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| Features and news |
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| A world full of talent: Making KPO work for You |
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INDIA'S HIGH KPO GROWTH TRAJECTORY
India started out in a truly unique position. It is a country with thousands of years of history as a leader in education, innovation and even genius, especially in the area of science and mathematics. However, during the comparatively few years where the world labeled India as a "Third World Country," the West only saw the bad roads and inadequate infrastructure. They forgot all about the amazing people; and there are a billion people in India. History and politics held back the vast intellectual capital of India's people and kept it out of the global marketplace. Think about that for just a second; Einstein, Shakespeare, Mozart, da Vinci, Socrates, the people who come to mind when a Westerner hears the word "Genius," came out of countries that were tiny compared to India.
How many geniuses have been born in India over the past few decades but never made it to University? How many never found an outlet for their genius in India's old economy? While everyone on our staff is amazingly qualified, they are not geniuses. Well, actually some of them are come to think of it! But they are all part of an incredibly talented pool of intellectuals in India that has been waiting for very long to have an outlet and to show the rest of the world how capable they are. Now that the world has seen this and has had some years to digest the message, there is a tidal wave of work coming to India. It is the right place, the right time and absolutely the right people!
KPO'S INVULNERABILITY TO CANNIBALIZATION
The issue is commoditization. If a task can be taught in a day and more or less the same task is being performed by rooms full of people, it is just a matter of time before it moves to the lowest cost producer or is taken over by a computer. At Integreon, we do not call highly repetitive work KPO just because a very expensive person used to do it. Answering a phone is largely the same task for someone who is paid $50,000 as it is for someone else paid $5,000,000. We look for work that is true KPO, work that involves education, brainpower and decision making. Still, after a while someone may come along and realize that what was thought to be complex decision making really is not.
A huge benefit of the Integreon method of KPO is that we analyze and measure how work is performed. Unnecessary steps can be eliminated, thus creating better ways to work. We find that some tasks that used to take years to learn take much less time in a structured environment, where we test training and measure the impact on the quality and the quantity of work.
We are not concerned that KPO work will be cannibalized by cheaper labor markets, but we do see that not everything that is KPO is KPO. This is not to say that Integreon will not set up shop in other countries, we are already doing that in the Philippines. What we are not doing is looking for countries that are cheaper than India. We are looking for locations that have a unique value proposition. This value proposition can come in many forms including excellence in a specialty area or allowing us to further expand access and utilization of the best and brightest workers.
INTEGREON'S KPO SPECIALIZATION
Overall our area of specialization is in the support of "Professionals." This means we assist Lawyers, Accountants, Investment Bankers and other highly degreed individuals who work in large corporations and are paid at the top end of the pay scale. This is where we see a great opportunity in freeing up domestic intellectual capital by letting people do what they were trained and hired for. Let Lawyers be lawyers, we will take care of all of the minutia and lower end work that they want off of their plate so that they can earn money for their firm.
INTEGREON'S STRATEGY TO WIN BUSINESS
In the end, it all comes down to trust. Integreon wants to be the most trusted KPO in the world. When we go to see a client and ask them to turn over important and critical work to us, why would they do it? They need to have trust in the company, Integreon. This is not that much different from when your kids ask you to borrow the car. You look back on their history, "Did they keep their promises, did they do the things they said they would, do they admit to their failings?" If they did not, you probably will not let them have the keys.
Any time you commit, even if you have a 500 page contract that lays out the tiniest detail of how the arrangement will work, it still comes down to trusting the person on the other side of the table. Of course you have to be competent and live up to your promises. If you do not, your clients are not going to recommend you to prospects and they certainly are not going to walk you down the hall to talk to a colleague who could benefit from your services.
Potential clients tell us that they work with BPO's or KPO's who did not deliver what they promised or tried to change their work processes because it made life easier for the outsourcer. This type of relationship makes clients very unhappy. Did you know that Integreon has never lost a client? As far as we know, we are the only KPO that can say that. So we want to be the most trusted, this is a business goal that many companies aspire to. What makes us different is that this goal comes out in our mission, values and most importantly, our actions. It is not just an aspiration to us, it is a way of doing business.
CONFIDENTIALITY AND OTHER CONCERNS
Basically, this is very hard work that never ends; there is never any "finish line" for security and integrity. Integreon constantly compares ourselves to our clients and looks to find the best practices for security. The hardest aspect is that there are always shortcuts, but you cannot take them. When you create a culture of security and enforce it constantly, as Integreon has, one of your best safety nets becomes your people. They know how important security is and they want to be sure that we follow the process because they know that the future of the firm could be terribly damaged by just one small breach. It really helps the overall process when you've got 2,000 pairs of eyes to keep everyone honest.
| OUR CLIENTS AND THE WORK WE DO FOR THEM |
We would love to tell you about our amazingly A grade client list! But most of our clients sadly want to keep their names confidential. This is an eternal temptation, but one that we just can not give in to! What we can tell you is that on our client list, we have some of the top Law firms, Investment Banks and Corporations in the world.
In the professional industries that we discussed, we |
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are the dominant KPO. We perform a variety of services from lower end tasks in document editing to high end tasks in financial modeling. We do legal review of documents and a variety of litigation support functions. We have lawyers who are supporting other lawyers, who are fully capable of doing all of the work that first and second-year lawyers do in a law firm. We expect to see the same trajectory in the KPO space as we saw earlier in the BPO space. Over time, the complexity of the work that clients want sent offshore will increase. We have the talent and the capabilities to move as deeply into the support of a clients work as they wish.
ABOUT INTEGREON
Integreon focuses exclusively on legal and financial outsourcing, where we have deep domain know-how. We offer a full line of knowledge support services from multiple, low cost delivery centers in India, the Philippines and the USA. Our transition planning and program management teams work from New York, London and Los Angeles.
Our customers include 6 of the 10 largest investment banks, 2 of the 3 largest global law firms, several top-tier private equity firms, hedge funds and many Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 corporations. Integreon has been in business for a decade and has around 2000 employees.
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