Jehan Perinpanayagam, Chief Executive Officer at Infomate, a pioneering BPM company and leading export earner and a part of the John Keells Group, shares insights into the growing importance of the Sri Lankan BPM industry amidst the unfolding pandemic and economic challenges.

Can you tell us how the BPM industry has performed over the last couple of years?

The BPM industry comprising 80-plus companies employing over 25,000 people serving a global clientele has grown impressively, even during the pandemic.

Sri Lankan BPMs primarily focus on finance and accounting, but the range of services has expanded rapidly in recent years. Today, Sri Lankan BPMs provide round the clock services in multiple languages to clients from all over the world.

Since the global Covid-19 outbreak and the transformations at the workplace and how companies operate, the BPM industry is seeing encouraging growth in volumes, new business, client acquisitions and ramping up recruitment to meet the snowballing demand. Another contributing factor is that global companies are increasingly diversifying geographic risks by spreading their outsourced work to multiple delivery centres.

According to a recent BPM industry survey conducted by SLASSCOM, the main export markets are Australia, the UK, Nordic countries and North America. The BPM industry is also making inroads into new markets like the Middle East, India and the Philippines.

At Infomate, we are seeing these unfolding trends. Our range of BPM solutions has expanded beyond accounting and finance BPO work to image annotation, HR outsourcing, data entry, payroll, shipping documentation, sales admin support, helpdesk and lead generation.

How has service delivery been impacted by the pandemic and evolved in the new normal?

We moved to remote working seamlessly because we saw this coming and laid out the infrastructure and processes for effective collaboration, monitoring and execution of work projects for disbursed teams. We bolstered our security protocols for uncompromised confidentiality and data security despite teams working remotely, enabling us to execute complex project migrations during the pandemic.

Infomate proved to be a reliable partner to all our global clients, many of whom were experiencing tremendous anxiety and uncertainty as the pandemic unfolded in their home markets. Infomate, in many cases, was the one constant throughout those tumultuous months. We not only maintained our service levels but surpassed them to the delight of our clients, as their very positive feedback has shown.

What are some of the challenges confronting the Sri Lankan BPM industry?

Firstly, despite the growth and the encouraging attention building upon the industry, we need to be better known as a BPM destination compared to say India or the Philippines. Sri Lanka is known for its tourism and tea, so we need to build our Island of Ingenuity brand into a globally recognised brand.

The second challenge is to build adequate capacity to ensure we can meet our ambitious goals of doubling our numbers by 2025. We need to develop new talent pools to avoid a war for talent. Growth will be challenging without a talent pool large enough to drive and sustain it, and that is why the industry is closely working with universities and the government on this.

How do you see the BPM industry evolving over the next few years?

One of the most exciting trends is the impact of the rapid advancement in technologies like artificial intelligence and robotic process on automation.

Bots are fast taking over repetitive and even complex tasks: this is the opportunity for BPMs to automate more functions thereby creating more space for our people to move into higher-end value-added functions.

More knowledge-intensive services will help unlock growth opportunities for our people and the BPM industry. So, instead of being a threat, bots are opening new opportunities for people-led processes higher up the value chain and complementing what we do.

The BPM industry can only expand because companies worldwide are increasingly looking to outsource non-core functions to focus on their core businesses to survive and grow in the post-pandemic new normal. I surveyed a group of CFOs and the results were that over 40% predicted that outsourcing will increase post-pandemic. The pandemic has reinforced the belief that a multi-country risk strategy is required, that with countries collaborating we all win and that work can be carried out effectively from anywhere.

The IT/BPO industry is already the fourth largest export revenue earner. And during the pandemic, while other industries suffered setbacks, this industry has continued to grow. Several global brands are eyeing the emerging IT/BPO opportunities in Sri Lanka and seriously exploring their options here.

With growth prospects looking very promising for the BPM sector, the industry hopes to double its workforce from 25,000 to 50,000 by 2025 and become a billion-dollar services export industry. The overall tech industry is targeting to become a $5 billion industry by then, with BPMs accounting for 20%.