The Hindu Business Line : HP global centre speaks many languages

Bangalore April 19 At first glance, it seems like any other BPO in Bangalore. Employees at HP's Global Language Center answer queries from Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, Poland, Italy, China, Singapore and Korea. The difference is that it's a non-English BPO offering services in nine international languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

In fact, HP GLC is the first-of-its-kind in the BPO industry providing customers with `close-to-near-shore' business processing capability and most of its 200 employees are Indians proficient in these native languages.

Says Ms Arundhati Chakraborty, Vice-President, Operations, HP BPO, "Close-to-near-shore means that the language proficiency of these consultants are close to that spoken in its native country."

The staff are post-graduates in the language they have specialised in and some of them have come with more than a decade of teaching experience in the language Interestingly, GLC also has a handful of native speakers from all these countries who have chosen to make India their home.

Why India? Because no other country offers the double benefit of being cost-effective and of a ready-to-use talent pool, specialised even in foreign languages. Now, HP plans to add Arabic and Russian to its language expert pool.

Functioning process

When HP GLC takes on new customers, the first job on hand is to find out what the language touch points are and the depth of the language required. Work at the BPO is measured on three metrics: process accuracy, language accuracy and turn-around time. The centre also has native speakers to monitor the progress of the employees and carry out quality checks on language proficiency.

On career growth for these extreme specialists, Ms Chakraborty says that apart from the growth within GLC to move into people management roles, they can move laterally into HP's global delivery centres across locations.