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Thomas K Thomas

New Delhi June 11 In a bid to arrest the declining market share, BSNL is appointing a consultant to suggest ways to improve its business processes.

The company has short-listed five global consultants, including the Boston Consulting Group for the purpose.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, said: "In view of the highly competitive market, we are looking at streamlining our business processes, which will help us serve our customers better."

He added: "We have asked top global consultants to give a presentation on how they can help us achieve our goals."

The short-listed firms had made a presentation to the BSNL's board of directors last week.

One of the concerns for BSNL is its huge employee base of over 2.5 lakh.

While private operators are managing countrywide operations with fewer people, BSNL's number of employees per telephone line is much higher than the industry average.

"BSNL is a large corporate spread across the length and breadth of the country, like no other telecom operator," said a BSNL official.

"The organisation carries a lot of legacy network and processes that have been passed on from the time it was part of the Department of Telecom."

The consultant will assist the company in improving its response time to the changing market demands and will go deep into the processes followed by it and suggest improvements.

BSNL has been steadily losing market share to private players and currently accounts for less than 50 per cent of all services put together.

The company, which was number two in the GSM cellular segment, has been pushed back by Hutch on account of capacity crunch.

One of the concerns for BSNL has been its tendering process, which has repeatedly held up its expansion plans.

The other issue is the large number of rural fixed line phones (almost 12 million), which is being offered at low tariffs due to its universal services obligation as a State-owned company.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Market Shares | Consulting

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