Nasscom drawing up quality control norms
The Economic Times, November 7, 2003

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) is drawing up an exhaustive charter of quality assurance for the ITeS sector along with self-regulatory and legislative measures to ensure information security, data privacy and business continuity planning in the BPO segment.

It is working with QAI-India, the US-India Hi-tech Co-operation Group (an inter- ministerial and inter-industry body) as well as the US’ Coalition of Services Industries and Financial Services Roundtable in this regard.

This has been triggered off by the realisation that the Indian IT-enabled services business can no longer sell itself on the twin-advantages of English and low costs alone. To move up the value chain, ITeS companies have realised that excellence in operations arising out of adequate and skilled manpower, low defect rates, consistency in services and customer-oriented processes is the need of the hour. (Are quality norms needed now for Indian BPO firms to withstand the backlash in the West?)

QAI, which has worked with BPO players like Wipro Spectramind, Daksh, 24x7, Epicenter, is working on a series of colloquiums with Nasscom to evangelise the concept of sharing best practices.

Says Umesh Vyas, consulting partner, QAI, “The growth pangs in the industry have led to several hiccups such as delay in ramp-up of operations, lack of diligence in verifying skills of employees (such as accents) before letting them interact with clients, as well as quality lapses.”

For the BPO companies this has led to a lot of heartache with clients reducing the business to 25% of the original contract, demanding that half the people recruited for the job be sacked as they do not meet quality requirements (there are instances where wrong information has been given to callers) as well as fresh orders drying up.

Sunil Mehta, vice-president, research, Nasscom stresses that the exercise is also to implement end-to-end quality standards from pre-sales to servicing so that the ITES industry is equipped to handle a growing client-base. A tiered-pricing structure to protect the interests of both the service provider and the client rather than just one attractively cheap entry-level price is being mooted.

“We will be looking at case studies before we finalise the norms. But the response we are getting from companies and professionals is testimony that this exercise was required,” he says.

While the industry is for self-regulation, judging by the fast-expanding businesses in the US and EU, a draft proposal to legislate BPO to ensure information security, data privacy and internal checks and balances to ensure business continuity is being prepared. Model customer contracts and safe harbour clauses are being examined. Much of this is to gain customer confidence.

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