APEX – Offshore Call Center Assignment Help
Executive Summary
Businesses are going through enormous transformations to stay in competition and technology is playing a vital role in it. Many businesses have realized the importance of having offshore setup for certain aspects of their existing business. Having an offshore business has many advantages, as it not only helps businesses in reducing their staff costs but at the same time a large pool of potential candidates can be accessed. APEX a local computer manufacturer has realized the importance of setting up an offshore Call Center to meet its growing number of customers. This report has been prepared to give better overview about the trends that are taking place in Call Center industry, the importance of IHRM and why a country like INDIA is an ideal and preferred location for the offshore Call Center. This report elaborates on the macro environment of India, along with the recruitment and selection process that APEX can use to recruit the best possible talent for its business.
Introduction
Background
With the ever-increasing demand of customer support, APEX that mainly deals in customized computer systems, hardware’s and other IT support is in need to increase its staff in order to be able to offer 24/7 over the phone support to its existing and potential customers. APEX has been in the market for over 5 years now, and to meet the challenges and stay in market, it’s very important that the business should and must open a Call Centre through which various customer support services and sales can be generated. To do so, a report is generated that highlight the trends taking place in the Call Centre business, which country is ideal to have an offshore Call Centre, challenges that are likely to be faced by the business and most important the role of managers in IHRM.
Aims
This report will give an in detailed analysis about India as the preferred destination for offshore Call Centre, how the employees will be recruited, what strategies to consider and most importantly what are the benefits that APEX can get by having this offshore Call Centre.
Call Centers: trends, challenges and issues
Over the years Call center have becomes a major aspect of the post industrial employment landscape as it helps businesses in able to achieve their goals in a more efficient manner. As stated by Mukherjee and Malhotra, 2009, the employee turnover is high and the overall employee morale is usually low. One of the major challenges in the call Centre industry is the high turnover rate, that exist mainly because of the routine work and low pay (Brannan. M, 2015).
Given the profound developments taking place in Call Center technologies, there are a number of trends I believe we must prepare for. These are not predictions – they have already been set in motion and are changing the Call Center landscape significantly and rapidly. There’s no doubt that major developments has taken place in call centre industry, various technologies are already been deployed by companies and many are like to be implemented in the near future (Francisco. S & Brad. C, 2006). Few of the prominent trends that have already taken place are for example:
Nowadays, customers are more informed about the products and services they should be getting and as for this very reason they have higher expectations. Pretty much any business will require staff for their call centre, in case of businesses operating in different countries will definitely need agents. To be able to provide better quality service, it is very important to equip the call centre staff with adequate knowledge along with the right set of skills. A major change in call centre structure has also been noticed as many call centre agents have not the freedom to work from the comfort of their home (Francisco. S & Brad. C, 2006).
Roles of IHRM in off-shoring
In order to understand the role that HR plays in international offshoring it is really very important to understand the two different terms, offshoring and IHRM. Talking about offshoring, it refers to the relocation of any business processes to other countries in order to support their existing business operations (Mihalache et al, 2012). There is no doubt that offshoring has many advantages, to name few, it allows businesses to hire cheap labour, large pools of qualified workers and specialized talented people (Larsen et al. 2013).
On the other hand, IHRM (international human resource management) is different from Human Resource Management, as that only deal with people within the workplace, however IHRM is responsible for dealing with people, training them across different cultures, ethical values and religions (HRINASIA.com). Based on this information, its very understandable and clear that HR usually deals with internal matters, for example training of employees who are hired from the same culture. On the other hand, IHRM has to deal with various aspects, such as managing employees across different cultures, have to take their religions into considerations, their beliefs and values as well. IHRM is constantly moving forward, in a more competitive environment where it has to take care of line-of-business and not only the country its operating in. IHRM is far more complex as compare to the usual HR, as with IHRM there are issues associated with it on both external and internal levels (Budhwar. P, 2012).
All those activities and practices that are part of HR, becomes more complex when consider from the IHRM context. The same process of recruitment and selection within the same country is relatively easier as compare to when the same process has to be carried out in different countries. At the same time the function of training for International HR departments is usually complex, as in the process of training their regional managers, companies have to train them from the global perspective (Barrachina. M, 2019). To be able to recruit the right talent in India for the Call Centre business, won’t be a major problem, mainly because of the fact that India is already home to hundreds of Call Centres and a large pool of talented and skilful people can easily be generated.
As stated by Chadee & Raman, (2009), over the last few years, India has become one of the most preferred destination for off-shoring of various IT services and Call Centres for companies around the world. At present, India is accounted for more than 50% of the global IT services that is valued for more than US$170 billion.
Call center in chosen country
Introduce the chosen country
When it comes to deciding which country would be better as compare to other for setting up an offshore Call Centre, there aren’t many options available. Countries like India, Pakistan and Philippines are generally the preferred ones, mainly because of low cost staff can be hired and recruitment of talented and skilful people can be easily done. In the case of APEX India is selected as the destination for the offshore Call Centre. Though countries like Pakistan and Philippines are equally strong candidate, however there are few reasons to opt for India.
Its no doubt that India is considered to be among the growing economies of the world and it also considered as IT hub. Since 2014, India’s GDP has increased by 7.5% on yearly basis and India is one of the quickest developing G20 nation. India is one of those countries which hardly had any impact due to global economic crises, instead FDI inflows were almost increased by over 40% on a year to year basis (Budhwar. P, 2012). India is also a home for many MNC and TNC’s, as because of this very reason it makes it very easy to find competitive talent.
To select India as the preferred location for setting up a Call Centre a proper in detailed macro environment is conducted that would give better overview about the country political situation, economic situation, social cultural and technological capabilities.
Macro-environmental context of chosen country
Political risks:
Talking about the overall political risk of India, then it won’t be wrong to say that the country is in turmoil because of the government’s new citizenship law. Though cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta are usually considered safe, however due to the new citizenship law, over two dozen people have been killed (Balakrishnan. P, 2020). Despite of all this, the overall political situation in India is usually stable as the country has never seen any Marshall Law. The policies are lucrative enough for international companies to consider India when it comes to set up Call Centers.
Economic:
According to a report generated by IBEF.org (2020), over the last few years, India has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and in the next 5 – 10 years it is very likely that India will be among top 5 economic power. For the year of 2019, India nominal GDP was 12 percent, and the most interesting fact is that India has retained its spot as the third largest startup base in the world. For any international company one of the most lucrative thing is the fact that India’s labor force will be over 150 million by 2020, this simply mean that more options will be available for recruiting talented individuals (IBEF.org, 2020).
Socio-cultural:
India is a very diversified country, with more then 1.2 billion people in the country, India is considered among the top 5 most populous countries. The country has different regions that have their own distinct culture, languages, religions, food and values. However, one thing that you are likely to find common in them is that the common language is English (Zimmermann. K, 2017). So finding skillful and talented people for Call Centre won’t be that much of a problem.
Technological capabilities
There’s no doubt that India is considered as IT HUB, with the growing adoption of technology, it will definitely play a major role in India’s economic development. Not only this but the tech savvy talented people of India wont take long to adapt new technologies such as Blockchain, Cybersecurity and AI (Dham. V, 2019). Because of this positive attitude and the willingness to take on the challenges, new technologies can easily be applied to the Call Centre business in India.
Other Advantages
Among many countries, India is one of those countries that has developed a flourishing business process providing support to various outsourcing industries. The western partners or investors consider the technological advancements and positive attitude of people as the benefit (Holland. P & Dowland. P, 2017). With such technological advancements taking place in the country, there are many advantages that APEX can use for its business.
Recruitment and Selection Process
Over time many changes has taken place, how managers use to recruit employees has also changed rapidly. One major change that has taken place is mainly due to the online platforms, like social media platform. Through such platforms not only job vacancies can be posted but at the same time, recruiters can easily do a background check on employees, on their education background and values. All this plays a major role towards recruiting the right talent that would not only perform better but at the same time, by implying such methodology it will lower the employee turnover rate. As stated by French & Rumbles, (2010) the selection process only becomes efficient if the job opportunities are made publicly aware among the right group of people, who actually fit the criteria and are talented.
