Hi Jitendra,
All depends on the type and size of process that your BPO organization have. For instance, your Company may be handling telemarketing outbound, inbound, blended or transaction based projects/processes.
There is no uniform and generic benchmark on the bench to be maintained. Typically, one indicator is how big were the different/domain processes handled in the past.
Bench strength would depend on:
1. Type of processes/projects
2. Size of processes/projects (ie., unit manpower required per
processes/task)
3. Skills availability (ie. are skills needed available easily)
4. Attrition (how often and how many employees leave the
Company/processes)
The chicken-n-egg situation is that you need to maintain bench in various processes in anticipation of new business or more business to deliver in shortest possible time without consuming time for recruitment and training. But larger the bench, more is your investment in terms of bench-salary/wage bill.
I would suggest you to maintain a bench depending on:
1. Existing processes shortfalls
2. Forecasted future processes (ie. new businesses or expansion of
existing processes/businesses)
3. Anticipated attrition (based on past records)
4. Skills availability (rare skills with higher hiring timelines call for a
higher bench strength)
Create your own unique bench depending on the above. The above factors vary from BPO to BPO depending on the type of processes/service, size of processes, complicity of processes, skills required and ability to acquire new businesses of certain size. Bench is a subset of manpower planning outcomes.
If your units are at commutable distance, you can opt for a centralized bench. Otherwise, if they are far away, or, in other states, or, have region specific processes which are fairly large in size, go for a location based bench. Location/process-service/unit based bench is preferred if processes, products or services have large manpower strengths or are have specialized domains/skill-needs.
Rahul
09968270580
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Dear Madam / Sir
I just to have inputs on the following:
1. What is the BPO industry average for the Bench Resources?
2. Does it help to manage the Bench Resources for a BPO in a Centralized manner i.e. having a Talent Pool for a City / Location.
OR
3. Does it make sense to have the Bench resources maintained by each Product / Services delivery unit.
If it make sense to GO with POINT "2", what all steps / precautions needs to be taken while going in for Centralization / Regionalization mode.
Thanks & Regards
Jitendra