B2R Corona Chronicles

B2R is best represented by its people, and as COVID caused a global upheaval, we at B2R, geared up for the new normal. On March 24, B2R quickly realigned itself under its “Community & Customer Protection (CCP)” plan to enable its employees for Work-from-Home.  The focus was directed to sourcing laptops, resolving issues of stable electricity and network & connectivity in employees’ rural homes. B2R’s strong on-the-ground team worked round-the-clock to transform 60% of its workforce into Work-from-Home in a matter of days.

Though geographically apart, we communicated constantly, stayed together and kept our morale high.

The Financial Process we deliver from Kausani center for a global corporation is extremely time critical, requiring 100% precision. Every page goes through nearly 40 sub-processes and is divided between a team of Coders, Quality Checkers and Support. Pre COVID, there were 80 employees engaged in the process at Kausani working in cells of 8, in three shifts (24/6). With the centre locked down, the process ground to a halt. 

Our Operations team redesigned parts of the process (and sub-processes) to make it work with limited Individuals, Internet and Infrastructure. On 1st April, the process resumed  with formation of  clusters, mimicking the erstwhile cells, arranged at locations having stable connectivity, close to employee homes, each with four members armed with laptops,. The crew in the clusters was chosen carefully to represent all skill sets and tenure for independent job delivery. The large buzzing Kausani centre got distributed into smaller, safer, home-like offices where the process delivery was continued.

With Phase II, the focus quickly shifted to reopening the centres with minimal staffing and safety protocols. Most of the complex challenges like sourcing and transport of laptops and IT infra issues whilst in Phase I of complete lockdown, and coordination with the government for permissions and e-passes in Phase II were managed with a mix of ingenuity and doggedness by B2R’s team of Supervisors, Managers and Senior Leadership.

We are proud of our teams, who defied job descriptions and spontaneously expanded their roles to meet deliveries, receiving accolades from the customers.B2R continues to rejig and push on resolutely to support customers around the world.

Even as we deal with unfolding of new events nearly every other day during this period, I have often reflected on the learning which emerged for me personally as well as for B2R as an organization. In times of such unprecedented crisis, more than BCP documentation, delivering business continuity seemed more about figuring how one was going to land on one’s feet in situations never encountered before. The idea from one of our bright young leaders to “utilise vegetable trucks for laptop movement” was a game changer for us!

B2R’s rural delivery model had proven Quality of Delivery from rural locations many years back; this crisis gave an opportunity to also demonstrate the robustness of this socially impactful model.Many global corporations have asked employees to work from home for even as long as the rest of the year, thereby opening up to the possibility that all work does not have to happen within their offices in a metro city!I am confident that
in the months to come more corporations will look towards Rural BPO and
Impact Sourcing as a robust integral piece of their global delivery footprint.


- Dhiraj Dolwani