Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: Would you tell us more about the five verticals you work in?

Sandip Sen: Our biggest verticals are financial services, so these are banks. We work today for some of the largest banks, like JP Morgan Chase, American Express, Bank of America ,and Citibank. The other big verticals are telecom. We work for three of the top 10. We work for AT&T and Verizon, in the U.S. We work for Telstra in Australia. We work for Virgin Telecom, Virgin Media, and Virgin Telecom in the U.K., and we work for the major telecom players in India. India is the largest sales market by growth, and the players there are the Vodafones and the Airtels.

The third major vertical for us is healthcare. In the U.S., we work for healthy care as in health insurance. So, we do a lot of work for United Health Care and Humana, which are two of our largest clients. We also do work for a couple of groups like the Blue Shield companies. Our fourth vertical is what we call travel transportation, and entertainment. We are a major partner for Expedia and Orbitz. We work for a couple of hotels like Hilton and Wyndham. We work for airlines like Spirit. And the last vertical we are developing is what we call energy utilities. We work for three large utility chains in the U.S. We also work for the British gas in the U.K. We work for a couple of utility companies in Australia. These are the large verticals, and we overlay this vertical with the entire CLM, customer life cycle management.

Sramana: You talked about U.S. nearshore. What is happening in your industry right now in terms of customers looking for nearshore supporters as opposed to offshore ones? In the first wave of outsourcing, we saw a huge amount of offshoring and people working in different time zones, working through the night and so forth. What is happening in the industry right now? What is the thinking? I am primarily interested in your customers’ feedback. What are you hearing from your customers, and how do you think your business will align with that?

Sandip: I think customers today are saying two or three things. One is that customers are looking at cutting costs. That is an imperative today. The CFO has become an important part of the equation when you look at the entire gamut of customer service, and we need to shave off cost by X or Y. Therefore, companies are looking at methods to do that. When I say companies I mean my customers. So, the offshore business is growing. The Philippines is obviously a big market. In fact, the Philippines is getting a little saturated overall, but the offshore business is dying. That is, obviously, the logic of running a business, of running efficiently, of cutting costs.

But what has happened is twofold. Companies are also a little sensitive to this whole issue of the offshoring of employment; therefore, they are saying, listen how can we blend both? How can we continue to offer offshore yet be sensitive to this issue? Some companies; that is, some of our clients, have done it two ways. They said, let’s look at a blended model where there is some business which is onshore. This business could be high-end customers, the top-end customers. This business could be licensed business like HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability] in the health care business.

Some have centers in the U.S. And these centers are expensive because they are run as cost centers, and clients want help with that. We have been very proactive in this. One idea we have put forth for these U.S. centers is saying, We will pay you the depreciated cost. Whatever cost you have, you will get today for these centers in terms of your assets. But more important, we will maintain the number of people. We probably will increase it because, unlike you, we can put other businesses there. You could have put only your business, and we will reduce your monthly operating cost. We recently acquired a call center of Sallie Mae, which has large call centers near Dallas in Killeen. Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae have all had problems in the [ast couple of years, and they were trying to consolidate. They were trying to reduce costs and we said, We will take over your center in Killeen. We will ensure that your people are gainfully employed. That is a major requirement for them, and we will also ensure, above all, that whatever the cost was, the newer center will be a delta cheaper. That is the other trend which is emerging.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis
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