The other side of strategy
July, 2015
- Most strategies tend to focus on ‘demand gains’, for instance setting ambitious targets for the BPO industry, tourism etc.
- Often forgotten, yet critical in any strategic exercise is to address:
- Which competitors will lose business – as a result of our gain?
Why should customers come to us? (The logic and the magic)
What will competition do while we ‘grab’ their customers?
Have we got our supply chain sorted out? - A classic example is the recent unfolding of events in India and Philippines incited that with the passage of the Data Privacy Act in the Philippines, International customers from US, EU and ANZ now opt the Philippines BPO industry.
- With international data privacy standards, which is beneficial especially for the multitude of sensitive information handled by the BPO sector, which could include things like banking details, this move by the government particularly had a huge positive influence in the drive for growth in the BPO sector.
- Throw in the cultural affinity and the Indian Accent- an accent which many outsiders fail to fathom adds all the more reason for Companies to opt of India.
- The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India estimated that the country had lost over 50 per cent of the international voice centre business to the Philippines.
- Fast forward a few more years, what do we know; India wins back some voice-based BPO services from Philippines! They streamlined their supply chain to claim what was once theirs.
- Exploiting the large delivery centers by scaling up and multiplying the sizes, India has now been able to better manifest their intellectual resource pool. Where Philippines lagged is they failed to keep up to demands of their customers. Clinging on to this opportunity, BPO firms in India offer the integrated tech services customers desire.
