After posting consistently declining revenues from its established ‘lift-and-shift’ BPO business (see WNS faces more turbulence in Q3), offshore BPO pure play WNS is now looking to invest in platform-based offerings, or as CEO Keshav Murugesh puts it, “crafting [platforms] for clients” that “fall well beyond the scope of lift and shift BPO”.
WNS’ existing BPO business suffers from fluctuations in volume demand from its travel, insurance and auto claims sector clients. Unsurprisingly then, the company is trying to reposition itself to become more resilient to these “headwinds”. For the fourth quarter ended 31st March, WNS’ adjusted revenue (less repair repayments) fell 2.5% to $94.3m, and its adjusted operating margin was 14.5% vs. 16.2%. Full year revenue meanwhile, was down 5.4% to $369.4m, and the adjusted margin was 13% vs. 18.6% in FY10.
Murugesh said that he is now investing in sales and marketing, and aims to position WNS as a more strategic partner to its clients. For instance in March, the company recently signed a deal with existing airline client Star Alliance for sales audit and revenue protection services. WNS will provide a hosted version of its web-enabled fare audit system Verifare and charge the client on an outcome-based pricing model.
Murugesh’s plans are now to develop platforms for clients with embedded analytics that will become a strategic part of the business in the future. The intention is to gradually move it away from FTE-based to more outcome-based pricing, and thereby assist in more strategic objectives such as revenue generation and client retention.
This is a bold move that will take time to develop and implement. But WNS clearly needs to take the plunge as clients look to cloud-enabled business process services (BPS), rather than out-dated lift-and-shift BPO.