Following CPA’s US$50m investment in its India operation, Bhaskar Bagchi, country head, and Inder Duggal, head of operations, explain why India is leading the growth in legal process outsourcing.

Outsourcing administrative IP functions and other forms of legal process outsourcing (LPO) is not a new trend. The IP divisions of many large, medium and small companies, as well as law firms, have been employing third parties to manage back-end services for generations. However, as the need and demand for IP services, and associated mounting legal costs, continues to grow, many companies are beginning to look to foreign markets to contain costs without jeopardising quality, with India emerging as the clear leader in the field of LPO.

‘Delhi and its surrounding areas have seen phenomenal growth in recent years,’ explains Bhaskar Bagchi, country head of CPA’s India operation. ‘This extraordinary development has been driven by the quality of the national workforce and investment from overseas. All this has helped India to emerge as a new economic powerhouse; one that is perfectly suited to the provision of outsourcing services in the legal and IP sectors.’

Investing in growth
India has emerged as a major destination for LPO, thanks to its huge bank of experts, its staff resources and its widespread use of the English language. It also has a favourable business and tax environment, works to a common law system and, importantly, has a positive work ethic. It’s something that CPA is keen to support.

‘CPA looks at India as a high-quality service provider,’ says Inder Duggal, head of operations at CPA in India. ‘And we want to drive it. That’s why we’re investing US$50m into the provision of legal services from our office in Delhi.

‘This Delhi office, coupled with our presence in jurisdictions around the world, ensures that we can provide our clients with a high-quality, multi-shore approach,’ he adds. ‘We can work our clients’ hours; be there when they need us, but also use the time difference to process work when they’ve left for the evening, so that it’s ready for them the next morning.’

The rising cost of office space, the scarcity of skilled staff in the developed world and the challenge to manage peaks in workload, all put pressure on a company’s bottom line. LPO enables companies to increase productivity and capacity, to achieve scale and add bandwidth to operations.

‘One of our biggest strengths at CPA India is our ability to scale up to meet the changing demands of our clients,’ says Inder. ‘We can bring in quality trained staff to ensure that the work gets done, gets done right and gets done on time. This enables us to meet our clients’ needs – and their expectations.’

‘CPA’s Delhi facility is state-of-the-art,’ adds Bhaskar. ‘We have three separate floors with a lot of room to grow. We can expand the facility to 100,000 square feet when we need to. And we plan to expand into other offices and into new cities.’ ‘We use open-floor offices for those clients with large amounts of work to process,’ adds Inder. ‘But we also have the option to provide a separate space for those clients who require a higher degree of confidentiality for their operations. Every employee has an access control card to specific area to ensure security and our proprietary software, FoundationIP ensures secure delivery.’

‘We understand that our clients need to touch and feel – literally – the processes that we’re doing for them here in India,’ says Bhaskar. ‘So we use advanced communication systems, such as video conferencing to ensure that they are kept informed.

‘It’s this contrast between the new technology and developments and Delhi’s historic sites and culture that provides a variety and a vibrancy that cannot be found anywhere else,’ he concludes. ‘It’s an exciting time for CPA and India.’

Heading Off-shore
It’s no surprise that companies looking to offshore legal services for the first time can often be nervous about the process. That’s why CPA invited some of its key clients to visit its offices in 2007. Simon Hughes, head of Corporate IP Services at Novartis International, reports back.

‘The reality of offshoring in India can be difficult to imagine, until you actually visit the offices,’ says Simon Hughes. He visited CPA in India in November 2007 and returned impressed by the set-up and the quality of staff. ‘many of the things I read about, but couldn’t quite envision turned out to be true. It’s important to see it with your own eyes. Not only is the overall calibre of the staff very impressive, but the educational qualifications are also matched by huge enthusiasm for the job. When you think about how difficult it is to find qualified legal professionals in europe and the US, the large pool of educated professionals in India is a powerful proposition; particularly when you consider the cost-effectiveness of the service and the capability of the communications technology that they have at their disposal.’

There are many motivations for a company looking to offshore, but in Simon’s opinion, price combined with the availability of skilled professionals is the biggest trigger. However, he also points to CPA’s attention to security and confidentiality as key benefits to their service: ‘It’s something that CPA is doing really well. The building of the India operation has been designed in such a way as to allow work from individual customers to be completely segregated if confidentiality dictate this’ he says. ‘Security and confidentiality are key concerns for companies looking to offshore, particularly in the legal and IP space, so it was very reassuring to see that CPA have taken this so seriously – this is an area where I have no doubt CPA could meet our demanding requirements.’

Of course that’s not to say that offshoring doesn’t come with its own set of challenges, and Simon believes that the challenges of working in such a different culture should not be underestimated. However, he does believe that India is the future of offshoring, ‘Anyone who has visited India will know that the rates of growth are constantly challenging the infrastructure capacity’ ‘However, the advantages that India can offer with its powerful combination of skill availability, price, English language capabilities and enormous enthusiasm, will mean that India is the legal off-shoring location of choice for many years to come.’

'CPA's Delhi facility is state-of-the-art. We have three separate floors with a lot of room to grow. We can expand the facility to 100,000 square feet if we need to.'
-Bhaskar Bagchi

Five key questions to ask when choosing a supplier

1 Is the work and processes you want to outsource suitable for offshoring? As a general rule, businesses should be looking to outsource non-core and lower-value activities in order to free up their internal staff to concentrate on higher-value tasks. Do not attempt to offshore any work that is not easily to reproduce elsewhere; instead look for standardised and defined processes and procedures, which can be reproduced accurately and efficiently. Putting a trusted supplier in place now will also assist in times of future growth or sudden surges in work; for example, as a result of a merger or acquisition. Not only is outsourcing most cost effective, the ability to upscale and downscale as required can also make a business much more agile in the marketplace.

2 Can your supplier fulfil all your needs, or do you need to multishore to achieve the best results? IP service providers work on a variety of levels, but few can actually provide the global multifaceted approach to LPO that most businesses need, hence the growth in multi-sourcing and multishoring. However, the need to set up multiple agreements with a range of different partners can be prohibitive. Companies would be wise to select a supplier who is able to provide a broader range of services, thereby providing the appropriate expertise and geographical scope without unnecessary paperwork and management time.

3 Can your chosen supplier ensure quality of work? Sceptics often argue that high-value work is too complex or specialised to outsource and that companies experience a loss of control over the quality. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) has come in for much negative criticism in recent years, partly as a result of the poor service provided by some companies in the telecoms industry, and while this is a criticism that is less often aimed at the LPO industry, companies should still vet their potential suppliers before entering into any form of agreement. After all, it is your reputation on the line if they do not provide the quality of service that your clients expect.

4 How established are they in your sector and how trustworthy are their client confidentiality and riskmanagement processes? Most businesses are all too aware of the need to select an experienced supplier when entering into any form of thirdparty agreement – and for good reason: their future success is dependent on the service provided by that supplier. The same rules apply to outsourcing agreements: companies need to focus on quality; implement robust risk management and security processes; check that the required certification and accreditation is in place for the service they provide; and apply good governance practices and appropriate technologies to the work they employ them to do.

5 Does the proposed outsourcing contract provide you with a suitable level of service and remedy should problems arise? Companies should be looking for a track record of quality service delivery both on-shore and off-shore – and they should demand the paperwork to prove it. Guaranteed service level agreements ensure that suppliers provide the staff and infrastructure needed to support the service delivery. Similarly, outsourcing contracts should guarantee an appropriate level of remedy if things go wrong. Without a good contract, it can be difficult to claim compensation, or terminate the agreement, when your supplier does not live up to their earlier promises.

For more information or to download CPA’s white paper, ‘Legal Process
Outsourcing’, visit www.cpaglobal.com.


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 21

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