Vertex BPO hops back into business

[gopu]

NEW DELHI: Vertex Customer Services, the Gurgaon-based Indian arm of the UK-

headquartered business process outsourcing company, that grew
to about 3,000 staff
back in 2003 and then almost imploded with key client exits and got reduced to a 400 people operation, is now getting back in business. A new CEO and a new strategy hopes to see the BPO company back on track.

It plans to hire over 6,000 staff by 2013. Besides, it’s looking at acquiring an analytics back office company to scale up its India offering from plain vanilla customer service work to analysing customer activity for better market forecasts for customers.

Many of the 6,000 positions could arise from work being transitioned from its US and UK operations, where it employs 9,000 staff, to India. That includes moving its own HR and finance operations to the Gurgaon-based shared service centre and transitioning some of the work it does for UK retailer Marks & Spencer, low cost airline BMIbaby, back office of a British water company and other customers.

Keshav C Gaur, CEO, Vertex Customer Services India said, ``we will offer customers a range of services spanning web support, customer care, transaction processing to analysing business activity. That’s where an analytics buyout will help. We are also looking at 50-60% revenue from the India market.’’ The company has just transitioned web support work for Marks & Spencer from the UK to India and it plans to increase it further to include a range of customer care activities. Mr Gaur joined Vertex about eight weeks back, from Fidelity, where he set up the mutual fund’s back office operations in India and was the country head.

``We are back in business, not just for global customers but to pitch for both government and non-government back office contracts in India as well,’’ said Jeff Chittenden, COO, Vertex.

Vertex was acquired by two private equity players Oak Hill Capital Partners and GenNx360 and Knox Lawrence International from UK’s United Utilities. Oak Hill owns 75% in Veretx. It was the exit of two clients — Power Gen and Orange Mobile — that accounted for most of the work in the India operations, that led to its collapse in India. Now the company sees a recovery with a strategy to transition work from US, UK to India to help cut costs for customers and the domestic business focus.