Mr Gudular, who was earlier the head of BPO at Cognizant Technology Solutions, will also spearhead the company’s attempt to leverage the client base of EDS, especially in healthcare and insurance, to get more BPO contracts, company officials said.

BPO accounted for about 22% of MphasiS’ revenues in the December 2007 quarter. “Our goal is to increase transaction processing as part of the business,” Mr Gudalur told ET. He said about 65% of the BPO revenues currently come from voice-based processes and 35% from back-office processes. A significant part of the unit’s current revenues are from finance and accounting, human resources and telecom.

This is the third senior-level top management appointment the company has announced in this year. In January, the software firm, now majority owned by EDS, had appointed Jeya Kumar, who earlier headed the global services business of Sun Microsystems, as CEO, and Michael Coomer from EDS in place of MphasiS co-founder Jerry Rao as chairman.

Jeroen Tas, another a co-founder, has been moved to a new role where he will head the applications services business for EDS, an MphasiS official said. The company will also have to find a replacement for CFO Alok Misra, who moved to WNS Global Services in February.

Part of Mr Gudalur’s brief is to look at restructuring the BPO to align it more closely with the IT business, so it can be postioned as a single integrated offering to clients. “The aim is not to be a great back office company but to integrate across,” Mr Gudalur said.