I came across this at a financial services captive center recently - and this could easily be a challenge for any BPO or shared-services entity. The scenario was as follows - work is submitted online in an operational system, and eventually is queued for processing by global delivery teams.

The catch is that the unit of work that is submitted (such as a simple change-of-address transaction) could easily involve multiple sub-units of work (such as updating each account in different systems with the change-of-address). Also, based on the type of work submitted, the typical number of sub-units of work, and the average time to process the work may be different.

The challenge then becomes - how does one compare the performance of individuals in a team, or teams in different delivery centers?

The two key metrics of productivity and accuracy have to be adjusted for the different types of work-units (and their sub-units) making it non-trivial to derive the overall scorecard rating of individuals and teams. Software solutions can go a long way towards automating this process - provided of course, there is clarity on the relative weightages of the productivity and accuracy metrics.

Hyderabad claims to be the "bpo" capital of India - and I had an opportunity last week to visit the city (after 15+ years). Every city has its own unique character and growth pattern - and to the extent I could tell from a single visit - Hyderabad has the feel of a city determined to become modern. Malls and stores with most brands I know (and some - I guess from Europe that I don't) were represented on the main road to the city from the airport. Also, unlike many of the cities where the infrastructure has not at all kept up with the growth, it did seem there were several road expansion projects underway, flyovers being built, and new "hi-tech" centers away from the "old" city being developed.

Several MNCs (multi-nationals) have set up services centers in and around Hyderabad, one senior executive (at an MNC) who originates from New Delhi remarked "I like it better here".

Overall - I was impressed - perhaps Hyderabad is indeed ready to become "Cyberabad - The BPO capital of the World' as one sign claimed.

We were recently working with a financial services enterprise who was in the process of outsourcing several key service areas in IT and HR towers to 2 major providers.

As we engaged in the process to determine the critical and key metrics that need to be measured, reported and tracked for SLA compliance, it dawned on them, in their enthusiasm to contractually cover all possible performance indicators - they had not fully thought about what they would do with the performance metrics that were reported and what would be the appropriate action on a breach of a service level.

Which brings us to the first rule of SLAs - construct SLAs on metrics that are actionable and that have a clear business or user impact (on meeting targets or falling below minimum service levels). There may be other operational metrics that would be useful to track and report - though, these may not be good candidates to base SLAs on.

For example, it may be somewhat useful to track the responsiveness and resolution of severity-3 and severity-4 tickets, though the business or user impact of an SLA based on these metrics for such tickets may be minimal.

Also, should a vendor be penalized for meeting the SLA target on severity-1 and severity-2 tickets but missing a monthly SLA for severity-3 tickets?

Who should be notified on such a breach? What would they do? Is it worthwhile doing a root-cause analysis of this breach? If the answer to these questions is "no" - the metric is not a good candidate for an SLA.

The client ended up with less than 50 SLAs across the two towers, though they had over 250 operational metrics that they were planning to track and report.

The 100+ (at least it seemed that way) services providers at the Gartner Outsourcing summit in Orlando were not just selling to customers - they were selling to each other! In an interesting twist in the evolution of the "global services supply chain" - regional services providers from Ukraine, Brazil and Russia - were actively seeking partnerships, alignment with leading global providers from India. As the outsourcing pie grows, the share of the rest of the world (vis-a-vis India) is bound to grow. All indicators points to an upcoming massive consolidation in the services industry (which has probably already started - going by some recent activity; EDS acquiring a majority stake in Mphasis, Accenture and Savista, etc. I expect over the next two years the larger India-based providers to actively acquire companies in eastern europe and south america, and to a smaller extent buy US-based niche business process outsourcing companies.

Which brings me to Hello World! - a quick introduction to my profile that is an interesting mix of providing services (CTO/CIO of a business process outsourcing company, and early on, was with Tata Unisys), purchasing and managing outsourced services, as well as developing and deploying enterprise software products (databases, portals, middleware and solutions). I am currently with Enlighta, a provider of outsourcing management tools to leading providers and buyers of outsourced services. In this role, get to meet and interact with leading providers, global sourcing teams and advisors and analysts covering this space. Will share what I think is interesting to me (and hopefully to you too). Stay tuned.

A quick introduction to my profile that is an interesting mix of providing services (CTO/CIO of a business process outsourcing company, and early on, was with Tata Unisys), purchasing and managing outsourced services, as well as developing and deploying enterprise software products (databases, portals, middleware and solutions). I am currently with Enlighta, a provider of outsourcing management tools to leading providers and buyers of outsourced services. In this role, get to meet and interact with leading providers, global sourcing teams and advisors and analysts covering this space. Will share what I think is interesting to me (and hopefully to you too).