By Ravi Venkatesam, MD, OnTrac\

One of the biggest challenges in the BPO industry is the performance of team leaders (also known as supervisors). Every BPO company employs team leaders with the expectation that they perform certain managerial activities. But this is easier said than done because of two reasons.

a. Team leaders have numerous tasks that they need to get done. Therefore, it is imperative that they stay organized. However, team leaders find it very challenging to stay organized because of their overall lack of experience. Also, they are not provided with sufficient tools for this purpose.

b. Managers and process heads do not have visibility into the team leaders’ activities. Without any data relating to the team leaders’ activities, it is very difficult for managers to help team leaders get their jobs done. Considering the above challenges, we created Starworks. Starworks, is an innovative Supervisor Management Software that helps BPO team leaders stay organized in their work. It helps them plan and track their managerial activities through a visual dashboard, so that they are able to get all their tasks done on time. It is developed by OnTrac, is a leading global provider of consulting services, training and software in the area of BPO Operations Management for mission critical roles in the BPO industry.

Starworks also helps operations leaders track and monitor their team leaders’ activities on a daily basis. It provides them with objective performance information to conduct deep and meaningful operations reviews with their team leaders. It captures information about team leaders’ critical operational activities, quantifies them, and makes them visible to all managers, through a visual dashboard. This means operations leaders can proactively prevent performance problems by detecting areas where team leaders need help.

With a combination of these functionalities, Starworks provides BPO companies with powerful tools to manage operations by ensuring that their team leaders are doing the right things at the right time.

The program demonstrates solid ROI through measurement of business results. Over 100 companies across various lines of BPO business in countries such as India, Canada, Philippines, China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have adopted the Star program. Over 50,000 team leaders have been upskilled.

Starworks can work for other fields as well. However, it has been contextualized to the BPO industry. In the future we could launch other versions for other industries.

We offer a Saas model. We charge based on the number of team leaders who are using the software.

In India, one cannot patent such products. One can only have a copyright on it, which does not offer adequate protection. Therefore, there is not much point in investing in IP rights, and hence we have not done it.