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...

Why Vivek Paul really quit Wipro

Times Of India
He was the brand ambassador for Wipro. He could come out with sound bytes that sent excited waves on air. Diligently following footsteps of his role model, Jack Welch, who moved into private equity business, Vivek Paul is now going to scout for new pastures and technologies by becoming a partner at the Texas Pacific Group, a leading private investment firm. In an telephone conversation from San Francisco he speaks about his past in Wipro and the new path ahead. more...