The Hindu Business Line : Tesco's captive centre handling high-end financial work

Chennai June 1 Six months after internal re-organisation, Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (Tesco HSC) is seeing high-end financial work coming its way.

This captive centre for the UK-based retailer Tesco started handling financial work in late 2004 and formed a separate team early this year to focus on this domain.

Initially, the centre handled transaction processing and accounting work for Tesco's operations in the UK, gradually moving on to making business-centric reports. "Now we are making critical management reports that directly go to Tesco's board of directors," Mr Amit Soni, Head - Financial Services, Tesco HSC, told Business Line via telephone. Besides, the centre has also started handling financial work from Tesco's US and Ireland operations.

Tesco operates in 12 countries today — Turkey, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, China and Japan, besides six others in Europe — and the HSC is likely to handle most of the financial work from these countries too.

"In future, our profile of work may not change drastically, but accountability of processes will go up," said Mr Soni.

This means the Centre will have greater freedom to simplify and streamline processes such as procurement and also be allowed to interact directly with vendors.

Business analysis

HSC is also likely to focus on providing business analysis services.

"We are thinking of developing a separate team for this. We already have enough data to create intelligent reports and analyse businesses globally," said Mr Soni.

The centre is also processing nearly double the number of transactions, about four million invoices a year, than it did two years ago.

Given this quantum of work, does Tesco HSC plans to set up a back-end operation in any other location?

"Unlikely in the near future. Unless, Tesco enters new non-English speaking markets, we may not need to set up new centres," said Ms Meena Ganesh, Chief Executive Officer, Tesco HSC.

At present, around 2,400 employees work at its Bangalore centre, which is also Tesco's only captive operation globally and is supported by a smaller team in the UK. Ms Ganesh said the existing centre could handle growth in work volume and manpower for the next 12-18 months. Later, it may scout for locations in India to set up another office.

Tesco finds India an "interesting option" to enter. The company is looking for options to enter the Indian retail scene, but "there are no firm plans as of now", according to Ms Ganesh.

More Stories on : Outsourcing | Financial Services

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page