BPO shockwave

8216;8216;A fraud is serious business,8217;8217; says a Bangalore-based analyst tracking the industry. Earlier, Lehman Brothers and Dell moved back their back-end business from India to the US but the reason was lack of quality and accent problems, not fraud. But there have been earlier incidents too with Wipro Spectramind facing a similar scam in 2004.

Experts worry incidents like this may slow down the BPO movement, though no one is buying 8212; not yet, at least 8212; Forrester Research8217;s claim that call center expansion will slow down by 30 per cent.

Is India unsafe?

But the whole industry agrees that it must read the warning signals and buck up on security. 8216;8216;The industry takes the issue of information security seriously,8217;8217; says Akshaya Bhargava, MD 038; CEO, Progeon Infosys8217; BPO, 8216;8216;but not every company does so8217;8217;. And that8217;s one lesson to be learnt 8212; the BPO has to make sure right policies are in place to detect fraud quickly and take corrective measures.

At Intelenet Global Services, there are quality checks not only for outbound calls voice, but also to checks to find out if the agent is adhering to security norms. 8216;8216;If we find an agent going off track, we warn him thrice, before asking him to quit,8217;8217; says Susir Kumar M, CEO.

But if money, which is traceable, can be siphoned off, what happens to information passing through BPO agents? At top BPO WNS, which manages travel, insurance, healthcare and knowledge services, there8217;s a 12-member risk management team working round the clock to ensure there are no leakages. 8216;8216;It8217;s a very controlled environment. We do lots of training and risks are spelt out in black and white,8217;8217; says a WNS official.

Lessons to be learnt

The major challenge is to make screening as tight as possible, says Partha Iyengar, VP, Gartner. And though a company cannot shirk ethical responsiblity for a criminal activity, Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM says BPOs must hire people with the right skills and right attitude, teach them values and ethics if necessary.

8216;8216;Companies will have to be more careful in employing people. In a 10,000 to 15,000 organisation, there will be some rotten apples, but you cannot paint the whole lot as bad,8217;8217; said an official of a top IT major. Though Karnik admits that with a workforce of 1 million it8217;s impossible to ensure 100 per cent foolproof security.

For about a year-and-a-half now, NASSCOM and the BPO industry have been trying to draw up a blueprint to tighten the system laws and all to do just that 8212; ensure foolproof security. Having a nationwide register of BPO employees with background checks is just one part of it. NASSCOM and the BPOs have been putting together a proposal to ammend IT laws. 8216;8216;We are in the final stages,8217;8217; says Karnik. 8216;8216;We should be able to send the proposal to the IT Ministry in six-eight weeks.8217;8217;

Ask MphasiS BPO President Bhaskar Menon how the fraud will affect the company and he admits 8216;8216;It8217;s too early to say8217;8217;. With Indian BPOs still waiting for the 8216;big deals8217; to come through 8212; the world BPO market is worth over 400 billion 8212; this is clearly a dampener the industry could have done without.

Inputs from Arundhati Bakshi-Dighe