What are the emerging trends you have been noticing in the FAO sector?
I have seen a big turnaround in the F&A market space over the last two years. Some prominent emerging trends include understanding of regional regulations and compliance (e.g. Sarbanes Oxley, FSA, etc.), which is critical for ensuring that both business and IT controls are instrumental in every process.
There is more focus on reducing the time to transition a process offshore. And this is happening by means of implementing “Control Frameworks” that includes knowledge management and business-process management. In fact there is an increased provision of a “blended” operating model. This uses a combination of offshore/nearshore, scale, specialized tools and expertise. This is an evolution from the pure labor arbitrage incentive for outsourcing. A vertical specialization to provide domain expertise and cater to the industry-specific requirements is also a rapidly growing trend.
How do you see the future of FAO in 2015?
IT and BPO convergence will be fueled as the companies are adopting “Service-Oriented Architecture” [SOA]. Solution companies will offer “Software as a Service” [SaaS]. As such, there will be an increased drive to outsource all the F&A processes including the “core.” While hybrid or blended outsourcing business models are preferred currently, the market has been moving towards a multiple-vendor, multiple-model approach, and this trend will continue to 2015. A critical need to ensure that there is a deeper understanding of the business process will arise leading to niche industry-specific players and increased domain expertise.
Where do you see India in the “future frame” that you mentioned about FAO?
India has been the largest provider of FAO, and will continue its reign even in the coming years due to overall cost arbitrage and collective accounting knowledge.
As you have chosen Pune, a tier-2 city in India, as your base, and we also know that the future of such cities is very bright, what’s your take on this?
Pune apparently has the largest number of certified CAs in the country. Therefore, it really becomes easy for us to recruit “right people” because it is all about recruiting right people; training these people; and leveraging on our strength in risk management and IT. I think, whether a job is back-office work or a front-office job, it is important to have good communication skills and good command over English language. And, Pune certainly gives an edge on this.
Though, Pune is getting expensive very fast, the city has become a pretty important hub for captives and non-captives because of the talent pool here. This will soon create a situation where it will be a challenge to generate required resources. And, people will move to other Indian tier-2 and tier-3 cities to fulfill their demand skilled workforce.
So not just Pune, the future of all such cities looks bright.
