How big data analytics can empower BPOs?

BPO companies and their clients are sitting on gold mines of data which can be extracted and analysed to deliver critical information and generate strategic insights

By Rajendra Deshpande

The changing dynamics of the digital platform has a direct impact on businesses. The emergence of disruptive technologies have led most companies to rethink and act upon their digital strategies. The rise of Social Media, Analytics, and Cloud- collectively called SMAC – has made it imperative for companies to metamorphose and adapt to these changes in order to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Most companies are now leaving behind legacy business models and taking steps towards digital transformation by adopting SMAC or Big Data analytics in particular, in order to gain competitive advantage.

There has been much buzz around Big Data and how it is helping companies enhance their business productivity and extend better services to their customers. Internet users leave digital footprints behind through their online activities and this leads to the generation of a huge amount of structured and unstructured data – collectively known as Big Data. According to studies, as much as 2.6 Exabyte of data is generated every day around the world and about 90% of the data in the world today has been generated in the past two years. Mining and analysis of this data can provide invaluable insights that can help companies, especially those in the BPO sector, offer better services to their clients.

Evolution of the Contact Centre
BPO companies and their clients are sitting on gold mines of data, which can be extracted and analysed to deliver critical information. The advantage that Big Data offers is that of predictive analysis. More and more companies are now relying on predictive analysis than reactive analysis to make business more productive and offer better customer service. With the gold rush that disruptive technologies have created, businesses are finding it strategically more advantageous to take a proactive approach in handling problems and discovering opportunities.

BPO businesses can highly profit from Big Data analytics because of the volume of data they gather. By analysing current data, they can generate strategic insights for their clients and build better customer relationships. The rise of disruptive technologies have completely reshaped BPO-customer relationships now. Businesses now need to focus more on reinforcing customer relationships by mapping customer preferences and delivering more personalised services. And data can be instrumental in achieving this end. According to reputed research firm Gartner, 70 per cent of the most profitable companies will be relying on Big Data for real time predictive analysis by the year 2016.

Predictive analytics can help in analysing customer preferences and derive insights into behaviours and attitudes which can be used to aid in furthering better customer relations. Besides building a healthy customer relationship, predictive analytics can also help in improving customer satisfaction. With the information derived from analytics, BPOs can design targeted programmes by identifying customers who will most profit from their campaigns and focus on one-to-one customer interactions.

There are other ways too in which BPO entities can benefit from predictive analytics. With this technology, BPO entities can help their employees meet key metrics by accurately identifying key service demands and provide deliverables accordingly. Consequentially, businesses can maximise their work force and promote employee productivity at the same time.

This is particularly true for BPO centres that provide voice calling services. Knowing the customer’s communication preferences based on his personality will help BPOs put the customer with the right executive who can cater to his requirements. With the right permutation and combination, better productivity can be achieved from operations as the customers get what they want and the agent feels more productive on delivering the right service.

Predictive analytics can also play an important role on servicing newly introduced products. It can provide useful insights into the response of the target audience to a new service or product for brands. BPOs that will deploy predictive analytics will not only be able to deliver better business outcomes but also help their clients make smarter decisions.

There are several BPO providers who have come to realise the value of being able to mine out useful information from the huge volumes of transactional data they handle every day. In the long run, the quality of services provided by a BPO can be greatly differentiated using predictive analysis. This can play as a differentiator in business and hence lead to more business wins for a particular company.

Analysis of transactional data provides clients with actionable insight into their business operations – enabling them to improve working capital management, claim full discounts from their providers for paid-within-terms invoice processing or increase customer acquisition, satisfaction and retention, for example.

As per a recent research by IT major Accenture, which also has its presence in the BPO sector, about 42 per cent of high performing BPOs, which are the ones that get full value from their BPO relationships said that analytics is a major component in their service delivery package.

Clearly, Big Data is the newest source of value creation in a business and it’s time that the BPO sector gears up for adopting this new technology as meaningful information culled from analytics deliver real outcomes, which can be critical for clients.

The author is chief information officer, Serco Global Services. Views are personal.