One Night in a BPO

“Amit, can you please send me those slides asap…I need to send the consolidated pitch for the internal review call in another 1 hour” I said assertively to Amit, the subject matter expert. He promised to send the pages in another 5 minutes. I went back to reviewing my pitch to see for any more changes. I inserted Amit's slides once i received them. I was all set for the internal review of the due dilligence pitch with our internal stake holders.

I was the project manager of the recent onsite due dilligence project for one of our big clients. We had gone onsite to study their processes and had come up with a report of processes that could be outsourced to India. The report talked about the processes that could be outsourced, why should it be outsourced, how could it be outsourced and what would be the cost impact of the same.

So, the call started at 630pm. Slowly all the internal stake holders (or characters) joined in, with the BD guy joining the last. The most difficult character of all was the operation VP. He has the habit of assuming everyone except him is not smart and not good enough. He questioned, probably for the 8th time.."so, did we validate the FTE numbers with the customer..are the assumptions correct?"..i was beginning to lose my patience..but i managed " yes it is all correct". So, we reviewed the whole pitch slide by slide. Everyone gave their two cents. Some really good. Some, just for the sake of it...like my immediate boss..who was new to his role and was really trying to impress everyone. Well as the project manager, one has to take all kinds of shit. The call got over by 730pm. We were to have a call with our client the same day to review the same pitch at 1130pm. I always hated late night calls. I cursed, but went about making the final changes and sent the pitch to the client at 830pm. Post which, i just dialled Amit on his cell and checked if he wanted to go for dinner in our office cafeteria.

I called and told my wife that It would late by the time I come home tonight and would be having dinner in office. I joined Amit in the buzzing cafteria. The food looked sad, but it was free. So, we took whatever they got to offer and started our dinner. One of our favourite topic was to bitch about my new dumb boss. I went again " Amit, I feel he is one of the least talented guys i have ever worked with in this company. It is so unfortunate that i have to work for him. huh"...With a good listener in Amit..i went on..." you know, i donno where he picks up his fake american accent..he just cant stop blabbering during customer calls...god save us and the customer." . Since we had lot of time before our review call with client, we decided to take a walk around the company in an effort to reduce our ever bulging tummy.

Finally, got back to our desks around 930pm to see some 10 new messages in my email inbox. 5 of it was from my dear boss. He was yelling that i had not made certain changes (suggested by him) in the final pitch i had sent to the customer. I had conciously left out certain of his as it made no sense at all to have them in there. Thought it was better to handle my boss seperately than to have to face the customer's question regarding those dumb suggestions. So, I just gave him a call "hi...sorry, listen..er..well...i totally missed out on those..it was a honest mistake...." he was like "huh..ok..but please dont let this happen again"...I thought to myself.. "yes, if you dont give such dumb suggestions again". well once i consoled him, I got a call from my operations VP.."Hi...listen..did you check the performance metrics with black belt? are you sure about the assumptions we have made...is amit comfortable with the productivity given?" i was like"yes ram, i have told you before as well..this was all done one week back..and besides I have already sent the final document to the customer"...quick came back reply "oh well...but..ek bar amit se deklo...."... I thought to myself "phew, how did this guy manage to be a VP..he sure is one insecured sole.." but i managed " sure ram, i will do that..thanks". I went back to checking my emails..there was one positive mail from my Business Development guy. He wrote "Mathuag, Great job on putting the pitch together, I think it looks great..i am sure customer will love it...now, we just have to nail the deal..Thanks"...Finally, it felt great to get some positive response. I was elated.

The conference call started at 113opm sharp. The customer, in their true american style, logged in at sharp 1130pm...and my dear internal india team, true to their style, logged on 3 minutes late. I, being the call organizer, had a quick roll call to make sure everyone was there and gave a quick introduction and purpose of the call. Then I started walking them through the pitch, slide by slide. There were some questions in between. Finally, I said "Bob, this brings us to the end of the pitch, do you have any more questions or comments". Bob, Sr VP, Customer said "Hey, no not really mathuag, everything looks fantastic,...I must say you and your team has done a great job in pulling this report together..thanks for all the hardwork....however, I will have to review this with my internal team and look at the pitch again and go over the details...i think that might take about 1 weeks time..post which we will get back..." suddenly one voice with a fake american accent spoke "Bob..thanks for your time....er..ah...however,...ah ah.. we would like to know ...eh eh...when you would get back on next steps..ah ah...if required, we can set up another call to walk you through again.....er...". well, that was my dear boss. Me and Amit, put the phone on mute and exchanged some curse words in all languages. In the meanwhile, Bob shot back quite assertively this time.." well, that wont be required..who was that again?..anyways, as I mentioned we will get back to you guys in a weeks time"..my boss said "oh ok, sorry about that Bob, we will wait for your response..." I jutted in and said "well then, if anyone does not have any more questinons, Bob, probably I shall set up a follow up call one week from now to take this forward? will that work?" Bob said " yes, that should work". I said.." ok then, thanks everyone for your time, we shall regroup again in a weeks time." We disconnected the call. It was round 1245am.In the meanwhile, there had been few missed calls & SMS from my wife on my cellphone asking when i would be back. I called her and told her i will be home in 20 minutes. Then, I shook hands with my buddy amit thanking him for all his support. Both of us had worked our ass of for the last 2 months on this project and at the same time had a blasts travelling to florida for the due dilligence. We packed our laptop bags and rushed out of the building. And that brings another hectic but exciting day in my bpo career.