CoCOA: A Framework for Comparing Aggregate Client Operations in BPO Services

Abstract

Operational efficiency is a major indicator by which the profitability of a business process outsourcing (BPO) service is evaluated. To measure such operational efficiency, BPO service providers define and monitor a set of key performance indicators (KPI) (e.g., productivity of employees, turn-around-time). While a pair of clients can be directly compared using a KPI, comparing the aggregate client operations across multiple KPIs is non-trivial. This is primarily because KPIs are disparate in nature (e.g., cost is measured in dollar while turn-around-time is measured in minutes). In this paper, we present CoCOA, a framework that compares aggregate operations of clients in BPO services so that they can be viewed in a single pane of glass. Two key modules of CoCOA are: (a) client rank aggregator and (b) KPI importance classifier. For a given time period, the rank aggregator module determines an aggregate ranking of clients using variety of inputs (e.g., individual KPI rank, priority of a KPI). When the aggregate rank of a client deteriorates over successive time periods, KPI importance classifier identifies the responsible KPIs for such deterioration. Thus, CoCOA not only helps in comparing the aggregate operation of clients, but also provides prescriptive analytics for improving organizational performance for a given client. We evaluate our approach using anonymized data set collected from a real BPO business and show how responsible KPIs can be identified when there is a deterioration in aggregate client rank.