Kavitha Vivek
Bangalore

IT solutions and services player MphasiS Ltd has more than one reason to bet heavily on its BPO and IT-enabled services arm MphasiS BPO . Not only has it recruited 120 people between January 1 and January 24, 2002, with an aim to notch up 200 per cent topline growth next fiscal, but has also unexpectedly opened up cross-sell and up-sell opportunities between the two businesses the company operates in.

Interestingly, a US-based MphasiS BPO customer has committed to an IT solutions project with MphasiS, while another MphasiS banking services customer has appointed MphasiS BPO as the BPO arm for servicing all its e-mail communication.

And going forward, the company’s chairman Jerry Rao told The Financial Express, there would certainly now be more focus on how this interesting cross-sell could be leveraged to formulate a strategy, to enable similar synergies between the two arms.

“Let me first make it clear that we did not expect this kind of opportunity at all. In reality the divisions in a large corporation that take care of IT outsourcing and BPO are completely different and there is not much possibility for a joint decision,” Mr Rao said.

While the company maintained that this could not be indicative of any immediate trend and preferred to take a conventional stand on the issue, MphasiS’ sentiments were certainly buoyed by this, and plans were being worked out to look into this more closely, he added.

“This is one key reason why a lot of IT services players are looking at the BPO segment. References still are an important part of the game and with MphasiS now being one of the established players in the IT solutions and services segment, customers were willing to work with the BPO arm, giving a go-by to three months of preliminary investigations,” Mr Rao said.

Meanwhile, MphasiS BPO is currently looking at making an entry into the specialty process outsourcing segment within the next 18 months. The specialty process outsourcing segment includes offering BPO services in areas like brokerage settlements, securities, corporate actions, etc., where there is a significant scope for large-scale paperwork to be replaced with electronic functions.

According to MphasiS BPO CEO Arthur R Flew the plan going forward was to expand across the chain to offer all services (high-end to low-end work) except collection services. “We are already doing claims processing as part of our specialty processes focus. Going forward we see MphasiS BPO as the link to integrating the channels which makes it an end-to-end offering from the MphasiS stable,” Mr Flew said.