however, require greater cultural affinity – hence, India’s good, but Manila may be better. Mexico becomes important for work requiring the capturing of information and documents, or if the center needs to be close to U.S. customers, for example.
Technology’s impact
Much is written about technology and the impact it has on services success. But technology is not the key factor, according to Genpact – process is. Given Genpact’s GE background, it is not surprising that the company considers “process” to be where the battle is won or lost.
“Technology is only as good as the process the technology is meant to serve,” says Tiger. “It’s all about the ‘Power of Process’.” Most processes have defects and require rework, is the premise. Technology will not fix this. “If you fix all the breakpoints in a process first, the leakages, cycle time extensions… then you can go further by bringing in a technology to automate what is already fixed.”
However, it’s not just the “big technology” that is relevant, says Tiger.
“Automation tools are of real value: Who is not following the travel policy; exceptions and reports; tracking compliance to procurement policies; identifying maverick buying. Many of these tools can be developed and bolted on to ERP systems. That is where we think technology is headed,” says Tiger. “The core platforms, whether SAP, Oracle, or Peoplesoft, do not solve everything. It is the process improvement or the bolt on that takes it to the next level.”
Trends
Scale is important to this market, so it is not surprising that Genpact foresees a certain amount of consolidation in the marketplace. Much of this will be driven via capability acquisition, says