Over the last couple of decades, the business process outsourcing (BPO) market has exploded, largely because of the ubiquity of the Internet. According to Market Research Future, the market is set to reach $52 billion by the end of 2023. It’s a super competitive industry, and companies constantly need to find new ways to innovate and lower cost overhead to stay in the game. After all, businesses have many choices, and if they aren’t getting the ROI they expect, it’s pretty easy to dump a BPO and find another within a few clicks. One way to do these things is with cloud-based virtual desktops.
Four ways BPOs can benefit from cloud-hosted virtual desktops
Before we dig in, let’s clarify what we mean by BPOs. The market prediction above is actually pretty conservative since the companies covered in the report are large IT outsourcing and strategic consultancies like Accenture, Wipro and Tata Consultancy. We’re taking a broader view and including call centers as a subset of the wider BPO market. For more perspective on the opportunity, Statista reports that the worldwide call center industry alone reached over $200 billion in 2017. In our view, cloud-based virtual desktops are beneficial to both. Here are four reasons how all of these companies can benefit:
- Security — With VDI, critical data is stored and managed in a secure cloud data center, not on end user devices. If a device is lost or stolen, data remains secure. Administrators can also restrict access to data and applications for certain users based on role or responsibility within the organization, or location on the network. For instance, some users can be restricted from downloading data to a USB drive, copying and pasting sensitive information outside of the virtual environment, and so on. Further, hyperscale cloud providers like Google Cloud have strict security levels in place – at all levels of the stack.
- Compliance — BPOs deal with highly sensitive customer, patient and personally identifiable information on a daily basis. Depending on the geographic location and what industry they are in, regulatory mandates vary for the companies BPOs serve. That’s a huge headache for these companies who more often than not operate globally. By migrating virtual desktops to a highly compliant cloud like Google Cloud, services organizations can be assured that compliance controls are in place. Companies can also decide where data is stored across GCP’s global footprint, and where users can authenticate from with itopia Cloud Automation Stack’s (CAS) hybrid and cloud-based Active Directory extension capability on GCP.
- Scalability — Companies often leverage BPOs for services when demand spikes seasonally. Think: retail during the holiday season or accounting during tax season. Not only do these organizations scale infrastructure resources in these times, but they also need to hire temporary call center employees to meet the increased demands. The very nature of hyperscale cloud enables companies to scale up or down at the lowest cost possible through consumption-based pricing. Going further, secure cloud-based virtual desktops are quick and simple to deploy for seasonal and temporary workers with an automation and orchestration solution like itopia CAS.
- Productivity & talent — It’s now the norm for call centers to be on 24×7. It’s next to impossible to provide that service from a fixed location, not to mention find the different sets of talent required for every possible scenario that needs to be processed. By deploying cloud-based virtual desktops, companies can mitigate this by enabling a secure BYOD and remote working environment for agents. By now, it’s well known that a flexible working environment not only makes workers more productive, but that younger generations have come to expect the choice of where they work, and what device they work from. In addition, companies that enable BYOD and remote working save costs on facilities and devices. It’s a win-win all around.
We’re only scratching the surface on how cloud-based virtual desktops benefit the BPO and call center industry. Of course, the elephant in the room is the capital and operational expenditure costs companies can eliminate by leveraging fully automated cloud-based virtual desktops in the cloud. In short, itopia CAS’s end-to-end virtual desktop automation and orchestration on Google Cloud Platform can enable BPOs to achieve the ROI required to remain competitive in a cutthroat industry.
