Bank of America plans BPO centre in Mumbai
Business Standard
Bank of America (BoA) is setting up its second outsourcing centre in India to undertake market research for its global capital markets and investment banking divisions. The centre, which is coming up at Andheri in Mumbai, will have a capacity to seat around 500 people. The second outsourcing centre is part of a move by the second largest bank in the US to cut costs. BoA’s first outsourcing centre at Hyderabad has grown to nearly 1,000-strong team since it began operations in mid-2004. The Hyderabad centre works on the bank’s corporate and consumer accounts . BoA’s business process outsourcing operations in India are implemented through a wholly owned subsidiary-Continuum Solutions. Continuum is part of BoA’s global delivery centre of expertise and manages the bank’s offshore outsourcing activities. more...
iGate CEO turns focus from woes
PittsburghLive.comiGate Corp. CEO Sunil Wadhwani outlined a strategy Thursday for capturing a larger share of the offshore outsourcing market that one consulting firm says will grow to $70 billion in five years. Only when asked by a shareholder, however, did he address the company's accounting problems, which nearly resulted in the company being delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. And he made no reference at all to the company's auditing firm resignation last Friday. more...
Kanbay CEO Highlights Growth of High-Value Offshore IT Services
Yahoo.comKanbay International, Inc. (Nasdaq: KBAY - News), a global IT services firm focused on the financial services industry, addressed the widening market for IT outsourcing and an evolution toward higher-value IT services at the UBS Software and IT Services Conference in New York, NY. During a panel session at the conference, held at the Four Seasons Hotel on May 24, 2005, Raymond Spencer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kanbay, described IT offshore outsourcing as becoming more generally accepted. Within the financial services sector, Spencer highlighted the insurance industry as one area that is increasingly using the help of global IT services to modernize highly complex processes such as claims processing, rate changes and policy and plan management. more...
Satyam to scale China headcount to 3000
CIOL.comIn yet another attempt to expand the definition of offshore-onsite model, Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services, an IT services and solutions company is charting out plans to further expand its operations in China. Being the first to set up a facility in Shanghai Pudong Software Park, in early 2002, Satyam has around 150 associates (as of December 2004) with 98 percent local talent. The company has plans to increase the workforce to 3000 by 2007 and set up two more operations, one in Dalian and another in Beijing. more...
Why Offshore Outsourcing Projects Fail
IT ObserverWe have all heard of outsourcing projects, particularly those that involve offshore, that have failed. Some recent examples of failed offshore outsourcing have made headlines and become hotly debated among opponents and supporters of outsourcing. In this paper, we will examine a few of the reasons why offshore outsourcing projects fail. more...
What expats feel about working in India
Economic TimesThe outsourcing and IT boom has led to a deluge of foreign expats in India. But how do they feel about working in India? Has their experience with managers in India been positive? Most foreign expats think that Indian managers are over-confident, immature and think themselves to be more knowledgeable than their foreign clients. Says Michael Anderson, COO of a US-based BPO in Gurgaon: “Indian managers lack honesty. One of the clients I know wanted to upgrade headcount at his India centre from 20 to 100 in three weeks. The Indian manager said yes very confidently. But failed to deliver. The end result was that the client got frustrated and pulled out of India totally.” more...
Nasscom shrugs off 112 anti-outsourcing US Bills
The Hindu Business LineTHE National Association of Software and Services Companies ( Nasscom) today said it is not "overly concerned" on the issue of introduction of more than 112 anti-outsourcing bills across 40 States in the US during the first three months of 2005, as State Government contracts currently account for less than two per cent of the total IT work that US outsourced to Indian companies. "We are not overly concerned about the issue as the US State Government contracts account for a very small proportion of the work for the Indian IT industry. In absolute terms it is valued at about $150 million," the Vice-President of Nasscom, Mr Sunil Mehta, said here. more...
iGATE Reports Revenue Growth of 9% in the First Quarter of 2005 Over Same Quarter a Year Ago
PRNewswireiGATE Corporation (Nasdaq:IGTE), a global provider of IT and BPO services, today announced its financialresults for the first quarter ending March 31, 2005. Consolidated revenuesfor this quarter were $69.6 million, an 8.6% increase from $64.1 millionreported in the same quarter a year ago and a 2.2% sequential increase from$68.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2004. The sequential increase wasprimarily driven by revenue growth at iGATE Global Solutions, the Company'sIndian offshore subsidiary. more...
India's biggest IT firm mulls London float
Silicon.comIndia's biggest IT outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is considering plans to float on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), according to reports. TCS is India's biggest IT firm having capitalised on the boom in offshore outsourcing by western multinational organisations and raised $1.17bn when it floated a 13 per cent share of the company on the Bombay Stock Exchange last April. Now the company is reportedly looking at a secondary listing on the Deutsche Borse, the LSE or the US Nasdaq. In an interview with The Telegraph TCS CEO Subramanian Ramadorai hinted that US regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley would push the company towards a European or UK listing, despite the fact that its Indian rivals Infosys and Wipro chose to float in the US. more...
FSA approves outsourcing in India
Computer WeeklyThe Financial Services Authority (FSA) has given offshore outsourcing in India a clean bill of health after investigating concerns about the safety of customer data. The UK’s main City regulator visited 10 outsourcing operations in India to study their operations. Most of these provided services to UK retail banks and insurance companies. After investigating the governance and data control systems in place for the operations visited, the FSA said offshore outsourcing posed no greater risk to customer data than in-house operations. more...
Outsourcing of Core Financial Services Functions Offshore on the Rise
CRM TodayWhile outsourcing of contact center and application services are relatively established, independent market analyst Datamonitor's ( DTM.L ) latest report on the subject " Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services ," expects increasing performance in core financial services functions - such as mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing - to be outsourced to alternative offshore locations. "Offshoring of core competencies amongst financial services institutions in Europe and North America is increasing as confidence in the offshore markets - be it via vendor or an in-house offshore operations - is improving rapidly," says Anders Maehre, financial services Technology analyst at Datamonitor and author of the study. more...
Celebrity political pundits: Island the least of concerns on US agenda
The Royal GazetteCelebrity-status political pundits Mary Matalin and James Carville say Bermuda might come up in damning news reports about offshore centres and occasionally be blamed by Capitol Hill legislators for America's job woes - but the Island really isn't the problem.Nor is it ever likely to register at the top of American lawmakers' political agenda, the couple told The Royal Gazette.The Island has been caught up in recent years in a high-profile US legislative and media debate on the impact to America from corporate inversions - US companies that move their headquarters offshore for tax reasons. Calls to shut down a so-called “Bermuda tax loophole” became a frequent reference by Senator John Kerry in his fight for the Presidential office last year. More recently, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, another Democratic hopeful - in his case for the office of New York Governor - renewed a focus on offshore areas like Bermuda and Barbados after a high-profile insurance probe highlighting questionable transactions between some US insurance carriers and their offshore subsidiaries. more...
