HCL has bucked the trend US and British companies follow, of relocating their customer care operations to India and created contact centre jobs in the UK.
LONDON: Four years ago when HCL made the ground-breaking decision to buy a call centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and become the first Indian company to own a BPO in Britain, everyone in the Irish city was scared of losing jobs to India. Today, it is the pride of Belfast, with HCL expanding to a second unit in Armagh and providing employment to more than 2,000 Irish youngsters and boasting further expansion plans.
HCL has bucked the trend most American and British companies follow, of relocating their customer care operations to India and created contact centre jobs in the UK, thus changed the notion that British jobs are being stolen by Indians.
The 30-year-old company is one of India’s original IT start ups and a leading Global Technological and IT enterprise with an annual revenue of $2.7 billion with IT products and services contributing to revenues of $1.4 billion. HCL comprises 30,000 professionals of diverse nationalities who operate from over 26 offices across 15 countries, including 170 offices in India.
In 2001, HCL acquired a 90 per cent shareholding in a British telecom call centre on the outskirts of Belfast. Today, it is fully owned by HCL, employs 1,550 and is the single largest BPO operation in the UK.
Both Belfast and Armagh suffered decades of sectarian strife due to the IRA-induced unrest, and unemployment had become a major issue sending youngster away in search of jobs.
Outsourcing to India has come under a lot of criticism in the UK because of precious local jobs being lost, and when HCL bought over the call centre it simply added fuel to the fire. Fears of losing jobs to Indians ran high in the community. But four years on and HCL is thriving. Senior managers have been recruited and the company has invested heavily in people, process and technology. A $8 million expansion has added an additional centre in the last year changing impressions of India so much so that a business delegation led by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland is currently on a week’s tour of India to sell UK cities to Indian businessmen.
DNA spoke to Kevin Houston, senior vice president and general manager of HCL’s Northern Ireland operations in Belfast.
The initial fright in Ireland of HCL taking jobs away has gone now?
Yes, we are now recognised as a large employer and provide employment of choice. Locals here no longer see India as a threat but more as an opportunity. There is always a waiting list for people wanting to work for us and our vacancies are filled almost immediately. We have people wanting to work for us both here and in India.
You have a foreign exchange programme for your staff between Northern Ireland and India?
Yes, at any given time there are about 10 people from here working in our Indian offices and 10 from India here. They go for three months or a year for experience, and seen it as a life changing experience. Over the last four years, more than 100 people have taken part in these exchanges, and there is always a long queue of people waiting for secondment to India.
How has opening a centre in Belfast helped HCL’s India operations?
The international expansion was based on HCL’s realisation that while outsourcing to India can produce cost savings of up to 60 per cent, this differential by itself is not sufficient to build a global BPO services company. For us in Northern Ireland this means that that while India is an integral part of the solution we offer our clients, far from taking jobs out of the UK, we are actually creating hundreds of new positions.
In addition to handling clients directly in NI, the call centre also helps migrate work to sister operations in India, allowing it to take on more lucrative higher value, long term contracts. In some cases, the company has provided customers with a ‘blended’ solution in which work is shared between its operations in Northern Ireland and India. One example is the work being undertaken for a US IT services company specialising in mainframe computers and related infrastructure. Support for its American customers was provided by HCL’s Indian operations while customers in six EU countries were supported out of Belfast because European language skills are in short supply in India.
What sort of clients do you service and how do you decide whether you will use the Indian or NI centres?
Our clients range from telecom, retail companies, financial services to the media. Our Indian BPO has 7,000 agents and depends on customer preference. But we find that voice processes or high touch logistics work better in the UK. Back office work, administration work etc are better in India.
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