Progeon has been working on the philosophy of customer being the first and foremost. The kind of reviews that Progeon has been having clearly point to the fact that the organization commands immense respect in the eyes of the customer. The integrated business model that Progeon has been following ensures that the customer does not have to get into a contract with a different organization even if the task is remotely connected to the task that has been assigned to Progeon.]
Leadership through example It is important that the leader of a household, firm or an industry performs and leads from the front. Progeon as an organization has created a niche for itself by defining the rules of the game and creating a new sector for itself within the BPO industry called the BPM i.e. business process management. Progeon has also been the first organization in the industry to reduce its voice-based services in its quest to move up the value chain. As an organization Progeon has been at the front of this movement to transform itself from an organization performing lower level back office jobs to one having considerable expertise in all levels of jobs at all the strata of an organization.
Integrity and Transparency Accountability, transparency, integrity and fairness are not just about hollow rhetoric at Progeon. It is only because of the rigidly imposed code of conduct that Progeon today has competitors from the same industry outsourcing work to Progeon. This has only been made possible because of the ability of Progeon to convince its clients as to complete data secrecy and non-disclosure at all costs. Progeon having two mortgage banks from the same country is the case in point. Two organizations, which are by nature of their work completely “manic” about the safety of their data, have assigned to Progeon projects of considerable size.
Fairness The attrition rate in an industry like BPO is just phenomenal. According to the latest data released by NASSCOM it is around 60% of the total employees employed in the core functions. In such a scenario it becomes increasingly important that an organization has an employee retention policy. It is an achievement for the top brass of the organization that the attrition rate in the organization is as low as 35%. The remuneration, perquisites and the complete ambience of the workplace has been made such that the employee develops an affinity towards the organization.
Pursuit of excellence. At the end of the day the customer can only be satisfied by the quality of work that is performed by the organization. In this regard it must be mentioned that the quality of work provided by Progeon is second to none. It has also been awarded the CMM level 5 certification as a vindication of the company’s superior performance. One other philosophy that the basic business model of Progeon adheres to is PSPD Model (predictability, sustainability, profitability and de-risking).
Note that the company does not believe in springing surprises i.e. not the unpleasant ones at least. They say that the most important thing in the business is predictability as this lets the management plan ahead. They want to convince the client that if some processes have been outsourced to Progeon the task would be completed without any unpleasant surprises. As far as sustainability is concerned the business model that Progeon follows, has been built keeping sustainability in mind. They say it upfront that the advantages that we as a country have are neither invincible nor inimitable and thus there is always a possibility that someone with an even lower cost structure and better quality can take our business away.
Therefore Progeon believes in going higher up the value chain and providing services that are not exactly back-end jobs that merely yield cost advantages. An important component of whatever Progeon does is Value Addition. However the bottom line remains Cost arbitrage, as this is the reason why the client outsource and Progeon believes in adding that extra bit to their client’s bottom line. The high standards that Infosys sets for itself are also pretty evident in the way Progeon works. Accountability, transparency and fairness are not just rhetoric but a way of life as far as Progeon is concerned.
It is important that superordinate goals are concise and succinct so that the management, employees and the stakeholders, readily understand them. And in this respect Progeon performs a tremendous job as the superordinate goals are not abstract or on a different plane altogether. They are neither very esoteric to comprehend nor are they arcane to implement.
2. STRATEGY
Strategy means an integration of all those actions that a company plans in response to or in anticipation of changes in its external environment-its customers, stakeholders and competitors. As the company’s chosen route to competitive success, strategy is obviously a central concern in many business situations-especially in a highly competitive industry like business process outsourcing. It has increasingly been recognized by the organizations that the competitive advantages that we as a country have today are not invincible or inimitable. The best way out for the organizations is to go up the value chain and in this regard it must be said that Progeon has been the pioneer because with a voice ratio of 20% (where the industry ratio is 63%) it is steadily moving up the value chain.
Also Progeon has been building up on the customer base that Infosys already has and as such a large part of the client base is common to both the parent and the progeny. It leverages cost competitive development centers in different parts of the world to provide high quality business process related solutions on time and within budget. The organization focuses on providing services tailor made to customer’s needs. Progeon works closely with clients to recognize the areas in where the scope for devolving the tasks into smaller components exists, and then builds upon its highly diversified services portfolio to undertake the performance of the smaller tasks recognized.
