Knowledge Professionals and the Indian KPO Market: Evaluation Processes, Performance Metrics
and Certifications

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2.5.1 Evaluation Processes

The recruiting process in the KPO industry requires an assessment of domain knowledge, intelligence, analytical and data mining skills, attitude and ability to work in teams. There are very few recruitment agencies in India that have developed organized and standardized recruiting teams and systems to address the evolving need for knowledge professionals.

The three areas based on which assessment could be made are:
1. Domain expertise
2. Soft skills, credibility and references
3. Decision-making ability and analytical skills

An organized evaluation process by the recruiting agency can help a KPO client reduce its interview to selection ratio. One of the top recruiting agencies in India, Ma Foi Management Consultants Ltd., conducts well-researched, structured and renowned tests that assess a person’s personality and behavior. Through strategic alliances with international institutes such as The Institute for Personality and Ability Testing (IPAT), Oxford Psychologists Press (OPP) - UK, Psychometric Services Limited (PSL) - UK and Skill Check (USA), some of the tests Ma Foi has access to are:

• The Sixteen Personality Factor Test (16PF),
• 16PF SELECT,
• Executive Profile Survey (EPS),
• Comprehensive Abilities Battery (CAB),
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),
• Fundamental Interpersonal Orientation Behavior (FIRO-B),
• Differential Aptitude Test (DAT), Raven's Progressive Matrix and
• Belbin Team Analysis.

In the KPO industry, in addition to assessing knowledge skills, there is an increasing requirement to understand the person’s behavior, especially in relation to people and in groups. Performance in a job does not depend solely on a person’s ability but also on his/her personality. Assessment techniques will provide an insight beneficial to the employer as well as the employee.
(Source: www.mafoi.com)

2.5.2 Service Level Agreement Metrics

In order to measure whether the relationship between a client and an outsourcer is successful, a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is established. This agreement defines the parameters of a project in terms of functions and services that the service provider will offer, the volume of work that will be delivered and criteria for accepting responsiveness and quality of deliverables. A well-drafted SLA will provide objectives and expectations for the client as well as the outsourcer and will measure the performance based on the targets.

An effective SLA includes performance metrics that will measure the performance of the service provider and establish whether commitments are fulfilled.

Categories of SLA Metrics

Based on the project specifications, metrics can be categorized and constructed. The key factors in deciding this classification are:

1. Volume of work – the main determinant of a project is the volume of work that will be outsourced and the level of effort required by the service provider within the scope of the project. Volume of work metrics should be specifically stated in the SLA in terms of number of units of work product or deliverables produced per unit of time. Choosing simple volume metrics will help in easier assessment and consistent results.
2. Quality of work – measurement of conformance to quality standards and specifications. Quality metrics may contain several individual metrics that collectively form the deliverable acceptance criteria or they may be measurements of a single aspect of a service. Some of these metrics are:
a. Defect rates – a measure of errors in key deliverables in terms of percentage or number of failures, missed deadlines and rejected or rework projects.
b. Standards compliance – internal standards for application source code, documentation, reports and other tangible deliverables, including number of enhancement tasks passing standards reviews, number of documented programs, etc.
c. Technical quality – a measure of technical quality of application code in terms of program size, degree of structure, degree of complexity and coding defects produced through commercial tools.
3.Service availability – the time frame within which the services managed by the outsourcer are available, ranging from online availability to delivery of reports by a specified time and date.
4. Service satisfaction – includes surveys conducted usually by a neutral third party measuring the client’s level of satisfaction of the service provided by the outsourcer. For instance, if the outsourcer meets the performance targets but obtains a substandard satisfaction rating, it clearly states that the right factors have not been targeted in the current SLA metrics.
5. Responsiveness – measure of the amount of time an outsourcer takes to successfully deliver a client’s request. Responsiveness metrics are considered high priority by clients and are a huge contributing factor to the perception of quality of service. Some of these include:
a. Time-to-market or time-to-implement – measure of the time taken from the original receipt of request until the time when it is completely resolved and delivered.
b. Time-to-acknowledgement – a measure of the responsiveness of the service provider in providing status reports.
c. Backlog size – a measure of the size of backlogs usually expressed in terms of the number of requests in queue and the number of hours required to process the queue.
6. Efficiency – a measure of the effectiveness of the service provider in offering quality service at a reasonable cost. Some of the metrics are:
a. Cost/effort efficiency – an index based on cost per unit of work produced. This metric is used to manage cost reductions and increase productivity.
b. Team utilization – a measure to estimate the work load of each team member and the means to utilize resources effectively.
c. Rework levels – a measure to observe the effectiveness of implementing quality standards and improvements.
7. Reporting Metrics Information – after identifying all key deliverables and performance metrics, the client and the service provider must decide on how the information should be presented. Typically, a prototype report is provided by the client as a reference for drafting a report. A simple form of presentation in actionable form and trends rather than a long list of metrics is usually the best option. Methods such as balance scorecards that rate the value of individual metrics against the overall objectives of the project are usually adopted.

The metrics used to measure and manage performance is a key factor in ensuring the effectiveness of SLA strategies. Most organizations will be able to achieve their objectives effectively through careful selection and implementation of performance and quality metrics12.

2.5.3 Certifications

KPO service providers in India are becoming more quality conscious and are continuously upgrading their standards to meet international requirements. Around 45 percent of the Indian KPO companies have the highest quality certifications such as Six Sigma, which is an organized methodology used to measure and improve a company’s operational performance and systems (13).

Some of the quality management standards adopted are the ISO 9002, ISO 9001, ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2001 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and those from the CMM framework to the new CMMI framework.

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