Need for Multilingual Skills to expand BPO Industr...

Currently the worth of the Indian BPO industry is $4 billion and most of their businesses, about $2.2 billion, have come from the USA. However, with the expansion of the BPO industry various Indian multinational companies are now trying to set up their base in European and Latin American nations. This is the reason that the need for workers who can speak multiple languages with equal fluency has increased drastically. And unfortunately this is one area where the Indian BPO faces some serious challenges as it lacks workers who have that kind of linguistic skills.

There was a time when recruiting people who are fluent in English guaranteed good business to the BPO companies. But now they have understood that in order to increase their revenues during this period of recession they have to concentrate on the European market as well.

Considering the current situation companies will do better by hiring people who are fluent in Spanish. This will help them not only to secure prime businesses in Latin America and Spain but also counter any competition that might arise from the Philippine BPO sector. Spanish is spoken in 20 countries including Latin American ones like Chile, and Mexico. As Philippines have a good number of Spanish speaking people in its workforce, Indian MNCs desperately need its workers to learn this language in order to survive in this competitive market.

This is the reason why various companies are now training their employees in Spanish languages. There are now Spanish teaching centers in Indian metros like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi.

Apart from Spanish, employers are looking for people who can converse well in French, German, Russian, Dutch, and Italian. Companies like Oracle, Infosys, Hewlett Packard, and IBM are recruiting such people who are well versed in any of the above languages apart from English.

Companies like Tecnovate have recruited foreigners to bridge this cultural and linguistic gap and to continue with their expansion plans in Europe. This is a company whose employees can greet you in nine language that include French, Finnish, German, Swiss German, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, English and Dutch.

Taking a look at the revenues earned by some of the companies in North America and in Europe in the year 2008 will give us a clearer picture: