Infosys BPO, the subsidiary of IT services provider Infosys, is considering moving to a hub-and-edge model rather than the traditional hub-and-spoke model for its BPO centres globally.
hub-edge model
“Increasingly, clients are today looking at the model of the edge, and are expecting us to have a hub-spoke-edge or hub-edge model,” Mr Gautam Thakkar, Vice-President and Head – Enterprise Services, Infosys BPO, told Business Line .
“We are seeing a lot of discussions happening and we are looking [at] that as an option,” he added.
What is it?
In the edge model, some of the client's personnel move on to the BPO service provider's rolls.
For instance, in a company that is looking to outsource work of, say, 250 people, in which suppose 100 are bunched together in a unit, and the rest spread across various countries.
In this model, since the client company will like to consolidate resources in order to optimise and standardise operations, the BPO service provider absorbs the employees spread across geographies into some of its own units in few locations.
“It would mean that Infosys will invest and take few people over in the local countries where the business case will work out,” Mr Thakkar explained.
“However, at the end of the day, while they may want us to takeover everybody, if the business case doesn't work out, it won't happen,” he pointed out.
Infosys recently had an agreement like this with Atlas Copco, an industrial equipment manufacturer.
Infosys handles parts of Atlas Copco's financial processes, such as accounting to reporting and processing of supplier invoices, and Infosys BPO had around 70 staff working in the Czech Republic on its own rolls.
Mr Abhijeet Ranade, Director, Consulting, PwC, said: “It is definitely a model that makes sense for them to pick up.”
variation of model
According to him, it is a variation of the model which IBM or Accenture used, where when IBM got a a client, some of the client's staff would be transferred on to the books of IBM and they would try to drive efficiencies.
“And there, over a period of time, they would move a part of work to India.
“But if the idea for Infosys is to maintain people in the local country, it is a much more socially-friendly model given the pressures of local job maintenance,” Mr Ranade said.