TCS plans new tech platforms
The Hindu Business Line — September 13, 2007

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) expects to launch two new technology platforms shortly, which should help the company expand its business process outsourcing (BPO) offerings.

The chief operating officer, N Chandrasekaran, said the company expected to launch the human resource outsourcing (HRO) and finance and accounting (F&A) platforms in the next couple of months, which have been developed internally.

A technology platform is an underlying application on which transactions such as claims and mortgage among others could be processed to deliver the desired benefit for the customer's clientele.

Chandrasekaran said the company's insurance platform was doing well and that the new platforms would be targeted at both existing and new customers.

Biz target
TCS is betting heavily on its Platform BPO business and expects to add few more platforms.

"We will have about five to six new platforms over the next three years with each platform delivering a business of $100 million plus," he said. The company is looking at areas such as retail and banking among other sectors and will be developing these new platforms on its own.

"We may also look at partnerships in some cases to develop these platforms," he said.

Platform BPO
TCS derives close to six per cent of its revenues from the BPO business, which mainly comes from the transaction processing and platform-based offerings. The company does not have any voice-component in its BPO business.

Growth driver
Platform BPO is considered to drive the next phase of growth for Indian BPO firms.
Majority of the Indian BPO firms are seen investing in creating technology platforms of their own.

According to industry analysts, Platform BPO is all about process standardisation and creating predictable delivery, which in turn, results in better quality offering. Using a platform for delivering the required processes also improves efficiency, they said.