The Hindu Business Line : Outsourcing deal to help Bharti Airtel in vendor policy

Firstsource Solutions’ deal win with Bharti Airtel gives the former the twin advantages of providing a revenue opportunity and strengthening its telecom vertical.

The three-year outsourcing deal envisages Firstsource providing VAS provisioning, customer service, fraud and credit monitoring and such backend services for Bharti.

For Firstsource, which already has other Indian telecom clients, this deal is a walk down the familiar territory, in terms of execution capabilities.

The company also works with telecom clients in the UK and the US.

Important criteria

As Indian mobile operators add 7-8 million subscribers a month, the complexity of backend operations such as those in this deal become important criteria for customer retention and controlling churn rates.

This is especially so because the prepaid segment represents the biggest chunk of subscriber adds for operators and also witnesses churn.

Firstsource currently derives 36 per cent of its revenues from Telecom & Media clients and 10.8 per cent of its revenues from domestic clients.

This deal should help strengthen both these areas and reduce dependence on troubled BFSI clients.

For Bharti, this deal furthers its vendor rationalisation policy.

Bharti already has five partners for handling its backend/call centre operations and the addition of a new vendor may suggest that it has got good pricing in the deal to optimise costs.

More Stories on : Outsourcing | Stocks | Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd | Telecommunications

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