Professional BPOs: Lanka has edge over India

By Hiran H.Senewiratne

India despite being a huge country was facing a tough time with an inadequate talent pool for its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and therefore, Sri Lanka could get that advantage by focusing on its strengths in this sector, an Indian expert said.

"Sri Lankans have the expertise in certain skills in accounting, analyzing, and other business skills, in which it could take an advantage over India. Therefore Sri Lanka should focus in its strengths in the BPO sector to capture certain portion of the market, Chairman and Managing Director, Accenture –India, Avinash Vashistha said, at the Sri Lanka’s first outsourcing conference, yesterday. This event gave much focus to Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO).

The theme of the event was "Outsourcing Vs Restructuring- Challenges in International Business Structures" It was sponsored by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) along with Association of Young Lawyers known as AIJA -Sri Lanka with the active support of Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA).

Delivering the keynote address at the conference, he said, the global off shore business was worth more than US $ 150 billion and 50 percent or US $ 70 billion of its business was being handled in India, However, the total value of the BPO business was US$ three trillion, he said .

Since the LPO business also comes under BPO business, which is a big industry and the total value of USA alone was US$ 400 billion. Therefore due to the high cost factor in the USA and the European Union, e countries like India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines could provide the LPO business, at a very lesser cost, he said.

What he noticed in the BPO business in the region was that it lacked the scale of work, which required new technology and process. Therefore, when it comes to complex and specialized work, this scale up issue comes into the picture, Vashistha said.

President BASL Shibly Aziz said Sri Lanka already had acceptable levels of undertaking outsourcing work not only in the legal field but also in other field like accounting, information technology and allied fields but it had only a modest record in the legal filed.

"Therefore, holding a conference of this nature would assist not only lawyers but also non lawyers to involve in the out sourcing business," he said.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ICTA Reshan Dewapura said that BPO industry and the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) were in the centre stage, where as when this sector was started five years ago it was a US $ 60 million industry and after five years it has been graduated to a US $ 400 million sector.

Dewapura said Sri Lanka could easily promote the LPO business because the country possessed English speaking lawyers with foreign qualifications.

He said that vision of ICTA was to promote ICT among the all citizens in the country to make Sri Lanka knowledge hub in the region.