Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Oct 29, 2007
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Oct 29, 2007 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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eWorld
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Interview Info-Tech - Outsourcing Clinching clients
Budi Uttama Vinson Kurian At Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram-based IT and BPO services player US Technology (now UST Global), Budi Uttama is responsible for understanding clients’ needs, harnessing the company’s resources, and delivering value. His team provides application software development, maintenance, integration and testing services to over 32 Fortune 500 clients. Budi was one of the founding members of UST Global and has taken the responsibilities of managing its accounts and enabling operations as its location head in the US. In an interview with eWorld, he dwells on clients, client-relations, value building, talent hunt and more…. What is the role of a Web site in building client contacts and maintaining them? Since 2006, we have used our Web site in a significant way to market our IT and BPO services. After all, our site is our number one point of contact for potential customers. The site offers us one key way to build our brand globally. Is a private extranet, specifically tailored for communications between the firm and client, in order? We do not have a private extranet for our clients. Our model ensures that communication is built by personally dealing with clients at every level. Our approach enables experienced onsite senior resources to deal with the client directly, while delivery operations are carried out from India offshore centres. Clients want to confirm the value of what they are receiving for the fees that they are paying. What guides your billing? As a company, we want to be as competitive and cost-effective as we could be, while providing value in IT and BPO services. Our primary driver is the knowledge of the client’s business and how we can add value to it. For this reason, a majority of our business is rooted in repeat business from delighted customers who come back with realised results. How do you construct a client relationship that can be a win-win situation for both? Six words say it all: ‘We don’t negotiate. We bring value’. Stephen Covey, in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, speaks of the ‘Synergise’ phenomena. Where one plus one is not one-and-a-half or two. Synergise is all about making one plus one eleven! We relive this insight because we listen carefully to the client’s need. A strong rupee has made the pricing outlook stable, but with an upward bias. Do you find a problem coping? Since we seek to invest in the quality of client relationships, not the quantity of transactions, we believe we can field this issue effectively.
Do factors such as wage attrition and inflation bother you? Typically, low inflation and low attrition are attributes of tier-two cities such as Thiruvananthapuram. Stephanie Moore of Forrester Research highlighted this fact in a recent webinar in which she studied UST Global against the broad trends of global outsourcing. Despite rising wages, the cost advantage for global corporates is perceived to still hold good. How do you assess the situation? India has cast-iron reasons for being regarded as the IT services capital of the world. A proven domain of excellence-driven IT services, the knowledge of English, and one of the largest available talent pools here in South India will continue to keep India as a capital and hub of IT services. How do you assess the European market? As our Chairman Dan Gupta tells us, ‘We go where our Customers go’. In the age of global corporations, we’ve seen our focus shift from the US/North America region to the Europe region. In 2006, we set up an office in Europe to cater to some of our key accounts there. The results have been incredible. Europe has, in a span of months, emerged a key growth region for UST Global. We will continue to accelerate on this growth by leveraging the relationship we have with existing global companies. We will go where our customers go! More Stories on : Interview | Outsourcing
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