Business Process Outsourcing at Apollo Health Street

The managing director of Apollo Health Street (AHS), a healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) company headquartered in Pennsylvania, United States, was pondering two dilemmas: securing short term growth for his company, and finding new ways to compete in a changing industry. AHS was itself a subsidiary of Apollo Health Enterprises Ltd. (AHEL), an integrated healthcare company located in Hyderabad in southern India. AHS had been growing at 80 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2005, aiming to reach $100 million in sales by March 2010. Its target was to increase annual sales to $500 million within three years in a highly competitive space, which if successful would move AHS into the top three BPO companies in the healthcare sector. How should it secure short term growth? The second dilemma was how to plan for the future. Industry analysts had predicted that over the next five to 10 years, healthcare BPO would become unrecognizable from its current form. The managing director believed that although scaling up would strengthen the company's position for the short term, the company should also be looking for solutions to stay relevant to the customer. How should AHS influence the shape of healthcare BPO in the future? What new ways of competing could the company pursue?