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For the second year running Wipro BPO experienced a slower than average growth of around 20%. The good thing is that CEO TK Kurien planned it that way. The bad thing: we dont know if the transformation phase is over yet.

When Kurien took over from charismatic CEO Raman Roy, he immediately realized that behind the big hype and good press lay a fundamental problemthe topline growth was coming from the high volume, low margin voice business which rested on the principle of throwing more bodies into the business. He identified three thrust areas: to build a scaleable growth model by platformizing skills and leveraging Wipros IT strength; efficiently manage the supply chain of people in the large voice business; and to take up the contribution of non-voice business (then just 17%).

He seems to have fairly succeeded in the first task. Wipro BPO also moved away from the volume game toward integrating business processes with technology, and focus on nine identified verticals.

Though growth slowed because of the solutions-centric approach with longer sales cycles, profitability increased with the operating margin growing from 9% to 24%. The revenue from transaction-based services doubled while revenue share from out-bound voice-based call center work became negligible.

But then, Wipro BPO lost the leadership position to TCS. Its overall contribution to Wipros revenues went down. The company managed to grow the headcount slightly more than last year, which could be good news.

Wipro BPO progressed well on its stated objective of creating a common platform and a set of standardized practices that will make scaling up a smooth process. The idea was to do away with the practice of every team working from scratch when a new process is migrated, and use the knowledge generated across the organization. This platformizing is close to becoming a reality and the announcement is expected in the coming months. DQ

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