EXL, a business process solutions' company that integrates operations management services, decision analytics, and technology platforms to deliver immediate results and long-term business impact, plans to tie up with management institutions in the country to leapfrog the development of human resources capable of delivering analytics services. This was revealed by the company's global head for human resources, Mohan AVK, to a leading newspaper in Pune. "The latest piece in the company's strategy has come in the wake of the trend of value migration in the BPM space as the cost arbitrage that drove the erstwhile business process outsourcing (BPO) sector for many years is on a decline," he said.

EXL works as a strategic partner to help its clients simplify and streamline business operations, improve corporate finance, manage compliance, create new channels for growth, and better adapt to change. "We have created analytics capabilities to add value to customer engagements," Mohan said. The strategy is also a method of de-risking the voice BPO business where there is a significant drop in margins as cheaper destinations such as the Philippines have emerged. EXL itself has moved a large part of its voice operations to Philippines, with 5,000 of its 17,000 personnel located there.

"EXL's move to becoming a value adding partner for its customers by harnessing analytics will get a boost by the three processing platforms it acquired in the last one year. We are looking at moving up the value chain of the customer and also claiming a share of the added benefit he gets," Mohan added. The company is following the approach of creating its own talent pool in analytics by working with academic institutions. "We have developed a curriculum based on our own insights and peculiarities of our customers' business complexities and want to develop talent capable of handling various aspects of customer engagement," he said.

The company has formalised a tie-up with Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow to run a post-graduate level analytics programme. "Companies have tried to increase efficiency and squeeze cost out of their operations for years. Today, adding productivity and eliminating waste can require a scalpel, not a saw. EXL looks deeper at client operations to understand how data and decision analytics can unlock operational efficiencies. Whether saving USD 1.5 billion in annual spend for a client by identifying attrition causes, increasing collections by 66 per cent per hour for another, or identifying revenue leakage for logistics companies, EXL taps sophisticated modeling capabilities, text and sentiment mining, and a proprietary methodology to deliver high-impact solutions," the EXL website states.