Decoding the evolving job roles and skill requirements of the BPM industry

The active and accessible BPM talent in India is a little over 1.8 million, according to specialist staffing company Xpheno.

The Business Process Management or BPM industry is going through a massive overhaul when it comes to talent requirements. Industry experts at IT major Accenture say job roles in BPM have increased in complexity and require specialised domain and functional expertise, and advisory skills.

In fact, there are new roles that didn't exist until some years ago. For instance, Accenture Operations has campaign management specialists and social media community managers, sourcing specialists and analytics modelling experts.

Similarly, BPM firm WNS’ multi-faceted approach is underpinned by deep domain knowledge, technology, and talent to enable cost-effective digital solutions for its clients.

For example, in a traditional claims process, customers would call the customer care centre to inform it about the notification of loss and it would be attended to by a customer care agent. Then post the call, the calculating and processing part of the claim process would start.

“Imagine a world where all the information and services can be delivered through one service request,” R Swaminathan, Chief People Officer at WNS, told Moneycontrol.

Talent availability

The active and accessible BPM talent in India is a little over 1.8 million, according to specialist staffing company Xpheno. The top five locations for BPM talent are Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad and hold 60 percent of the total BPM talent in India.

“BPM talent has grown by a little over 4 percent in the last 12 months, owing to an overall slowdown in the tech and tech-enabled services sector. As a sector with high talent demand and low entry barriers, BPM has been a hot sector for onboarding fresher talent in tech and non-tech functions,” Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, told Moneycontrol.

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More importantly, Xpheno’s data suggested that the sector has experienced a reduced pace of talent growth in the last 5-6 years, due to the impact of digitisation across the voice and data processes. High cognitive roles and functions remain manpower driven, whereas low to mid-cognitive actions have been assigned to tech and bot-driven methods.

Evolving role of BPM professionals

Besides the necessary domain or functional skills, Venkatraghavan AC, Lead – HR at Accenture Operations, Accenture in India, feels today’s BPM roles call for a client-first mindset, operational rigour and the ability to use data-backed insights and digital technologies to make clients’ processes future-ready.

“A continuous learning mindset is vital. On the whole, this is an exciting time to build a career in the BPM industry,” he said.

As part of its industry-led services, Accenture Operations provides actuarial and underwriting services to insurance companies, pharmacovigilance services for life sciences companies, wealth management services to the banking & financial services sector, and digital manufacturing and intelligent production-related services.

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“We build specialised skills and upskill our people for niche domains through our in-house learning and development academies such as an Insurance Academy, Finance & Accounting Academy, Marketing Operations Academy, etc,” Venkatraghavan said.

Organisations are increasingly looking to implement Robotic Process Automation (RPA), bots and intelligent automation to accelerate their ability to deliver profitability as well as growth, according to WNS’ Swaminathan.

In the future, he added that companies would also focus on finding new sources of value by leveraging a problem-solving global talent pool and using data as an asset. “BPM companies are already working on automating processes that are time-consuming and repetitive. They are also finding new opportunities for human intervention in digital transformation and decision making.”

Top job roles available for BPM talent

The highest volume of job roles are with Analytics, Operations, Cloud Computing, Consulting, Client Services and Sales, Xpheno’s data showed.

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Some of the popular roles open in the sector are Marketing Operations Lead, Operations Supervisor, Operations Manager, Functional Consultant, Marketing Specialist, Media Sales Executive, Network Security Engineer, Information Security Executive, SOC & NOC Analysts, and SOC & NOC Executive.

The current active demand for BPM talent is a little over 50,000, with nearly 60 percent of the openings available in the top five locations (Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad). The top five functions with the highest talent demand are IT, Sales, BD, Operations, Finance and Marketing. These functions account for over 40 percent of the total active talent demand in BPM.

Top skills in demand

Professionals who can operate in a hybrid environment and work from anywhere will be in high demand, WNS’ Swaminathan said.

While data science skills, combined with domain knowledge, will remain important, he added that process mining and skills related to the combination of data science and process science are becoming critical for businesses to operate in a disruptive environment.

“In addition to technical skills, soft skills such as emotional intelligence, creativity and innovation, resilience and grit, leadership and balanced decision-making, as well as critical thinking, communication and collaboration, are also necessary to enable more thought-driven solutions,” he said.

The panacea of high attrition

Attrition trends continue to worry the contract staffing industry as TeamLease Digital predicts 50 percent to 55 percent attrition for FY2023 compared to 49 percent in FY2022.

The attrition affects staffing companies directly as many of the resignations are by the temporary workers they provide BPM providers.

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According to its study, increased business and higher resignation numbers within 90 days continued to contribute to increased attrition. This attrition trend is the highest in the history of the IT-BPM industry in India.

“The primary reasons for attrition remaining high in the BPM sector are extended hours, working across timezones, night shifts, salaries that are comparatively lower to tech sector roles and tight target-driven performance models,” said Xpheno’s Karanth.

According to Xpheno’s data, average entry-level salaries are lower than tech packages by anywhere between 25 percent and 35 percent. Further, Karanth highlighted that as a high-churn talent pool that is often hired in high volumes, marginal increments in packages do drive movement across employers.

“Besides, for a large part of the talent, the BPM role is a kickstart for a career and a shift to another sector is always in the works. The largest movement of BPM talent is toward the IT Services sector, Software and BFSI sectors,” he added.

For WNS, the elevated attrition was concentrated at the junior-most levels of the organisation and primarily focused on voice-based CX services resulting from the return-to-office mandate.

However, this did not impact its ability to service clients or accelerate growth. “In fact, the attrition rate has reduced in the last few months. We have added over 5,400 net new employees in this fiscal year, so far,” Swaminathan said.