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Kolkata , Nov. 19

THE education system in the country must keep pace and be in tune with the emerging needs of the business process outsourcing (BPO) segment.

This is especially important in view of the fact that the BPO segment in India is expected to provide employment to 30 million people by the year 2020, according to Mr James Abraham, Vice President & Director of Boston Consulting Group (India) Pvt Ltd.

Speaking at a session on IT-enabled services (ITES) and BPO at Infocom 2003 here on Tuesday, Mr Abraham said the availability of trained manpower could be a constraint in the absence of an appropriate education system. The quality of education that is imparted should be on par with that in the IITs and the Regional Engineering Colleges.

Mr Abraham said that, in the future, the content of BPO operations would become more complex. Many companies would wish to have their own captive BPO operations as well. Skills, and not costs, would provide the competitive edge.

Mr Raj Dutta, Chief Financial Officer of Wipro Spectramind Services, said the infrastructure for BPO operations must be scaled up "in a widespread manner" if we did not wish to miss the bus. The focus should be on restricting the cost per seat and meeting the desired quality standards. Mr Chris Luxford, Director (Portfolio Management Enterprise Voice Over Internet Protocol) of Nortel Networks in-charge-of the Asia Pacific region, said BPO and ITES would be the key growth drivers for Nortel Networks' enterprise and networking product offerings in India.

According to Mr Avinash Vashistha, Chairman & Managing Director of neoIT, India had inherent advantages in terms of costs of BPO and ITES operations. Proper infrastructure such as datalinks, uplinking facilities, Voice Over Internet Protocol, etc, were in place and the quality of services on offer was very high, he said.

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`Trained manpower to meet BPO needs urgent'

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