What Are The Most Common Misconceptions About Outsourcing To India?
India’s vastness often leads to misconceptions about its culture and business, especially for those who haven’t experienced living or working there. This applies both to general stereotypes of India as well as to business. Many companies operate very successfully from India – DATAMARK has a team in both Chennai and Mumbai.
India is the most populous nation on earth. In June this year, India overtook China and now has around 1.486 billion citizens. With its ever-expanding population, India showcases exceptional adaptability to technology and boasts a vast talent pool despite being about a third of the land mass of the continental USA.
India’s Role in Global Outsourcing
India is now a leading location for the global technology industry and business process outsourcing (BPO). This expertise in BPO has come from a long history of delivering business services from India for several decades. Companies such as GE and American Express have managed their business processes from India for over 30 years.
This long experience means that there is a large number of people with deep expertise and knowledge. Some senior executives working today can trace their careers to the early contact centers and back-office processing centers that opened in India in the 1990s.
However, India is now gaining greater visibility for their expertise in technology and business services delivered through technology.
Look at the Indian space program. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon last August. The lander spent several weeks collecting data and sending it back to scientists on earth. Not satisfied with just the moon, India sent their Aditya-L1 spacecraft on a mission to the sun in September. These missions have been planned for over 15 years, and together, they are symbolic of the ambition India has to be seen globally as a technology leader.
But even though India has a long history in technology and BPO and is now successfully landing on the moon, many misconceptions are constantly repeated.
Challenging Misconceptions about India
We asked our online audience for their views on India and where they feel many of the misconceptions can be found. Every respondent to our survey confirmed that they were very familiar with the concept of outsourcing, so this was a group of people who knew about technology and remote services.
54% confirmed that they had previously, or were currently, outsourcing business processes to India – in addition, another 9% said they were considering it. So, most of the respondents have experience in India, meaning this is an excellent group to ask about misconceptions.
The most common misconceptions, according to our respondents and ranked by the most common first, were:
1. Language barriers
2. Cultural differences
3. Poor service quality
4. Time zone differences
5. Security concerns
6. Lack of skilled workforce
We also asked our group to list why companies are most likely to consider outsourcing business processes to India; they said:
1. Cost savings on labor
2. Access to a skilled and educated workforce
3. Faster project turnaround times
4. Ability to focus on core business functions
Contrasting these two lists is interesting- the reasons companies choose India and the misconceptions about India. Beyond the cost argument alone, companies are working with India to tap into a bright, digitally literate workforce. This helps them to accelerate their own business and to focus on what really matters for their brand.
Language problems, cultural differences, and poor service quality lead to misconceptions.
Bottom Line?
They are obviously misconceptions. How could companies be out there beating a path to India if the end result is poor quality services that are culturally problematic and the people don’t even speak English? India has about one billion people more than the USA that speaks English – albeit sometimes as a second or third language, but it is still one billion more.
India has evolved into a nation that leads the world in outsourcing technology and BPO. No other country has the decades of experience that has led to such a deep talent pool. India also has about 41.4 million students in higher education, so the pipeline of educated talent constantly expands.
For more information on DATAMARK in India, please click here.
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