Healthcare BPO ‘techs’ leap of faith

The Bengaluru-based firm, with a strong presence in Chennai, Tiruchy and Bhimavaram (AP) is betting on technology developed in-house to drive growth trajectory and transition into a tech-driven BPO.   

The company, which also has offices in Philippines (Manila, Cebu) and the US (Florida), is a leader in providing billing and revenue cycle management services to healthcare firms in the US. Fresh from the acquisition of Whitespace, an American data analytics start-up which has a 15-member development team in Hyderabad, the 12,000-strong Omega is now chalking out plans for its next iteration. 

The debt-free Omega, which funded the acquisition through internal accruals, has expansion plans that include beefing up its largest centre at Tiruchy. Gopi Natarajan, Omega’s Co-founder and CEO, said, “We branched to Chennai and entered Tiruchy in 2011, where we have about 3,900 employees. We are among the largest corporate employers there. We will continue to expand and by end2018, we will have a 5,000-strong team in Tiruchy.” He added, “The boiler town has so many colleges where we recruit from – arts, science and commerce institutes. We find the maximum concentration of talent in this part of the state,” he said. 

Amid constant pressures on margins and inflation driving up costs, the company has been focusing on frugal engineering, cost-efficiency measures and automation. Two years ago, Omega roped in consulting major KPMG to bring in relevant checks and balances that have resulted in savings of about 3 per cent annually. Natarajan said, “Margin pressures are always there. Inflation in India is higher compared to other countries. Payroll takes up the biggest share of our costs – 8 to 10 per cent increase year on year. We lean on frugal, cost-efficient and automated processes using in-house technologies to stay competitive. We have constantly innovated by using technology and hired KPMG to help us look and fine-tune our operating processes.” 

“Whitespace, our subsidiary, squarely fits in the space where we operate (in revenue cycle management). They do a tremendous amount of analytics that can be presented as dashboards,” he said. 

Pointing to the lack of time and patience that are needed to pour over voluminous data and reports, Natarajan said, the complementing nature of Whitespace helped them to present key metrics to clients on any platform – Android or iOS. “We are re-designing products as per market needs. Our six-month ongoing development efforts are aimed at empowering users with a powerful data analytics tool with relevant dashboards that are simple and easy to use,” he said, as he explained Omega’s ‘go to market’ strategy. 

He added that Omega has signed its first client in the clinical care management space, that will enable it to foray into the under-penetrated segment by end-June this year.