Jindal Intellicom to Jindal X is a story of two decades of evolution. And I use the word ‘evolution’ deliberately because it has been a journey of measured growth by innovating, learning and adapting.
The Genesis
The idea of Jindal Intellicom can be traced back to the turn of the last millennium in Texas, USA. In one of the manufacturing facilities of Jindal Saw, there was a team of 20 people running a planning process which I felt could have been achieved with a team one-fifth its size, and with greater efficiency if partnered with the right technology. With a go-ahead from our Chairman, I returned to India to put this theory into practice. We achieved the objective within a short span of time, thus paving the way for Jindal Intellicom in the year 2000. It slowly became the technology and intelligence arm of the Jindal Group, sharing global best practices and developing custom technology solutions for its various entities.
We had to be a Profit Center
Being part of the O. P. Jindal Group – one of India’s most respected and leading business houses with interests spanning various industries and across countries – we were secure in our existence. But my vision for Jindal Intellicom was to turn it into an independent profit center for the group. Around this time (early 2000’s) India had started gaining traction as a favored destination for outsourced services, giving shape to a whole industry around it. We started with developing software for clients in UK and US. Our first big break came when we acquired a US telecom giant – part of Fortune 500 – as our customer. We soon extended our footprint to Europe and Australia, while strengthening our customer base in the US. However, as outsourced services became commoditized and it became all about wage arbitrage, the BPO space transitioned into an assembly line model. The challenge came not only from within, where an increasing number of companies entered the fray, but also from outside as more destinations, such as the Philippines, presented themselves as viable alternates for outsourced services.
It was time to move up the value chain
While the industry was struggling with challenges of cost cutting on one hand and trying to meet demands of their investors on the other, we made a conscious decision to move up the value chain and offer an intellectual capital based model to differentiate ourselves from the others. We added Custom Software, Analytics and Business Intelligence Services to our value proposition. We started developing software customized to our client’s revenue and customer service chain with an automatic feedback loop built in as we were the end users as well! We entered into a JV with a US healthcare organization offering complete Revenue Cycle Management, medical billing, coding and business analytics services to hospitals, physicians and physician groups. We developed a customized CRM for world’s largest direct response marketing company, while also providing them customer support services. We added several India clients such as Zomato, Daikin and Otis, where we created value for them through outcome-based business intelligence solutions. Jindal Intellicom entered a phase of delivering integrated solutions, adding greater value for customers which were harder for others to replicate.
‘Together Xponential’
This brings me to the latest phase of our evolution – rebranding of Jindal Intellicom as JindalX. We are in an era of big data analytics, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. Traditional modes of customer service will soon become automated or machine driven with less dependency on human interaction. While the first phase of our industry was about wage arbitrage, and the second phase about value creation, the current phase is about becoming transformation partners for our customers. The accelerated pace of technology-driven innovation is creating new and tougher challenges for businesses. The solutions they need will come from a new way of thinking – from the ‘X’ factors that may not have been thought of yet.
Our new brand identity, JindalX, is our alignment with this future, which starts now. We aim to become end-to-end technology partners for all our customers, a role we have been playing successfully for some already. Our focus is on continuous innovation, providing out-of-the-box solutions, and becoming enablers for our customers by finding the missing ‘X’ that will propel us as partners towards ‘xponential’ growth.
Reference:
1.) How Email Support Can Help Drive a Positive Customer Experience
2.) How Customer Support Outsourcing Can Improve Business Growth
