadership, Infosys BPO has won several key awards for partnerships with clients, such as the Shared Services Excellence Award for Best New Outsourced Services Deliver and the Breakthrough Award at the Global Supplier Awards. Infosys BPO has also won awards for peoples practices, such as The Stars of the Industry Award for BPO Organisation of the Year and RASBIC Awards for Recruiting and Staffing Programs.

Your personal contributions that have made a big impact to the SS and Sourcing community:

1999 - CEO of GE’s Shared Service Centre globally that grew dramatically from 0 to 12,000 people in 5 years one of the pioneers of the global delivery model for processes

2001- Embedded Lean Six Sigma into Genpact Operations, making it the cornerstone for the organization and the industry
2003 - Patent filed with the US office of patents for driving a new algorithm for call centre routing
2005 - Part of the leadership team that enabled transition of GECIS (a captive beta site of GE) to a third party BPO company 'Genpact'
2006 - One of the chief architects of the Virtual CaptiveSM model - A hybrid solution giving clients the benefits of a captive services model as well as the benefits of working through a third party
2007- Received patent # 7184541 for call centre routing algorithm
2009 - Pioneered the set-up of SolutionXchange - a Web 2.0 based Genpact network for collaboration between SMEs, clients and high quality external experts
2010 -One of the key architects of Smart Enterprise Processes (SEPSM) – a unique granular approach leveraging Process Expertise, Targeted Analytics, Pragmatic Reengineering and Focused IT to bring Science to Process Management

Your 2011 prediction for one major change the community will see in the next 12 months:

Innovation will become extremely important in the provision of services. Some firms will drive innovation as an agenda very successfully for their clients and collaboration and partnership between a provider and its client will be key …. This will drive dramatic differentiation.

What do you think is the most debated question in the industry and why?

Will advent of the Cloud and BPO-in-a-Box be the next game changer for the industry? Why because it could allow provision of services to the mid market in a very standardized form driving real value

Aparup is a serial entrepreneur and has been in the Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing industry for over 25 years. He started his career CMC Ltd (ex – IBM), India’s premier software development and system integration firm and played a leadership role in some of the landmark IT deals in Defence and Manufacturing industries.

At Aegis, Aparup engineered a spectacular growth story interwoven with organic and inorganic wins. From less than USD 60 million in revenue, Aparup’s focus, vision and determination has transformed Aegis into a USD 1 billion company with over 55,000 employees from 85 nationalities.

Aparup contributes frequently as an author and speaker at several industry forums across the world. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from BE College, Kolkata, and has participated in several leadership programs at institutions like IIM Calcutta, XLRI Jamshedpur and Portsmouth University, UK.