Indian cos 2nd largest biz investors in N Ireland

Economic Times
Indian companies are the second biggest business investors in Northern Ireland, next only to the US, during 2005-06, Lord Diljit Rana, Honorary Consul for India in Northern Ireland has said.
Companies such as FirstSource, part of ICICI Bank of Mumbai, Polaris Software Lab of Chennai, and HCL-BPO pledged investments of almost 30 million pounds and to create over 1,000 new jobs, Rana, himself a successful entrepreneur, said. All three companies are now fully operational. HCL-BPO operates the biggest independent customer contact centre in Ireland, employing over 2,000 people at operations in Belfast and Armagh. FirstSource has already recruited over 700 of the 1,000 people it intends to hire. It operates two customer contact centres, in Belfast and Londonderry. more...

Americans see job-loss to foreign nations

Economic Times
Americans see illegal immigration, loss of jobs to foreign countries, natural disaster and energy shortage as events most likely to be major threats to the US in the next five years. Two of these possible threats are seen as extremely or very likely by over half of the public, according to a Harris Poll released Monday, with 55 per cent of all adults putting a large number of illegal immigrants coming in at the top. A significant loss of jobs to foreign countries comes next with 52 percent of adults believing it would be an extremely or very likely threat, according to the results of an online survey of 1,508 US adults Jan 5-12. However, because split samples were used, each individual item on the list was asked of between 400 and 500 adults. more...

TCS to set up largest offshore centre in Karnataka

Hindustan Times
India's top IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is planning to set up an offshore development centre in South Karnataka. The company will invest nearly Rs 1,000 crore to set up the centre, which will house close to 2,000 people, sources close to the development told HT.
This would be one of the largest centres of TCS in the country, which currently employs 83,000 people across the world. This offshore development centre would be undertaking high-margin work such as writing codes for ERP and other package implementation along with some application development and maintenance work. more...

Cost Arbitrage - Globalization - NeoIT

CIO-Weblog.com
On the on going discussion on the topic of the increasing cost of salaries in India and therefor the loss of the cost arbitrage advantage that created this Industry of outsourcing and put Globalization on the fast track. While doing some poking around for more information I came across this study by NeoIT, which focuses on the areas of Salary cost in the possible offshore locations it focused on the areas of business IT Outsourcing & BPO (Voice / Non Voice).Some methodology on the study, Study is based on data from a survey of leading service providers in Tier 1, 2 & 3 in 20 sourcing destinations including 9 in Europe, Middle east & Africa region (the Czech republic, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia & South Africa) ; 4 in Americas region (Canada, Brazil, Mexico & Costa Rica); and seven in Asia Pac region (China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) analyzing salaries of 3 levels of experience upto 2 yrs, 3-6 yrs relevant experience & Project Manger includes 7-10 yrs. more...

Offshoring Tax Returns Preparation to India

Researchandmarkets.com
We estimate that in 2011, 1.6 million US tax returns will be prepared from India, for $200 million, for a largely 4-month activity. Significantly, Returns preparation is expected to lead the way for a host of other accounting services that can be effectively outsourced to India.Overloaded CPA firms have increasingly been taking to offshoring tax returns preparation to India. The workload in the peak tax season forces CPA firms to employ seasonal tax workers, and let go of other lucrative professional opportunities, which are typically more remunerative. These include advisory services, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, financial budgeting, MIS reporting, etc. Outsourcing works well to address this situation for CPA firms already challenged by manpower shortages and rising labor costs. more...

India's right on top in Intel's global gameplan

Economic Times
Even though its India operations felt the tremors of its biggest global restructuring exercise earlier this year, the country remains top priority in Intel’s global strategy. Indian talent ranks among the best in the world, and growing its research capabilities here is, therefore, high on the agenda of the company, says Craig Barett, chairman of the board, Intel Corporation. Speaking exclusively to Corporate Dossier on the eve of his current visit, Mr Barrett hailed the capabilities of Indian engineers in contributing to technology development and innovation within Intel. “The design and engineering teams that we’ve been working with in India have been very prolific and high quality.” With rapidly-evolving technology and once-distant competitors like AMD closing in fast, emerging economies like India hold the key to growth. The Intel India Development Centre (IIDC) in Bangalore is its largest non-manufacturing facility outside the US, with nearly 3,000 researchers working on cutting-edge technologies, and Barrett indicates the company intends to grow that number over time. more...

Long-term visas for foreign CEOs likely

Economic Times
Decks have been cleared for granting long-term visas to professionals and visa-on-arrival to tourists. While foreign CEOs and business travellers from 18 countries may avail of the multiple-entry visa with five-to-10-year validity, tourists from these nations may be able to enjoy visa-on-arrival facilities at major Indian airports. The home ministry has finally agreed to the tourism ministry’s proposal for relaxing visa norms. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) has already given in-principle support to the proposal. It is learnt that the issue of visa-on-arrival came up at a recent review meeting of tourism infrastructure, chaired by the prime minister. While the home ministry has agreed to consider implementation of the visa-on-arrival scheme, it has said the scheme could not be extended to all categories of travellers and countries due to security reasons. Earlier, the ministry was against the very idea of visa on arrival. more...

Outsourcer Infosys Reports 2Q Revenue Of $746 Million

Informationweek.com
In a sign that the furious growth of offshore IT outsourcing hasn't abated, India's Infosys Technologies Ltd. reported Wednesday that revenues and income in its just-ended second fiscal quarter jumped more than 40 percent. Infosys, the second largest Indian software exporter, pointed to business deals with U.S. firms that helped drive the impressive results. The firm said revenues for the quarter ending Sept. 30 came in at $746 million -- up 42.4 percent -- while earnings per share expanded by a similar percentage. The Bangalore-based firm said it expects revenues for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007, will be more than $3 billion. Infosys and other offshore outsourcing firms have been enjoying rapid growth in recent months. "Our business model provides a compelling value proposition to clients in a flat world," said Nandan M. Nilekani, Infosys CEO and managing director, in a statement. "Our robust organic growth coupled with investments in various strategic areas helped us to grow faster in this environment." In trumpeting the results, Infosys noted that it is enabling a leading U.S. cable provider to launch new features. Another important contract with a U.S. airline calls for Infosys to implement Oracle software to transform its finance functions. more...

Where is IT industry headed? Experts opine

Moneycontrol.com
Where is global information technology held over the next year or so with the US economic slowdown? Will the budget tighten for the CTOs as well and where do Indian companies fit in? An expert panel of global and local experts discuss where global IT is headed over the next twelve months and where Indian companies actually fit in into that picture. The panel includes Peter Bendor Samuel, CEO of the Everest Group who tracks the macrotrends in global IT and one of the Gurus in the IT World, Rod Bourgeous, a celebrated IT analyst at Sanford C Bernstein, which is almost a mover and shaker in the IT world from the equity analyst fraternity and Stan Gibson, Executive Editor of eWeek, one of the world’s largest IT publications. For the local perspective, the panel has B Ramalinga Raju, Head of Nasscom and Chairman of Satyam Computers and Ram Mynampati is President of Satyam Computers. The panel discusses where global and Indian IT is headed over the next twelve to twenty-four months. more...

ABN Amro BPO to up headcount to 5,000

Economic Times
ABN Amro Central Enterprise Services (ACES), the BPO arm of ABN Amro Bank, is set to scale up headcount to 5,000 by June ’07, across its three locations in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. ACES is evaluating a number of tier-II cities and State capitals for further expansion. Paul Abraham, managing director, ACES, told ET in Chennai that BPO operations have grown to over 3,700 people, across Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai in the past four years, with an investment of about $50m in infrastructure, IT, staff and training. “We wanted to have critical mass at each of these locations. Having done that, we are thinking in terms of business continuity and disaster recovery,” Mr Abraham said. ACES would create mirror capacities at these centres and integrate operations at the work-flow level. If a disaster were to strike one location, the work would move to some other location seamlessly, he said. more...

Low-cost carriers take to outsourcing to stay fit

EconomicTimes.com
To mitigate the effect of increasing costs, low-cost airlines are increasingly looking at outsourcing to lower their operational expenses. While Air Deccan is in talks with an Indian company to outsource its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) needs, GoAir recently announced its joint venture with Singapore Airline Engineering Company to provide MRO services in the country. Some others are also expected to follow suit. Outsourcing fits well in their business model because of the overcapacity in the low-cost airline segment. Indian low-cost carriers (LCCs) are therefore high on outsourcing following a global trend to this effect. “For LCC outsourcing is a good option as it helps in cutting capital costs and increasing efficiency. Besides, by outsourcing they are partnering with the best in industry,” says Kapil Kaul, CEO, Indian Subcontinent and Middle East, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA). Most LCCs are outsourcing their ground handling and heavy maintenance to an extent. more...

Outsourcing story keeps getting bigger

Economic Times
Driven by strong demand conditions, new customer additions, big deal wins and employee additions, domestic software companies are set on a high growth path over the remaining three quarters of FY07. Analysts say that a surge in future demand can be gauged from the fact that many big companies, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Fidelity, Wells Fargo and GE are looking at outsourcing significant parts of their software development work to Indian software firms. Already in the first quarter, Indian IT vendors both mid and large sized have had significant customer wins and have added 37% more employees on an average year-on-year to meet this robust demand. In the June ‘06 quarter, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Satyam and Patni together added 253 new clients. The revenue per active customer increased from Rs 15.3 crore in September ‘05 to Rs 18.6 crore in June ‘06. There has also been a surge in offshoring ERP projects. more...

BA's former Indian offshore unit floats on NYSE

Silicon.com
The former Indian offshore outsourcing unit of British Airways (BA) has raised more than $255m after completing its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). WNS floated at $20 per share on its opening day on the NYSE on 26 July, with shares reaching a high of $25 earlier this week and giving the company a market capitalisation of almost $1bn. The 12.7 million shares offered represent just over 28 per cent of the company. WNS, which reported $202.6m in revenue for the last year, was originally set up by BA as a wholly owned captive business process outsourcing (BPO) division in Mumbai in 1996 to support the airline's back-office operations. The company started offering services to other airlines in 1999 and became independent, with venture capital funds giving private equity firm Warburg Pincus a majority stake in WNS in 2002. more...

Motorola forms JVs with Wipro, Tech-Mahindra

Economic Times
US-based telecom equipment maker Motorola, on Tuesday, announced two joint ventures in India. One with Bangalore-based Wipro Technologies for managed services and second with Pune-based Tech-Mahindra for application development. ET had reported the JV in its edition on Tuesday. The global telecom major has decided to make this shift because of the change in the market place. The global telecom equipment market has been undergoing a major turbulence in the past couple of years. There has been consolidation due to shrinking margins with Alcatel acquiring Lucent Technologies, Siemens selling its handset business to BenQ. more...

Is the Indian IT safari hitting a roadblock?

Economic Times
Party’s over, folks. That’s what a new study would have Indian outsourcing companies think, but industry insiders aver it’s far from the truth. With outsourcing being one of the key drivers of the Indian economy, the Chicago-based report almost sounds like the end of the road for India in its bid to be an economic superpower. The study done by consulting firm Diamond Cluster International, predicts that the IT outsourcing boom is over worldwide, including in India, as companies learn to be more strategic. In India, growing labour shortage will see outsourcers shift their focus towards China, the study adds. The report mentions India’s major IT and BPO services hubs, such as Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad, to point out that they’ve reached labour saturation and are looking to tier II cities such as Kolkata, Mysore and Chandigarh for an educated workforce. The study also claims that US-based companies are also ignoring cost factors to outsource to Canada because of proximity and similarities in language and culture. The resource crunch India will face will cause Indian companies as well as its customers to look at other locations for their operations. They feel that this is an opportunity that other countries could grab. Incidentally, 75% of the respondents of the DiamondCluster survey are currently o utsourcing to India. more...

Indian data breach hits HSBC

IT Week
The practice of moving customer data to offshore sites has come under fire again after a security breach at HSBC's offshore data processing site in Bangalore led to £233,000 reportedly being stolen from a small number of UK customers. An HSBC spokesman confirmed the bank had commenced legal action against an employee who had passed customer information onto fraudsters, claiming that it would "pursue a conviction as aggressively as possible". He added that the fraud had been detected by HSBC's security procedures and that all affected customers had been informed and reimbursed. However, the incident is likely to increase pressure on HSBC and other UK firms with offshore data handling facilities to reassess security processes after reports claimed the HSBC employee had used false records to obtain the job. more...

Film on Indian outsourcing to be screened in US

Economic Times
Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night", an award-winning documentary on outsourcing work to India, is being screened this month in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Told from the perspective of an Indian living in the US, the film journeys into India's call centres, where telemarketers acquire Western names and accents to service the telephone-support industry of the US. This film incorporates animation, live action, and archival footage to explore the complexities of what it terms as "globalization, capitalism, and identity". Screened first over the last year, the film has won awards at Uruguay, the Humboldt film festival, NextFrame Film Festival and Rosebud Film and Video Festival, among others. Directed and written by Indian American Sonali Gulati, this film now gets shown at the Urban World Film Festival, New York, on June 22 and 24, at the Artwallah Festival in San Pedro Los Angeles on June 24, at the 29th Asian American International Film Festival in New York on July 16, and via WYBE Public TV station, Philadelphia, on Aug 2 and 5. With a runtime of 27 minutes, the film has been described as giving "a behind-the-scenes look at outsourcing through interviews with workers competing fiercely to staff the steadily increasing number of call centers based in India". more...

TCS bags orders worth $30 mn

Economic Times
India's largest software services exporter, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, said on Monday it had received two orders from South America worth over $30 million. One of the orders was for managing the business process outsourcing and information technology operations for Transantiago, the public transportation system in Chile's Santiago city, the company said in a statement. The other was a five-year contract to manage back office operations for a banking and financial group, which Tata Consultancy did not name. more...

India's offshore IT revenues hit US$13.3B

ZDNet
Revenue across India's booming offshore IT software and services industry grew by 33 per cent over the last year, hitting a new high of US$13.3 billion. The annual figures from India's IT trade body Nasscom, for the financial year 2005/06, also show a 37 per cent rise in the country's business process outsourcing (BPO) revenues to US$6.2 billion. Nasscom's predictions for growth in the next 12 months show no sign of India's position of dominance in offshore IT and BPO services being lost any time soon. Combined IT services and BPO revenue for the financial year 2006/07 is expected to grow by up to 30 per cent, to between US$29 billion and US$31 billion. This continued level of growth will put India's offshore outsourcing industry on target to hit revenues of US$60 billion by 2010, according to Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom. He said in a statement: "In the last year India's strength has emerged through large client wins, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, movement of the industry towards a stable pricing model and a gradual positive shift in the outsourcing debate." But Karnik warned India also needs to address concerns about the quality of its graduates and the country's poor physical infrastructure. A separate report by research company Everest last month also claimed India will maintain its low-cost IT skills advantage in the offshore outsourcing market for at least another 30 years. more...

Opinion: Why I don't trust offshore customer service

Silicon.com
How comfortable are you with giving your personal details to call centre staff in foreign countries? Simon Moores doesn't like it one bit. Something hasn't been quite right with the Barclays online banking site this week. As I write this column, I'll 'ping' it one more time to be sure - and the result is a 'no response from server' message, so all is not well in the wonderful world of online finance. Being curious as to the cause and wanting to know if a client payment had made its way by Bacs into my business account, I decided to call the Barclays helpline. This was answered by a pleasant young woman with an Indian accent, who requested my online account information. more...

Tech predictions for 2010

Economic Times
Techies who want to lead businesses will find it easier to climb up the ladder of corporate success in 2010. According to a study by management consultants Deloitte, called "Eye to the Future — How Technology, Media and Telecommunications Advances Could Change the Way We Live in 2010", technology will become really important in a few years. The report outlines how technology will affect our everyday lives by 2010. The growing ubiquity of technology will have a number of impacts on our everyday lives. Here, according to Deloitte, is how your daily life will be affected by 2010: Techie rules the roost By 2010 technical skills will be more sought after than ever, according to the study. Tech professionals will find it easier to climb the corporate ladder by the end of the decade. Those with a greater degree of technological literacy may find themselves moving up the corporate hierarchy more quickly than those without. more...

Why do IT projects fail?

Economictimes.com
Sagarika Gupta, a project manager in a leading IT company, was thrilled when she got a large software project. She had the best people in the team. And she was promised bonuses if the project went well. But unfortunately clients rejected it. Her boss assumed that she had not put best efforts in the project, although she knew she had. It was a failure - and worse, she had no assurance that she would do any better on the next project. If this scenario sounds familiar, you're not alone. Repeated studies have shown that the failure rate for IT projects is more than 50 per cent. This is tolerated only because software is vital to the running of modern organisations. Today three out of four projects are still failing. Why, though, do these failures occur? And why project managers (PM) are held responsible to it? How can corporate India deal with project mismanagement? One would claim that every project that fails is the result of poor management. A poorly funded or ill-conceived project will fail regardless of the skills of the project manager or project team. Projects that lack buy-in from top management are doomed, as are projects that lack ties with company objectives or that have no clear return on investment. Sometimes a shift in business priorities requires that certain projects be abandoned. But project mismanagement plays a significant role in many project failures. more...

Know how much Infy top earner makes?

EconomicTimes.com
S D Shibulal, the US-based founder-director and promoter of Infosys, leads the pack among the company directors in terms of pay-packets with an annual salary of $1.6 lakh (Rs 71 lakh at an exchange rate of Rs 44.9), according to the filings made by Infosys with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). Among other directors, it is the former CFO and incumbent HR head, TV Mohandas Pai who ranks as the second highest paid director with a pay packet of $41,815 (Rs 18.78 lakh) in FY06. He even tops the other directors in terms of bonus/incentive payout in FY06 which stood at $1 lakh or Rs 45.6 lakh. The other four directors including Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani drew a salary of $29,355 (Rs 13.2 lakh per annum) during FY06. Both the chief mentor and the MD of the company received a similar bonus payout of $ 45,925. Incumbent chief financial officer of the company, V Balakrishnan, drew a salary of $29,946 with $64,762 as bonus/incentive in FY06. Infosys, which launched Infosys Consulting in April ’04, has invested $7m in FY06 in this arm, taking the total investment to $17m. more...

UK firms to drive offshore outsourcing boom

Silicon.com
Demand for offshore outsourcing services among UK and European companies is set to increase by 50 per cent per year over the next two years, according to Gartner. Globally the analyst predicts the number of organisations doing offshore outsourcing will increase from 13 per cent to 20 per cent over the same period. In the next decade China will move from manufacturing to services. But being able to speak English is one thing. Being able to think it is another.
Ian Marriott, research VP at Gartner, said: "We are seeing increasing uptake in offshore services in the UK and Europe both with traditional providers and Indian providers. It's not an add-on anymore. Deploy those resources wherever they can be found." India remains the first choice of offshore destination for European countries and China also features as a potential top three choice, although it is still hampered by a lack of English language skills and a focus on the US. more...

Wanna be a software testing expert?

Economic Times
Software Testing, also referred to as software quality assurance, has come up as a rewarding career in the computing industry. Companies need people to write software programmes, also called applications, but they also need professionals to discover defects in these applications, before the customer does. And it's here that the need for software testers is felt. While simply defining software testing, Sunil Bellara, Associate Director, Recruitment and Staffing, Capgemini , said: “It’s a process used to identify the correctness , completeness and quality of developed computer software. Testing involves operation of a system or application under controlled conditions and evaluating the results.” Pankaj Agarwal, CEO, Sopra Group, India, added, “There are many approaches to software testing, but effective testing of complex products is essentially a process of investigation , not merely a matter of creating and following rote procedure.” more...

TCS bags $500m Citi deal

Rediff
Tata Consultancy Services has bagged $500 million outsourcing deal from global financial services giant Citigroup Inc. It is an application, maintenance and development contract, based on a 'take-or-pay-order' system. TCS officials confirmed the deal and its size but declined to spell out the client's name. "It's not our policy to divulge the client-specific information," they added. Industry sources said the order came from Citigroup's consumer division and TCS was expected to start the work in the first quarter of this financial year. more...

Why India Succeeds

Line56.com
As far as I know, Line56 is the only news outlet on the Internet or in the world of print that regularly presents both sides of the offshore outsourcing debate. We often speak to foreign vendors, as well as to U.S.-based vendors who are adding service capacity abroad. We acknowledge the cost benefits of IT and business process outsourcing (BPO), but we also feel obliged to point out some of the cant around these processes -- for example, Dell's repeated claims that they hire Indian call center agents because they are better than American agents, or industry claims that there are not sufficient number of educated Americans to pick up the IT slack. We have never advocated the rollback of offshore, just an open discussion of what offshore trends, taken to their logical conclusion, would mean in a global context. Right now, there's anything but an open discussion. more...

Is GM pushing offshore outsourcing?

Autoserviceworld.com
According to reports in a Detroit newspaper, some of U.S. auto giant General Motors Company's parts suppliers, are being sent a very clear, if not explicit message: outsource to cheap labour nations, or lose the business altogether.After an internal investigation by GM, it was learned that a single employee sent out the policy in question and had suggested that suppliers find parts form a list of countries such as China and Namibia.GM global purchasing chief Bo Andersson immediately released a statement to all employees suggesting that the automaker should not "direct suppliers where to source" parts. In his comments he wrote: "GM's suppliers must determine how to compete in this hyper-competitive market."However, after GM lost some 10 billion dollars last year, some auto parts manufactures say the message is still clear; outsource or else.Despite the controversy over the issue, GM maintains that it purchases 99 per cent of its parts from North American sources. However, that stated number includes parts that are only assembled on this continent, even if the vast majority of their components are imported from low-cost countries. more...

Visit www.OffshoreIT.com

BPOs help staff cope with stress

Economic Times
Blame the nature of the job, deadline pressure or customer expectations. BPO jobs undoubtedly involve high stress. Prashant Chawla, COO, Integreon, a Mumbai-based KPO, says that there are three types of stress an employee may experience — tight deadlines, repetitive nature of the job and late night shifts. Aashu Calappa, VP-HR, ICICI OneSource, says, “Everything gets measured and this puts employees under pressure.” Companies are now making efforts to help their employees cope with stress because it is an occupational hazard. For example, night shifts are rotated on a regular basis. However, deadlines can’t be controlled. more...

Outsourcing opens doors in global village

The Age
THE offshore outsourcing train has left the station and Australia doesn't even have a ticket, according to FoobooOnline.com president Martin Conboy. Mr Conboy is in the business of match-making. His newly launched FooBooOnline.com (Front Office Outsourcing Back Office Outsourcing) business offers a website portal as a single point of contact between buyers and suppliers of outsourcing services in the Asia-Pacific marketplace. He believes businesses that do not assess their outsourcing or offshoring opportunities will be left behind. "If we don't get on to this train then overseas organisations will come over here and where (companies) have got comfortable … will eat their lunch," Mr Conboy said. "Unless they've got something so fantastically special that people are prepared to pay a premium for it, they'll go out of business. Outsourcing is not a blip on the economic radar. It's a growing and accelerating trend. Currently the market is worth about $US130 billion ($A180 billion)." more...

Outsourcing equity research

Hindustan Times
If numbers are anything to go by, then the KPO industry will help create a very bright future for India. The story of the KPO’s is fairly new and KPO’s might not be very large, however the numbers predicted are huge.The Mckinsey Global Institute estimates that the volume of offshore outsourcing will increase by 30 to 40 % for the next 5 years. 3.3 million Jobs will be generated overall by the year 2015. Deloitte research predicts the outsourcing of 2 million financial sector jobs by 2009. In this scenario India will act as the primordial sea using its biggest strength - that is a supply of at least 2 million graduates and 300,000 Post Graduates - to help the KPO industry evolve into a mass job generator. There are many countries in the race. However, today all roads le4ad to India. more...

iGate Corp hives off Canadian ops for $9.3mn

Business Standard
iGate Corporation, the $267 million, US-based IT services firm, has sold its Canadian operations for $9.3 million.iGate Corp holds close to 82% in iGate Global Solutions, India.According to a statement issued by iGate Corp, the sale of its Canadian professional services operation was completed during the fourth quarter of calendar 2005. "The transaction concludes our strategic initiative of divesting all non-core operations to focus strictly on our more profitable and faster growing offshore and US professional services businesses," the statement added.According to senior officials of the company, the Canadian operations were mainly into systems integration, and this was the reason for exiting the operations. The company further added that during the past year it substantially completed its client rationalisation process and the quality of its offshore client base has improved significantly. more...

Bush: No protectionism to safeguard offshored US tech jobs

Silicon.com
US President George Bush has ruled out any protectionist measures to safeguard US jobs that are under threat from companies outsourcing work overseas to countries such as India. On a visit to India last week Bush admitted that it is "painful" for those people who lose their jobs as a result of globalisation but he said the US rejects a policy of protectionism. In a free economy, every citizen has something to contribute. He said in a speech at Purana Qila in New Delhi: "It's true that some Americans have lost jobs when their companies moved operations overseas. It's also important to remember that when someone loses a job, it's an incredibly difficult period for the worker and their families." But he said the answer is to embrace that competition and the new opportunities it creates. more...

Bush drops hints of relaxing H1B visa limit

Business Standard
An inconspicuous banner outside the lane that led to the Indian School of Business (ISB) seems to have caught the eye of US President George Bush."Would you like to work in the US?" was what the banner asked. Well, Bush seems to have answered that question during his interaction with a select group of entrepreneurs at the ISB - an indication of relaxing H1B visa rules was given.At present, the cap on H1B visas is 65,000 for knowledge workers, and India Inc has been urging the US to relax the limit. Sashi Reddi, chief executive officer of AppLabs Technologies, said the issue of H1B visas did come up during the informal interaction, and there was an indication that the US was actively looking at relaxing the limit. Reddi was among the 16 people selected to meet Bush. more...

Bush's Pro-India Stance Shows He's Got The Facts Right About Outsourcing

Informationweek.com
Legislative efforts to restrict the outsourcing of IT and other services jobs to India would hurt America more than they would help it. Most business people and economists know this, and it appears President Bush knows it, too. Amidst all the hyperbole about the so-called ruinous effects of offshoring, it's easy to forget that the U.S. enjoys a significant trade surplus in services with India--$1.8 billion, to be exact. "India is now one of the fastest growing markets for American exports, and the growing economic ties between our two nations are making American companies more competitive in the global marketplace," Bush said Wednesday in a speech to the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. In other words, a trade war with India is one of the last things America wants or needs. Fueled in part by income earned working for American tech companies, India's emerging middle class is spending its newfound wealth on the kind of products and services that are familiar to most of us: pizzas from Pizza Hut, washing machines from General Electric, computers from Dell. "India's consumers associate American brands with quality and value, and this trade is creating opportunities here at home," Bush said. more...

Cambridge Solutions named best performing BPO

Sify.com
Cambridge Solutions Ltd., the BPO division of Scandent Solutions, has been named one among the three ''Best Performing BPO Providers'' in the world and the 100 top ranking global services providers. The international survey and evaluation was conducted by Global Services media and neoIT, a leading offshore outsourcing advisory firm, a Cambridge release here said today. ''The Global Services 100 firms demonstrate a pattern of market leadership, innovation and outstanding customer service. They have exhibited balanced excellence in the way they run their operations, address client needs and manage their client relationships, as well as their human capital,'' the release said, quoting Rusty Weston, editor-in-chief, Global Services. ''This international recognition validates the success of Cambridge Solutions' unique strategic global outsourcing model,'' Chris Sinclair, Executive Chairman and CEO, Scandent Solutions, said, adding ''in today's economy, establishing a global services strategy is critical for all companies. more...

GM awards US$7 billion in IT outsourcing contracts

Infoworld
General Motors Corp. Thursday awarded IT contracts worth approximately US$7 billion over five years to six vendors, including Electronic Data Systems Corp., which is now responsible for most of GM's IT operations, as well as IBM Corp. and Indian offshore firm Wipro Ltd. The other winners of outsourcing deals from the automaker are Hewlett Packard Co., Capgemini and Covisint, a subsidiary of Compuware Corp. EDS will continue to have the most business at GM, but somewhat less than it has today, GM officials said in a statement, while HP and Capgemini will increase their existing business. IBM, Compuware Covisint and Wipro "will continue to be strategic IT partners to GM," the automaker said. It planned to offer more details about its IT plans later this morning. more...

Wachovia's Change of Heart

Businessweek
The bank took a long time to discover the virtues of outsourcing -- but now it admits they're irresistible. Still, it's not sending any call-center work overseas While many other large corporations were rushing headlong into offshoring, Charlotte (N.C.)-based Wachovia (WB ) was content to sit on the sidelines -- until now. By the middle of this year, Wachovia will have outsourced 500 to 1,000 jobs, with plans to move an additional 3,000 or so by the end of 2007.
Most, but not all, of those jobs are going to India. An undisclosed number of human resource slots are being outsourced to Hewitt Associates, which will perform some HR functions for Wachovia right down the street from its Charlotte headquarters. SOUL-SEARCHING. Why the change of heart? Peter Sidebottom, director of corporate development and strategic initiatives for Wachovia, says that with a couple of major bank acquisitions on its hands at the time—the bank has pulled off two large-scale mergers with other regional banks so far this decade—Wachovia had a lot on its plate, and knew it could extract plenty of cost savings just from those two mergers. "We felt we had a lot of opportunities to save money without going offshore," says Sidebottom. more...

Offshore Firms Target IT Infrastructure Outsourcing

Computerworld
For most U.S. companies, a 30% year-over-year increase in employees without a major acquisition might make the national news. But in India, that kind of growth is becoming routine for IT services firms. For example, Wipro Ltd. in Bangalore, India, said in its latest quarterly earnings report last week that its workforce had reached 51,000 employees as of Dec. 31—up 30% from the start of 2005. It's a similar, or even better, story at Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Ltd., which said earlier this month that it had 49,400 workers as of Dec. 31. That amounts to a 40% year-over-year increase. Those gains come as offshore firms and the Indian operations of U.S. vendors are seeking to expand into relatively new areas, such as IT infrastructure outsourcing. Last month, Dallas-based Perot Systems Corp. started offering infrastructure management services from its facilities in India, where 6,000 of the company's 17,000 employees are based. more...

The challenges of outsourcing: Can Dubai's vision become a reality?

Khaleej Times
Dubai is aiming to become a key hub in the region for outsourcing. Is this achievable and what will it mean for the economy? Outsourcing worldwide is big business and the Dubai Outsource Zone (DOZ) is lobbying hard to grab a good chunk of it. It is determined that Dubai should benefit from the outsourcing, or more specifically offshoring, boom and the need for international companies to find better and more innovative ways to reduce costs. If Dubai succeeds the benefits could be huge, not only from the immediate impact on job creation and consumption, but also in generating long-term economic growth by facilitating the development of a mixed economy and accelerating effective technology transfer. But will escalating costs deter potential candidates from coming here and can Dubai's infrastructure grow fast enough to cope with an increased population? How well positioned is Dubai to capture a large share of the offshoring market? more...

Indian legal eagles join BPO boom

IBNLive
They are among the more recent entrants to the outsourcing party. They are the Indian lawyers. If industry reports are any indication, the country's legal eagles could well give much muscle to India's knowledge process outsourcing growth story. The legal services sector is tipped to be the next big offshore destination and corporate lawyers are increasingly hopping on to the outsourcing bandwagon and are handling prestigious international clients. Recent industry reports peg the annual value of legal outsourcing at $80 mn and predict that it will rise up to $4 bn by 2015 - that translates to almost 80,000 more jobs for lawyers in India. more...

A paradigm shift

The Hindu
AFTER having established their credentials in developing software applications primarily to enhance back-offices of organisations across the globe, Indian software companies are now all revved up to embrace the development of customer-facing software products and are growing significantly in the outsourced product development (OPD) space, thus bringing forth a paradigm shift in outsourcing. Seen as an indicator of the maturity of the outsourcing business in India, the Indian OPD market is expected to grow to $11 billion by 2008 (Nasscom-McKinsey report). While major players like Oracle, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have product development centres in India, venture capitalists are investing significantly in smaller players. more...

More CSRs Are Staying Home

DestinationCRM.com
The number of contact center agents wearing their pajamas as their professional garb is expected to continue to gain traction throughout the decade, according to a new IDC report. "Home-Based Agent 2005-2010 Forecast and Analysis: Converging Economic Forces to Drive the Expansion of Homeshoring in the United States" predicts that the number of U.S. at-home agents will nearly triple, from an estimated 112,000 in 2005 to more than 300,000 by 2010. The report, which explores the growing market for home-based customer care agents, also examines providers that are influencing this market's growth, including Alpine Access, LiveOps, VIPdesk, West, Willow, and Working Solutions. The trend within the outsourcing industry to tap the nation's work-at-home agents is spurred by a collection of drivers, including organizations' needs for more productive agents and enhanced retention rates. Workers can be "more productive and enthusiastic [working] from home, because they don't have to deal with going into work five days of the week to the call center," says Stephen Loynd, senior analyst for IDC's CRM and Customer Care BPO service. Also, workers' familiarity with American culture and English may make them better suited to field certain types of customer care calls that may demand a higher level of sales skills, compared to someone working in another country. These points also were highlighted in the research firm's 2004 report "An Alternative to Offshore Outsourcing: The Emergence of the Home-Base Agent." But Loynd notes that its most recent installment examines macroeconomic factors that are contributing to a healthy growth rate for home-based agents, citing technology enhancements, increased oil prices, and increased cost of living. more...

New interest in software products

Business Standard
Sasken, Ittiam, Pramati, Subex, Tejas Networks and the like are a select breed of Indian companies infusing a whiff of newness in a space dominated by software and BPO services. The Indian software industry is now waking up to the potential of software product business. This is manifest in the number of such businesses being set up. The heightened activity being witnessed now, coupled with the unique advantages for Indian software product companies, will ensure the success of a large number in the coming years, feel industry watchers. Over the years Indian companies have made a foray into software product development but have been able to capture only a meagre 0.2 per cent of the $180 billion global market for products. Now, as the Indian IT industry matures and there emerges the need to look at innovations to sustain high margin growth, the need to look at product development space more aggressively is being realised. more...

Seven Fearless Predictions For Outsourcing In 2006

Informationweek.com
There will be a major data-security breach at an offshore firm. The resulting controversy will have no impact whatsoever on the outsourcing industry as businesses realize the same thing happens in the U.S. almost every week. And here's six more of my can't-miss prognostications for the year ahead in outsourcing. An Indian IT-services firm will buy a significant U.S. software vendor. Many Indian tech companies are cash rich from recent IPOs and are looking for ways to diversify beyond outsourcing. Look for at least one deal where a major Indian player acquires an ISV with dominant market share in a vertical such as manufacturing or financial services. Lou Dobbs will continue his hypocritical, ill-informed tirade against outsourcing, even though he willingly accepts a paycheck from a company, Time Warner, that his own Web site says is "Exporting America." Questions for Lou: Do you think TW could afford your multimillion dollar salary if it wasn't sending back-office work to India? Have you offered to take a pay cut if it means keeping more Time Warner jobs in the U.S? more...

India faces offshore IT skills crisis by 2010

Silicon.com
A huge IT skills shortage and poor physical infrastructure could threaten India's position as the leading offshore outsourcing location by 2010, according to a new report. The report by consultant McKinsey and Indian IT body Nasscom warns that labour market pressures could leave India facing a shortfall of 500,000 IT staff equipped with the skills to work in the offshore outsourcing industry. Jayant Sinha, partner at McKinsey, said that India faces a challenge in maintaining its dominant offshore IT position. He said in the report: "The skills and quality of the workforce need to be improved, since only 25 per cent of technical graduates and 10 to 15 per cent of general college graduates are suitable for employment in the offshore IT and BPO industries respectively." Sinha said the country's urban infrastructure also needs "immediate attention" with better road and air links between India's high-tech hotspots. more...

Charlotte banks seek savings offshore

Miami.com
How much of a bank's work force can be sent overseas?
These days, more and more. You might not notice the shift because financial firms aren't getting rid of face-to-face workers such as tellers. But increasingly, they're tapping support and technology staff in low-wage countries, from computer programmers to financial analysts. In fact, the financial services sector is one of the more aggressive in offshore outsourcing. A new report predicts the industry will move more than 20 percent of its costs offshore by 2010, up from less than 10 percent in 2006. That could mean the shift of 2 million jobs to low-cost countries such as India from the U.S., Europe and Asia by 2010, according to consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Charlotte's banks exemplify the ramp-up. Starting with technology work in 2002, Bank of America Corp. now has 1,500 employees in India, handling tasks from computer work to market research. The bank said last week it plans to grow there. more...

BANGALORE INFRASTRUCTURE WOES WORSEN

SearchCIO.com
Arrivals at Bangalore's tiny airport are greeted with newspaper headlines screaming "Bangalore crumbling!" Like many sensational news stories, the one centered on Bangalore's overtaxed infrastructure has legs. These sorts of headlines have been greeting business travelers and tourists for years. In this case, though, the doomsday headlines have it right: "Bangalore is a national calamity in terms of infrastructure," said Azim Premi, CEO of Wipro Ltd. And he ought to know. Wipro is synonymous with Indian offshore outsourcing, and is a $1.7 billion giant with more than 100 acres of property in this city alone. "Some years back it was just bad roads, but now it's irregular power, blocked drains and mismanaged transport," said T. Kurien, CEO of Wipro's BPO unit. "The distance that took us just 10 minutes to go over a few years back, now takes at least an hour. It is putting pressure on costs," he said. more...

CAPGEMINI EYES INDIA BUYS TO SUPPORT GROWTH

TMCNet.com
Capgemini of France, an IT services provider, is looking at acquiring Indian rivals that will help it achieve aggressive growth targets in the offshore outsourcing market.The company has said that it will need 14,000 information technology (IT) staff in low-cost countries to serve its customers by the end of 2008.Most of those will be in India. Possible acquisition targets are companies with revenues of between 100 and 200 million euros and double- digit operating profit margins. The valuation of such companies is 12 to 18 months of revenues and a takeover of one such company could cost up to a maximum of 300 million euros. more...

Marlabs to Expand India Presence

NJBIZ.com
Marlabs, headquartered in Edison, plans to expand its offshore services in India.
The company expects to increase its headcount from the present 70 to 300 by the middle of next year. The company has one offshore outsourcing center in Bangalore and as part of its expansion strategy is looking for more space in the city and beyond the city, most likely Chennai. Sunil Nambiar, Bangalore-based head of global delivery, says, “We see a greater value proposition and cost advantage in outsourcing to India. In addition, the availability of the talent pool and the advantage of a 12-hour time difference is a big factor.” He adds that although the cost advantage of offshore outsourcing to India has reduced compared to what it was three to four years ago, India is still preferred. “Last year the Indian operations contributed 20% of the overall business, going forward we expect it to increase to 40%.” more...

Our focus is offshore for top clients

The Hindu Business Line
A GOOD September quarter this year is not the lone feather in Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS) cap. Since then, it has managed to fill up a few key gaps in its services portfolio. It has bagged a contract from Pearl Insurance of the UK, marking its foray into end-to-end BPO and acquired Australia-based FNS for $26 million to strengthen its presence in core banking. eWorld caught up with N. Chandrasekharan, executive vice-president, Tata Consultancy Services, when he was in Chennai to launch the company's new infrastructure management centre, to see what the future held and if trends that could change the fortunes of IT players were visible. Excerpts from the conversation:
A recent Forrester report has indicated that the Consulting and Systems Integration opportunities - seen in the last few years - might be short-lived. Your perspective, in the light of IT players moving in that direction? more...

Insurer outsources processing to Indian IT firm

Personneltoday.com
Insurance firm Pearl Group has outsourced its processing and administration to Indian IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in a deal worth £486m over 12 years. Under the agreement, TCS will establish a subsidiary company to employ about 950 of Pearl's 1,100 staff, with the remainder retained by Pearl to work in its life and pensions business. Phiroz Vandrevala, global head of corporate affairs at TCS, said the firm plans to take over Pearl's Peterborough office and establish a business process outsourcing centre of excellence for the UK, initially managing four million insurance policies. more...

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In-house trend threatens outsourcers

VNUNET.com
Insourcing of IT services is a growing trend and could have a significant impact on outsourcing, according to research by the National Outsourcing Association (NOA). Sixty per cent of respondents to a survey of outsourcing industry specialists said that insourcing poses a significant risk to outsourcing contracts and is not a passing fad. But 30 per cent of respondents felt that insourcing is often a knee-jerk reaction to bad outsourcing experiences. more...

Google, Yahoo Out Of Censored Commerce Report

Webpronews.com
A Department of Commerce report on how offshore outsourcing has affected tech jobs in the US was sanitized to present a brighter job picture. White House and Commerce politicos whitewashed a research report that showed a more balanced picture of outsourcing, opting instead to demonstrate the positive side of the practice only, two publications have charged. BusinessWeek pointed to a pair of documents in its coverage of the report. One PDF document, a 12-page final report delivered to House Republican Frank Wolf (VA), omits negative information that appeared in a slide show created by the original analysts at Commerce. more...

Will salary inflation curb offshoring?

News.com
Asia's booming economy is raising an interesting question for U.S. companies: As businesses in that part of the world raise salaries to reflect their prosperity, will the region become less attractive for offshore outsourcing? A new report indicates that more than 50 percent of companies surveyed in Asia expect to increase jobs and salaries in the last quarter of the year, with those in China being particularly bullish. Although the study did not cite specific salary levels, some Asian countries had reported substantial increases in compensation as part of a trend that began more than a year ago. more...

Infosys Posts Robust Increase In Second Quarter Sales, Profits

Informationweek.com
Indian IT services provider Infosys Technologies continues to benefit from the boom in offshore outsourcing. The Bangalore-based company on Tuesday said revenues for its second quarter increased 38.3%, compared to the same period a year ago, to $524 million. Per-share earnings jumped to 51 cents from 36 cents a year earlier. Infosys also added 34 new customers and grew from 40,000 to more than 46,000 employees during the period ended September 30. For the first six months of its fiscal year, Infosys' sales topped the $1 billion mark, a level it took the company a full year to reach as recently as 2004. In a statement, Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani said the company's robust growth was due in part to moves to offer "a broad array of services" by diversifying beyond basic IT work and deliver higher value offerings, such as consulting and business-process outsourcing. more...

BT slams "bigots" who abuse Indian call centre staff

Silicon.com
BT has dismissed some of the "myths" around offshore outsourcing and claims some customers who complain about language difficulties with Indian call centres are just "bigots". BT's chief procurement officer Meryl Bushell, speaking today at the annual Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply conference in London, said the company will continue the offshoring drive that has delivered "substantial" cost savings and improved customer service. There are some bigots who are very rude. There are times I have been ashamed to be British. -- Meryl Bushell, chief procurement officer, BT She said: "The savings have been substantial - in the region of 40 to 60 per cent savings on everything we have offshored." more...

Accenture Achieves Meets Gold Standard Using IEX Workforce Management System

TMCNet
Accenture Ltd. is committed to providing innovative consulting, technology and outsourcing services designed to help customers transform their operations into high performance business units. On behalf of its outsourcing clients, Accenture operates contact centers all over the world, including India. As a result of the widespread adoption of offshore outsourcing, Accenture’s India sites have grown rapidly. Faced with mounting pressure to maintain high standards of service quality throughout the rapid growth period, Accenture had to quickly ramp up its operations to support the centers’ in reaching and sustaining a high performance environment. Critical contact center tools were not operating as required and cost controls were strained due to a high rise in growth and client expectations. more...

Israeli women power to combat Indian BPO

Hindustan Times
India’s hegemony in BPO is facing a new challenge with Israeli high-tech companies developing own progamming centres and hiring hundreds of women for cheap and quality labour to combat offshore outsourcing to the country. With the Israeli government providing a programme that supports each employee with a monthly subsidy of N.I.S.1,000 for five years, high-tech companies like Matrix Talpiot, Imagestore Systems have opened programming centres in Kiryat Sefer and have hired Haredi women for the job.Kiryat Sefer, also known as Modi'in Illit, a Haredi town located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, has seen more than 250 haredi women hired over the past year. Haredis are a religious sect. "Global high-tech companies such as Comverse and Amdocs outsource today to India and Eastern Europe. This creates a big problem for unemployment in Israel. This project is a way of keeping work in Israel and one which provides an alternative to offshore outsourcing," said Ronen Engler, vice president of sales and marketing of Matrix Talpiot, was quoted by the Jerusalem Post. more...

PWC survey: Financial services firms looking offshore

Computerworld
Financial services firms expect to double offshore use by 2008 despite widespread dissatisfaction because of cost overruns, difficulties in recruiting and training staff in India and cultural differences, according to a study released this week by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Nigel Vooght, a London-based capital markets advisory leader at PWC, said that many of the problems reported by executives in the survey generally occur in the first year or two and should iron out as companies improve their business and IT processes. PWC surveyed executives in IT and business roles at 156 firms worldwide and found that about a quarter of the companies send 10% to 20% of their head count offshore in the business process and IT areas. In three years, PWC estimated, half of those firms will be offshoring. "There is a lot of demand from a lot of players for the trained and educated resources," said Vooght, adding that companies working offshore are developing more Western-like approaches to retaining employees, such as improving benefits. more...

ABN AMRO signs contracts with IT vendors

ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO announced on 16 December 2004 that it would accelerate its Group Shared Services (GSS) programme, with the objective to create value across the Group through increased client satisfaction, higher operational efficiency, optimising operational risk and increased flexibility. After a careful analysis of the options, ABN AMRO has chosen an IT service solution that encompasses in-house consolidation, partial outsourcing, multi-vendor strategies and offshoring. Further streamlining of the bank's global IT organisation will lead to an improved performance of all IT services and to significant efficiencies. Following the announcement on 16 December last year, ABN AMRO announces today that it has signed global services agreements with five IT-vendors for five years, for a total value of approximately EUR 1.8 billion. The selected vendors are:
IT Infrastructure: IBM
Application Support and Enhancements: Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
Application Development: five preferred suppliers Accenture, IBM, Infosys, Patni, TCS The initiative leads to a new technology organisation of approximately 1,800 full-time equivalents (FTEs), compared to a total of approximately 5,000 FTEs currently working in IT within the bank worldwide. Approximately 2,000 FTEs will be transferred to the selected IT vendors, of which a majority will go to IBM. In line with the former communications, the total estimated IT staff reduction for ABN AMRO will be 1,500 FTEs over the next 18 months. more...

10 Ways to Get Offshoring Right

CRM News
Like it or not, offshore outsourcing is becoming increasingly central to IT. As the drumbeat grows ever louder, chances are you'll eventually be asked to get in step. So how do you design and implement an effective offshore initiative? What are the key issues to keep in mind? The offshoring landscape is littered with the spectacular failures of companies that missed or lost sight of the big picture. "People who jump on the bandwagon to make some quick savings get quickly frustrated," says Ramakrishnan Ramamurthy, general manager and practice head at Bangalore, India-based Wipro Technologies. To avoid becoming an offshoring cautionary tale, heed the following tips from expert offshore outsourcing consultants, vendors, and analysts. more...

Playing on a new court

Hindu Business Line
The Indian IT industry has a new court to play on — Legal BPO. But as global firms outsource work to India, domestic players will have to address concerns of data security and service quality to score in the game. The Indian IT industry has a new court to play on - Legal BPO. With international law firms, the in-house legal departments of MNCs, and legal publishing and research firms, particularly in the US, increasingly looking at sourcing services from India, Legal BPO may well be the next big opportunity for Indian firms. more...

Offshore outsourcing has not hit UK jobs, says ONS

Silicon.com
Offshore outsourcing of IT and call centre roles to low-cost countries such as India has not hit UK jobs, according to the latest official employment statistics. The ONS' latest Labour Market Trends figures show that employment growth in call centre related occupations in the UK has been nearly three times the overall growth in employment, while redundancy levels have also consistently fallen since 2001. The employment data calculated by region is also in line with that growth trend and the ONS said this suggests offshoring has had minimal effect on the employment prospects of IT-enabled occupations across the UK. more...

Economic Crime and Public Sector Offshoring

eGov Monitor
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, Global Research Director of Commonwealth Business Council Technologies lays out a strong case for public sector IT teams to play a proactive role in combating economic crimes that cost the UK economy an estimated £100m per day. Economic crime has come of age in a digital society where we now entrust our identity and finances on a daily basis to organisations across the world. Once considered to be a victimless nuisance and glossed over or relegated to the latter pages of the business press it has come to the fore in recent years with high-profile prosecutions and a post-7/7 focus on terrorist financing. more...

Challenges before Indian call centres

Domain-b.com
The Indian contact centre market continues to grow, providing offshore investors with services at prices that are much lower than those found in western locations. Investors across verticals in both North America and the United Kingdom have been quick to use Indian call centre services, and despite recent negative press, evidence suggests that this trend is set to continue. However, market maturity and increased competition from other emerging offshore locations means outsourcing service providers will need to overcome significant challenges. Peter Ryan, call centre and CRM analyst with independent market analyst Datamonitor (DTM.L), explains. more...

Offshoring 101: How to minimize the risk to your career

Computerworld
The debate surrounding offshoring may have cooled somewhat in recent months, but many IT professionals in the U.S. remain concerned about losing their jobs to employees overseas. Little wonder, considering that a white paper released late last year by Ventoro, an offshoring research and consulting firm, showed that 95% of Fortune 1,000 firms currently have an offshore strategy in place. The report also indicated that a sizable number of companies are planning to explore offshore options or increase spending in this area. However, even if you've begun to hear rumblings within your organization about moving some IT operations overseas, a number of factors may prevent your firm from doing so: more...

How to keep data safe when outsourcing offshore

Computerworld
As U.S. businesses, policy-makers and security experts work to stem the tide of data thefts, an equal or greater vulnerability lurks overseas -- the level of network and physical security at outsourced operations of U.S. corporations. Cheap labor and increased efficiencies continue to drive major U.S. companies to open and expand offshore operations throughout India, Southeast Asia and Europe. India's National Association of Software and Service Companies reported recently that India's outsourcing industry is creating jobs at the rate of nearly 100,000 a year, and its revenue is growing at more than 40% annually. Analyst firm Gartner Inc. estimates that global spending on offshore outsourcing services will top $50 billion by 2007. Many of these outsourced operations involve handling and processing customer transactions and sensitive personal information, exposing outsourcing facilities to the same risk of data theft occurring domestically. As U.S. companies increase operations abroad, many aren't ramping up IT or physical security measures at these locations to manage that growth. more...

India to lead outsourcing bandwagon: TPI

Siliconindia.com
Offshore outsourcing is set for increased growth and India will continue to be the leading destination on the back of good quality and first mover advantage, according to the latest research by sourcing advisory firm TPI. The research, based on a survey of 100 senior UK executives responsible for outsourcing within large companies, reveals that 81 percent plan to increase their offshore outsourcing over the next 2 to 3 years, while only 4 percent expect to decrease it. While India continues to enjoy its first mover advantage, being used by 75 percent of survey respondents, there is close competition for second place, between Central and Eastern Europe (28 percent) and China (25 percent), according to the study. more...

European Companies Show Keen Interest in the Philippines' IT Services

PRWeb
The Philippine business mission to Europe was met by a dozen of companies eager to do business with the Philippines' IT and IT-enabled firms, according to the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM).According to CITEM, "The response from the business community in Europe was encouraging. We have to keep them in our radar screen if we are to remain competitive in the business process outsourcing (BPO) space." Local enterprises which visited Europe operate in various IT outsourcing areas such as contact centers (Advanced Contact Solutions (ACS), Vision X, and Teletech Holdings, Inc.); contact center solutions and technology (Alliance Technologies and Diversified Technology Systems Inc.); financial services and accounting, publishing and transcription (SPI Technologies, SENCOR); architectural and engineering requirements outsourcing (Environments Collaborative) and project management of outsourcing needs (Invent Asia). more...

Is outsourcing reaching its limits or simply pausing for breath?

Wisconsin Technology Network
Outsourcing is a management tool that is taking the business world by storm, or so it would seem from reading much of the dedicated coverage of outsourcing topics featured in business and IT publications and websites. Thus it was very surprising to me to come across two recently released studies on outsourcing published by leading consulting firms - Deloitte Consulting and DiamondCluster - that accentuate the negative aspects of this management practice. Both of those studies inject a welcome dose of reality into the hype-saturated subject of outsourcing. They present insightful perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing that counterbalance some of the biased treatment of this topic emanating from those media, research and consulting firms with a vested interested in seeing the outsourcing trend grow.Deloitte Consulting’s study, “Calling a Change in the Outsourcing Market” was released at the end of April 2005. It presents data collected from twenty five of the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies and draws valuable insights from their substantial experience with outsourcing - both the good and the bad. more...

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UNI Apro Statement on Offshoring: Give Call Center, BPO and ITES employees a voice!

UNI Home
UNI Apro Finance and Telecom discussed the spread of service offshoring in Taiwan in July. In a statement, they expressed their collective view on the phenomenon stressing the importance of transparency and ensuring an equitable deal for workers in boht the source and destination countries.
UNI APRO FORUM ONOUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING29 – 30 JUNE 2005, TAIPEI, TAIWANUNI APRO TAIPEI FORUM STATEMENTGive Call Center, BPO and ITES employees a voice! more...

IT wages tick up on tight labor market

Computerworld
A strengthening economy that is fueling higher IT spending and a tight labor market for U.S. IT workers is creating moderate pay gains for technical workers such as application developers and database administrators, according to new research and interviews with IT executives and analysts. "There is a noticeable wage increase" for technical skills, said David Myers, director of project management at Solo Cup Co. in Highland Park, Ill. Myers believes that the gains are the result of a general rise in IT spending, which has led to the launch of more IT projects; a decreasing supply of available domestic IT labor; and the maturation of IT offshore outsourcing, where foreign labor costs are rising. more...

Barclays moves helpdesk jobs to India

Silicon.com
Barclays Bank has said up to 140 jobs will be affected as it moves its internal UK helpdesk to India. The bank will try to re-deploy workers before offering them redundancy packages when the technical support centre is transplanted from Cheshire to Mumbai. Hilary McVitty, head of PR for Barclays, said: "It's premature to say that it will result in 140 job losses. We have been involved in selective outsourcing, which isn't always offshore. In this case it is." The helpdesk service, dubbed Servicepoint, will be moved in October to Indian company Intelenet, of which Barclays owns a 50 per cent share. more...

WTO Gets It Right on Offshore Outsourcing

Information week
In its annual trade report, issued last week, the World Trade Organization concluded what many advocates of offshore outsourcing have been saying for some time: that offshoring is good for both buyers and sellers of IT and business-process services--and the countries in which they operate. To the argument that offshoring kills off good jobs and generally harms the economies of nations importing IT services, the WTO notes that offshoring's impact "on production, employment, and trade patterns is significantly less than suggested by press reports or popular perceptions." The trade body further points out that the United States enjoys an overall trade surplus in business services that's larger than that enjoyed by India. The upshot of that nugget is that the United States would be more harmed than helped by some politicians' calls for protectionism around business and IT services. more...

The End of Call Center Entrepreneurship: And the Flowering of Offshore Outsourcing

India Daily
There have been few entrepreneurial ventures in business history as rewarding as the offshore call center. Within Asia, there are numerous tales of entrepreneurs who made tons of money for themselves by creating substantial value for their customers and employees. more...

SAP to up headcount to 4,000

Economic Times
SAP AG , the world's biggest maker of business software, is upbeat about India both as a market and a development base and plans to more than double headcount to 4,000 people by 2006, a senior official said on Tuesday. SAP, which has been in India for 10 years, already has its largest development hub outside Germany in Bangalore. more...

Wipro's Vivek Paul: Forget outsourcing, think global collaboration

ZDNet
Prior to the Churchill Club event, "Outsourcing: Sorting Out The Hype, Reality, Risks And Benefits," I interviewed Vivek Paul, vice chairman of Wipro Limited and President of Wipro Technologies. The 15-minute interview is available as an MP3 that can be downloaded or,if you’re already subscribed to ZDNet’s IT Matters series of audio podcasts, it will show up on your system or MP3 player automatically (See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in). Paul believes that the term "outsourcing" will be replaced by the term "global collaboration." At least he is advocating that change, and advising companies to focus on tapping into global talent pools and markets. more...