Indians write the BPO script in Philippines

NEW DELHI: BPO firms, which have so far been big job creators in India, are now shifting employees from here to emerging outsourcing destinations, including the Philippines.

Not only are domestic BPOs like Genpact, Sitel and Intelenet hiring people in India in droves for their Philippine operations, MNCs like Citibank and Accenture with operations in that country, too, are relying on Indian talent.

“While at the associate level, the Philippines has talent that is comparable or superior to their Indian counterparts, there is a complete void at middle and senior management level. It’s largely Indian executives who fill this void at Indian, local and captive BPO firms in the Philippines,” says Quatrro BPO Solutions managing director Raman Roy.

The Philippines has emerged as an attractive rival outsourcing destination to India, on the back of its large English-speaking population, a slew of fiscal incentives and lower property rates. Apart from the capital, Manila, other places — Cebu, for instance — have also come up as favourites for setting up call centres.
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IGNOU To Start A Diploma Course For BPO Jobs

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will soon start a diploma programme to train students from across the country to take up jobs in business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, well known as call centres. This will be a one-year diploma course conducted jointly by Accenture Services, a Bangalore based global technology service and outsourcing company.

“You know the BPO situation in our country. It’s a growing industry and the number of trained manpower required is huge. Here we have stepped in to provide trained human capital,” IGNOU spokesman Ravi Mohan told.

Mohan said the varsity has already signed an agreement with Accenture. Candidates who have passed 10+2 or equivalent can apply for the course.

“It is just not outsourcing for foreign companies, many Indian companies, government offices too have opened and will open call centres for better customer relations.

“This course will create a pool of professionals who will be able to handle the job better and reduce attrition rate,” Mohan added. Those having IGNOU’s certificate course in communication skills will have an edge but alternatively students shall be screened through a communication evaluation test.

The specialization would be offered in finance and accounting, insurance, banking, human resources, sourcing and category management, customer contact services, health care, pharma, engineering services, equity research, capital markets, order management and technical writing and learning services.

IGNOU shall ensure that the course will be imparted through a mix of education delivery channels across India including print, CD, web-based learning materials, contact sessions and simulated exercises labs for language and application learning.

India most mature spot for BPOs - BPO Updates

BANGALORE: India has emerged as the most matured location for offshored IT and BPO services, though this dominance might be chipping away given the rising costs. Everest Research Institute in its report “Global Sourcing--Market Vista Q1 2008” said that the cost inflation in Indian cities is exceeding the 2007 levels and this has increased the risk of labour arbitrage closing very rapidly.

There has been a constant threat of newer locations such as China, Philippines and Eastern Europe, which are challenging the dominance of India. Everest said that players are continuing to expand and the competitive intensity for talent remains unabated. Further the consumer price at an alltime high since 2004 is potentially creating inflationary pressure on wages.

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Indian BPO ranks high - BPO News

Satyam BPO also ranked fourth on the Knowledge Process Outsourcing vendors list. more than 4,000 organizations were evaluated in compiling the listsSatyam Computer Services Ltd announced on Monday that Satyam BPO, its business process outsourcing BPO arm, has been ranked second among the worlds leading BPO vendors in BrownWilson Groups Black Book of Outsourcing. Satyam BPO also ranked fourth on the Knowledge Process Outsourcing vendors list. more than 4,000 organizations were evaluated in compiling the lists.

For the third consecutive year, Satyam BPO has been ranked among the top 10 in BrownWilson Groups Black Book of Outsourcing. In 2007 and 2006, Satyam BPO, formerly Nipuna, had been ranked in several categories such as FAO, KPO and Energy and Utilities.

The categories in which we have been ranked this year BPO and KPO are the key growth areas that we have been focusing on basing our Specialty BPO positioning on. This ranking fits in extremely well from a strategic perspective for us, said Satyam BPOs Chief Executive Officer Venkatesh Roddann. Recognition from the BrownWilson Group shows our commitment to developing partnerships with clients and enabling transformation through superior delivery.

Satyam BPO is powered by a combination of domain expertise, operational excellence, process skills, and superior technology. The company is the worlds first eSCM Capability Level 5 service provider and Indias leading integrated endtoend outsourcing service providers. Satyam BPO offers proven,fullservice expertise for multiple industries, including telecom,pharmaceuticals, financial services, and manufacturing. Its global delivery standards have resulted in numerous longstanding client relationships with Fortune 500 companies.

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

Accenture’s BPO Determines Change In Price Pattern

Due to the slowdown in the US economy on the one hand and changing business needs on the other, management consulting and IT services provider Accenture’s BPO business is seeing newer trends in pricing pattern as well as in the nature of deals.

The company said because of the slowdown, there is pricing pressure for some kinds of deals, especially for the low-end transactional work. But for more complex or large-scale projects, or projects done out of multiple geographies, there is no significant pricing pressure.

However, there is a change in the pricing pattern, said G Raghuraman, Lead Executive, Accenture India Delivery Centre Network, BPO. There is a shift from fixed-fee contracts to contracts that are a mix of fixed-fee and variable-fee. This is because the clients are looking for more business benefits, he added.

Multi-location advantage

The clients are also looking for more multi-geography contracts and there would be fewer single geography contracts, said Raghuraman. They want to use a wider network of global delivery centres and global opportunities. They want managed distribution of work, he said.

The larger BPOs with global network and multi-geography manpower would benefit because of this trend, he said. Business might shift to the larger companies, he added.

On being asked if the multi-geography contracts would dampen the growth of the Indian BPO business, Raghuraman said the competitiveness of India continues.

Many of Accenture’s clients choose to go to other locations because they have a large footprint in India. The other locations are an add-on to their India presence. Accenture’s clients are considering other geographies in addition to India and not substituting it, he said.

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Global BPO’s To Rely Upon Shareholder’s Approval

The warrants have a strike price of $6 and Global BPO is trading at $7.80, allowing the warrants to have an intrinsic value of $1.80 and time value of another $1.50 for a total of $3.30. However, the warrants only trade for $0.67. There are two main reasons they trade for such a low value, which we’ll get to later, but more importantly, there is a good chance that one of these reasons will no longer be a factor when shareholders approve the pending merger with Stream Holdings on July 29th.

The shareholder vote is important because warrant holders can’t exercise the warrants until shareholders approve an acquisition. Global BPO is a special purpose acquisition company, or “SPAC,” created to find an acquisition in the outsourcing arena. Earlier this year, Global BPO’s management announced a deal to acquire Stream Holdings. The deal looks like it is priced attractively, plus the CEO of Global BPO, Scott Murray, used to run Stream Holdings from 2000-2002 until he sold it to Solectron. Shareholders have a choice to approve the attractively priced acquisition and own shares in the ongoing company or vote against the deal and receive $7.93 in proceeds from the Global BPO’s IPO trust fund.

The recent history of SPAC stock performances after acquisition approval is horrendous, so it had seemed likely that shareholders would vote against the deal and warrant holders would have worthless warrants. However, in early June, Global BPO’s management increased the likelihood of shareholder approval by announcing an interesting deal with Ares Capital, a private equity firm. The deal would have Ares Capital pay $150 million for convertible preferred stock at $8. Global BPO would use the money from Ares to tender for 70% of its publicly-held shares. This event significantly increased the probability that shareholders would approve the deal, but it didn’t make the vote a foregone conclusion.

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BPO, offshoring may be obsolete words by 2015

Words like business process outsourcing (BPO) and offshoring may not exist in the IT dictionary by 2015. Substitutes like business service outsourcing and global delivery model (GDM), necessitated by the changing business model of IT firms, are likely to replace them over the next seven years.

"In five to ten years, you will see a dramatic change in the way people are serviced. Who will care from which location they are being serviced? A large number of processes will get globalised. There will be more automation. Companies will reinvent themselves every six months, and IT will be further embedded in their processes. The BPO sector, too, will be providing end-to-end business services. In fact, there may be no such word like BPO or offshoring," asserts Nasscom President Som Mittal.

Sudin Apte, senior analyst with Forrester Research, concurs and predicts there will be two types of players by 2015. "You will have five or six large players with multiple lines of services across low-cost delivery centres," he says.

These players will comprise both Indian players like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys and multinationals like IBM and Accenture. These firms will have thousands of workers in different geographies, and be servicing many industry verticals. Forrester referred to them as Billion-Dollar Babies 18 months ago.

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Philippine BPOs get Indian voice

NEW DELHI: BPO firms, which have so far been big job creators in India, are now shifting employees to emerging outsourcing destinations like the Philippines.

Not only are domestic BPOs such as Genpact, Sitel and Intelenet hiring in droves from the country for their Philippines operations, MNCs such as Citibank and Accenture too are relying on Indian talent.

“While at the associate level, Philippines have talent that is comparable or superior to their Indian counterparts, there is a complete void at the middle and senior management levels.

It’s largely Indian executives who fill up this void at Indian, local and captive BPO firms in the Philippines,” said Quatrro BPO Solutions MD Raman Roy.

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Tata Group of India to set up BPO operations

India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., one of the world’s largest software services and consulting companies, will set up local business process outsourcing operations in the country.

Indian Ambassador to the Philippines Rajeet Mitter told reporters over the weekend that the unit of Tata Group, one of the world’s largest industrial conglomerates, was focusing its Philippine operations on software development for its customers worldwide.

“Tata Group is coming in on its own, there will be no joint venture partners,” he said.

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New Zealand Bank to send jobs to India

The New Zealand-based ANZ National bank will soon be outsourcing its 238 backoffice jobs to India.

A meeting with the staffs at the bank's lending services centre in Auckland and customer transaction service centre in Wellington took place on Tuesday, which according to NZPA report is the beginning of a two-week consultation period over the outsourcing of the work to India.

Meanwhile, Finance workers union Finsec accused the Australian-owned bank of being greedy and a bad corporate citizen. The work will be done in India at a quarter of the cost, the report said.

The bank disputed the union's claim of job losses when the story first broke, saying that the back office workers would be offered the chance to work in bank branches, report said.

"About 403 workers were told that there would be 165 positions in the future, meaning 238 people would either be redeployed or made redundant," said Finsec campaigns director Andrew Campbell.

The plan is still a proposal while consultation continues. The union has no idea how many workers will accept an offer of redeployment.

One group of workers had been told they would be paid redundancy because the bank had acknowledged it would not be able to find them a comparable role.

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Warning bells ring over B`lore as BPO destination

Warning bells are ringing on Bangalore's future as a leading BPO destination. It is not a full-blown crisis yet but the portents are disturbing, according to a cross section of industry, human resource and real estate experts.

"From January 2008, only a handful of BPO companies have set up shop in Bangalore, as against an average two or three companies beginning operations every month in 2007," says a source in a real estate consulting firm.

"Of late, we don't hear of too many companies coming to Bangalore, whereas we have seen many BPO companies starting operations in cities like Chennai, Noida, Kolkata and Kochi. I feel Karnataka is losing its advantage as a BPO destination," said S Nagarajan, founder and chief people officer of 24/7 Customer, a Bangalore-based BPO firm which employs around 7,000 people across various cities in India.

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Where is BPO in Asia-Pacific?

Do you see lots of BPO happening in the Asia-Pacific region? Before we answer that, what do I mean by BPO?

I mean business process outsourcing, which therefore excludes captive centers and considers only the engagement of third-parties to provide business processing services, excluding IT-related services such as infrastructure and applications. In addition, we need a threshold level to consider, and for that I've used a total contract value (TCV) of US$25 million as the threshold.

If we look at this BPO market from a global perspective, we see that the main business process areas are HR-related, facilities management-related and financial services-related (not finance and accounting, but rather, specific financial services such as loans processing).

However, in the Asia-Pacific region, BPO in these areas is relatively non-existent and CRM-related BPO is the only significant contributing domain. What's intriguing is why would that be the case?

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BPO professionals get their own social networking space

NEW DELHI: It's the era of social networking groups. When everyone is either joining or starting a social networking group on the net these days, how could the young crowd from the Indian BPO sector be left behind? That's why BPO Voice, a new social networking group for people with a background in the BPO industry, is fast catching up in cyberspace.

Formed a few months ago but opened for membership only last month, the group meant exclusively for BPO employees already has over 200 members. ‘‘The idea took shape when I started using some of the BPO communities on other networking sites,'' says Amit Saxena, the brain behind the latest online community.

"The more I used other networking sites, the more I realised how they could offer much more than what they were currently giving,'' says Saxena. "Most networking groups in Google, Yahoo or even Orkut, offer nothing more than a space for reuniting old friends and making new ones. In fact, most of what they have is either spam or recruitment drives or some mindless activity or games," explains Saxena.

Realising the potential, this former BPO employee saw the need to make use of the collective intelligence of BPO employees and create a platform to share their domain related expertise. Saxena and his band of friends, Ankush Wadhwa and Siddharth Jindal who joined him later, have their job cut out.
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More jobs in UK, thanks to outsourcing

London Jul 15: According to the experts there are more outsourcing work by British companies to India does not cause job losses but there are more jobs or employment a research by economists at the University of Nottingham.

Scores of major UK companies have been involved in offshoring, which has often been opposed by unions. But the research by the Globalization and Economic Policy Centre (GEP) at the University of Nottingham says the efficiencies it has brought has actually boosted business and led to them employing more people in the UK, not less.

David Greenaway, director of the centre, said: “People fear their jobs are being exported to countries like India and China where labour is cheaper, but the picture is far more complex than that and much more positive.

“It would seem that firms that offshore part of their production process or service provision overseas become more efficient. This boosts productivity and turnover and as a result these firms grow and end up employing more people at home, not fewer."

The GEP research says there are losers when offshoring takes place through higher job turnover and people are unable to adapt to new skills. Richard Kneller, who co-wrote the research, says it also explodes another myth about off-shoring.
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Accenture to offer cross industry BPO

Accenture, the global technology services and outsourcing company, today said it has opened its 53rd delivery centre in Noida to strengthen its outsourcing capabilities.The centre will offer cross industry BPO services in finance and accounting, human resources, learning, procurement and customer care, as well as industry-specific services focussing on insurance, healthcare, pharmaceutical and utility industries, a company statement said.

It also offers customised BPO services, back-office operations for the banking industry and the management of end to end supply chain.

Accenture now has more than 35,000 professionals at 13 delivery centres in six cities including Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Noida.

The center also offers custom BPO services, including the redesign and implementation of clinical data management practices for the pharmaceuticals industry, back office operations for the banking industry, and the management of a companys end to end supply chain, the release added.

The establishment of a delivery center in Noida was driven by the continued strong client demand for Accentures services from India.

In addition to achieve an impressive scale in India, we plan to hire a significant number of people over the next few months to support our new delivery center, said Accentures Lead Executive, Delivery Center Network for BPO in India P G Raghuraman.

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

'It is really expensive to do BPO business in India'

24/7 Customer, the Bangalore-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, started operations at a time when the very concept of offshoring jobs was not much known.

The BPO industry in India has grown up in size and scale since then, providing employment to thousands of youth. However, 24/7 Customer, which could have grown much bigger in headcount, has preferred to maintain its leanness but never compromised the quality of services.

S Nagarajan talks about his company and its future plans in an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra. Excerpts:

In spite of being one of the pioneers in the BPO industry, you have not grown much in terms of headcount?

Our emphasis is not just on increasing headcounts or opening multiple centres. We grew our revenues by 30-35 per cent last year, whereas the headcount has not gone up in that pace.

It shows that we have started growing in a non-linear fashion. The focus is to improve the per-employee productivity.

Does it mean that you are going to emphasise more on non-voice services and high-end KPO areas?

For me, KPO, BPO, voice and non-voice are the same because these are the terms invented by competition who can not differentiate themselves.

When a client comes, he does not say give me 50 BPO or 50 KPO agents. He says give us processes which increases our business. We are experts on customer lifecycle management, and that is our niche area. We are already into banking, financial services, insurance, technology, telecom, retail and services.

We want to dig deeper in these industry verticals instead of expanding our portfolio further. The market is not saturated for all these industries.

In addition to your presence in India, you have centres in Philippines, Gautemala, Ireland and China. Is your plan to open centres abroad is driven by the client demand?

We open centres outside India basically to meet the clients' requirements. Sometimes, many small and medium enterprise (SME) clients prefer to outsource business process works to places (like Guatemala) which are closer to the US geographically so that they can come to the centre in 2-3 hours. Larger clients don't mind sending works to any location. Most of the clients in the UK prefer India.

Do you think India is no more enjoying the cost arbitrage it used to enjoy? If not, who would you like to blame for this?

In India, there are so much of added costs in the form of providing food and transportation to employees. India is the only country on earth where the BPO firms provide transportation and food to the employees.

Basically, as an industry we desire to do all these, because our cities do not have transportation facility in the night and no good road. We have to provide everything, and it is little more expensive to do business in India.

What about your plan to go public?

We will certainly go public, but the market is not good right now. We have revenues and internal accruals in terms of profits. We are not in a hurry to go public for the sake of going public. When it happens, it won't be an exit event but a milestone in the company's history.

Has the increase in fuel prices started affecting BPO firms like you?

The growing transportation cost is going to be a major problem in days to come. However, it is not affecting us now since we have long-term contracts with service providers. When the contracts come for a renewal, I am sure that our service providers will come and ask us for a hike.

Source : http://www.business-standard.com/

Opportunities Available to IT and BPO Vendors in Major Latin American

DUBLIN, Ireland–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Global Delivery Locations for BPO - Focus on Latin America (Strategic Focus)” report to their offering.


Introduction : A detailed analysis of Latin America’s capabilities as a sourcing location for IT outsourcing and BPO services.


Scope : - This report looks at the opportunities available to IT and BPO vendors in major Latin American locations such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.


- It also covers developing markets such as Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay.

- It contains analysis of the leading players in the Latin American market, including both local and international providers.

- The report also offers recommendations to vendors about how best to utilize Latin America as part of a coherent sourcing strategy.


Report Highlights : - Latin America is becoming an increasingly popular destination for IT services and BPO vendors who are looking to provide low-cost services to clients.


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Infosys BPO Executives in FAO Today’s Superstars List

Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, today announced that three of its top-level executives have been superstars named in FAO Today’s global Superstars List, now in its fourth year.


Amitabh Chaudhry, MD and CEO, Infosys BPO, Ritesh Idnani, VP and Global Sales Head, Infosys BPO, and Michel de Zeeuw, Vice President, Infosys (Former SVP, Global Finance, at Philips) have been ranked superstars, along with global leaders of the industry.

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Despite US recession, BPO’s future looks bright

THE BUSINESS Process Outsourcing (BPO) vendors having United States based clients share mixed reactions due to the temporary slump in the US economy. This will be further heightened till the time final election results are not out and the new president doesn’t announce some relief with string of measures to combat the credit crunch heat.Those BPOs or KPOs, which focus on large US companies or big ticket outsourcing contracts, are facing the recession crisis as seen by the delays in contract renewals or temporary freeze in awarding of new contracts. One of the associated factors is the lengthened decision-making time with a lot of top heads losing their jobs under the recession pressure.


Large companies have now focussed their energies on restructuring their companies through vertical acquisitions or major divestitures besides analysing their internal processes. This has chiefly been observed with IT and financial service companies. It seems that ’outsourcing’ is now on the back-burner for them, as they focus more on meeting their budgeted business targets first.


But there’s some hope in these tough times. The economic crisis has forced the small to mid-sized US companies to assess outsourcing as an option as they struggle to survive against the big mammoths. They are re-evaluating their internal processes to find solutions within tight business budget constraints. This, in fact, opens up a galore of opportunities for BPOs and KPOs from India, which focus on small to mid-sized US clients with revenues lesser than $5 million.


There are few other smart choices available too, like looking beyond the US to stretch the sights to Europe and Australia or changing the client exposure from the typical IT and financial service clients to other industry verticals.


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BPOs design in-house curricula to train and retain staff

Prominent BPO firms like Essar Group’s Aegis BPO, WNS and Capgemini are designing in-house curricula to suit the sector’s requirements while others like Wipro and HCL Technologies are partnering key universities for certified courses.


The broad idea is to help freshers and high-potential employees develop soft skills not generally taught at universities, and simultaneously increase retention rates in an industry that has attrition rates between 30 and 50 per cent.

The industry, according to Nasscom estimates, accounts for almost $11 billion and employs slightly over 700,000 professionals (in terms of direct employment).

Dollar dip has little effect on BPO profits–ePLDT chief

MANILA, Philippines — Despite the depreciation of the US dollar, the effect on profit margins for business process outsourcing (BPO) companies remains insignificant, according to a top official of PLDT.


A recent survey of BPO executives noted that further depreciation will take its toll on industry competitiveness once it moves down to P37 per dollar.


“The margins are still deeper,” said Ray Espinosa, president and CEO of ePLDT, when asked by INQUIRER.net to comment on the matter at the sidelines of PLDT’s financial briefing this week.


At present, Espinosa estimates BPO companies are still able to deliver 40 to 45 percent operational cost-savings to offshore clients.


ePLDT, the information and communications technology arm of the PLDT Group, reported P2.6 billion in revenues for the first quarter, 85 percent of which is contributed by its BPO businesses Ventus and SPi.


The two companies have a combined employee base of 14,000 located in 22 delivery centers.


The peso appreciation has more impact in its voice-based or call center business where revenues are dollar-denominated. Dollar revenues grew 21 percent but in peso terms the growth is only seven percent.


“But our voice-based business remains promising with new contracts in the pipeline and expansion of existing contracts,” Espinosa said.


ePLDT currently pumps in six percent of PLDT’s total revenues. The goal in the near-term is to increase that share to 10 percent, Espinosa said.


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Indian IT and BPO sectors will ramp up its staff by four times

Indian IT and BPO sectors will ramp up its staff by four times from its existing workforce of two million to eight million by 2018, with Tier 2/3 cities contributing two million of the target, according to a recent study.


Currently, the top 7 IT-BPO locations in India contribute almost 90% of the workforce, but in a decade’s time, trade body Nasscom and management consultant A T Kearney expects that to move down to 75% and the rest by the other cities.


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Now, BPOs queue up to book seat in billion dollar club

BANGALORE: The game is fast changing for the Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) industry as for several players, entry into the billion-dollar club may be round the corner.


Given the inorganic opportunities, maturity of outsourcing and an appetite to grow scale rapidly, many BPO players may breach the psychological barrier much faster than IT services companies.


Large players manage to create a big impact on clients and employees and are serious contenders for mega deals, says Tholons CEO Avinash Vashistha.


As of now, leading the race to get into the billion-dollar league is Genpact, which reported a revenue of $823 million for 2007 with an year-on-year (YoY) growth of 34%. Others in the fray are WNS and Aditya Birla Minacs, who are distinctly behind Genpact but have ambitious plans.


WNS, with a revenue of $460 million, has been scouting for inorganic options to fuel growth. Aditya Birla is already looking at a $1-billion revenue in the next three years from its current level of $392 million.

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BPO employees fight for rights on the Net

NEW DELHI: It is redefining the way employee unions function. This 'e-union', that was formed last month on the Internet for BPO employees, does not plan to fight companies and managements the conventional way. That is, through strikes and sloganeering on the streets. Instead, they plan to hit where it hurts the companies most.

The e-union plans to talk directly to shareholders so that it affects stock prices. After all, the fear of a downgraded stock price will force companies to set their operations team and its people in order, the union believes.

BPO Union, as the new group likes to call itself, also plans to engage clients of companies they are up against and tell them how these companies are repressing their employees.

"Clients should know the negative PR against the vendor could spill over to their own brand. Also, it could affect them if we ever suspend work with the vendor," says the chief of the BPO Union who refused to be named.

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Tricom acquires US outsourcing firm for $2.25 mn

MUMBAI: Non-voice business process outsourcing company Tricom India on Thursday said it has acquired US-based Pacific Data Centres Inc for $2.25 million (about Rs 9.71 crore).

Tricom has acquired PDC through its US subsidiary Tricom Document Management Inc, the company said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"The purchase of Pacific Data Centres is another major acquisition and markedly increases business offerings in the non voice BPO sector," Tricom India Managing Director Chetan Kothari said.

The acquisition would enhance the capabilities of Tricom to address the needs of clients whose data cannot be sent offshore, he added.

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IBM India Lab develops data security solution for call centres

KOLKATA: The Indian lab of IBM has brought out a next generation solution to protect against theft of sensitive data from call centres, a major concern of the growing Indian outsourcing market.

"We have developed a solution that offers advanced data masking technology, which is a speech analytics tool that detects and masks private and sensitive information, both audio and onscreen without disrupting customer services or business operations," IBM India Research Laboratory Director Guruduth Banavar said.

The technology solution has been internally code named AudioZapper.

Banavar claimed the solution, developed after 18 months of intensive research in India, was the only solution in the global marketplace that addressed complete security concerns of a call centre.

"There has been some attempts on data masking of conversation but it did not prove to be worthwhile. The IBM solution offers the industry the required protection of confidential data such as credit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PIN), social security numbers, from getting into wrong hands," he said.
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Top 10 outsourcing companies 2008

Curtains went up on the Black Book of Outsourcing list. The survey of global service users aims to identify the 50 best-managed global outsourcing vendors through surveying client experience and assessing industry developments.

The 2008 issue of the annual list released by US-based Brown-Wilson Group once again proved the fact that change is the only constant in the dynamic outsourcing industry.

The 2008 list saw last year’s leaders Infosys, Hexaware, EXL Service and ICICI Firstsource failing to feature in the Top 50 this year due to low client approval ratings, a fact which clearly shows that Indian BPOs need to work on their delivery levels. IBM Global also lost its position this year. Firstsource (formerly ICICI), a four-year top ranked performer fell the most of any BPO to 1550 of 1690.

The top 50 list this year comprises six Indian companies Wipro, Satyam, TCS, HCL, NIIT and Patni. Interestingly, the survey shows that outsourcing is no longer seen as a refuge of the financially weak or technically-deficient enterprise, nor is it a stick to threaten US workers. It is increasingly being accepted as a strategic tool. As the outsourcing Juggeranaut rolls on, we bring to you the top 10 best BPO vendors globally.
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BPO employees fight for rights on the net

NEW DELHI: It is redefining the way employee unions function. This 'e-union', that was formed last month on the Internet for BPO employees, does not plan to fight companies and managements the conventional way. That is, through strikes and sloganeering on the streets. Instead, they plan to hit where it hurts the companies most.

The e-union plans to talk directly to shareholders so that it affects stock prices. After all, the fear of a downgraded stock price will force companies to set their operations team and its people in order, the union believes.

BPO Union, as the new group likes to call itself, also plans to engage clients of companies they are up against and tell them how these companies are repressing their employees.

"Clients should know the negative PR against the vendor could spill over to their own brand. Also, it could affect them if we ever suspend work with the vendor," says the chief of the BPO Union who refused to be named.
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Cos moving out of outsourcing business

NEW DELHI: Outsourcing vendors could see more and more clients move back customer service work onshore or in-house, according to the Black Book of Outsourcing’s latest report. While telecom firm Orange UK recently announced plans to stop outsourcing call centre work to India, banks like New Zealand’s ANZ National and UK’s Lloyds TSB have in the past said no to offshoring contact centre work. In its 2008 State of the Industry Report, the Black Book noted, “Companies are bringing parts of their customer service back onshore and even in-house, because it is a key part of the customer experience.” As part of its new strategy, Orange UK had recently announced that it would move back call centre work done in India to centres in the UK. Stating its goal of being the best-loved telecom company in Britain, CEO Tom Alexander said, “To reach that goal, we need to give our customers consistent quality, quality of network, products, service and experience.” Says ExlService president & CEO Rohit Kapoor, “The India offshoring story is intact though companies will reshuffle processes and portfolio. Customer service has always been more sensitive and BPOs have to look beyond just voice based work to high end services like analytics and risk advisory services. This is absolutely key to retaining clients.” Read more Article...

Issues in the BPO sector

THE fast-growing business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country is not without problems and challenges.

The Business Processing Association Philippines (BPAP), has identified three key issues that should be addressed with a clear set of initiatives and an institutional framework to sustain momentum.

The three issues are: talent, which require that the supply of qualified workers be sustained; the business environment, referring to the government’s predictable and consistent regulatory policies, and; the next wave cities, which means that additional cities should be tapped to house the different BPO players doing business in our country.

The above issues can be dissected in the light of the present circumstances and realities. In the case of availability of qualified workers, the industry should confront the need to attract more talent. Efforts have to be made to make the supply meet the skill requirements of the offshoring and outsourcing industry. Focus must be made on the English language, problem solving skills and other competencies required by the industry.

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Economic slowdown is a boom for the BPO sector

BANGALORE: Unperturbed by the economic slowdown in the United States, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector is growing and cashing in on the opportunity of more business.
For the BPO sector, the US slowdown is the melting in the pot to look for more business in terms of opportunity.

This space in information technology even though US centric is looking formidable in facing the slowdown.

The sector is also looking at other economies and non-US geographies to fill more space.

Talking to a nes agency in an interview, Partha Sarkar, the CEO of HTMT Global Solutions, one of the most reputed BPO companies, said, "The US economic slowdown is an opportunity for BPO sector."

Sarkar finds this trend is temporary and will stabilize soon.

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IT, BPO to grow 10-15 pc in next 5 yrs: NASSCOM

CHENNAI: IT and BPO industry is poised to grow 15 to 20 per cent in the next five years and direct employment likely to go up to eight million, a recent survey by NASSCOM has said.

The survey has revealed that prospects of the industry growing in 50 cities in the country were bright if the state governments concentrate on developing infrastructure in these cities.

Releasing the survey, NASSCOM President Som Mittal told a press meet that the industry was focused in seven locations in the country now, employing about two million people.

The present locations - Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, National Capital Region of Delhi and Pune - might not be able to cope with the pressure developed due to setting up of new units there.

The survey said that the development of these 50 locations, including the seven, would depend on knowledge pool availability, infrastructure and social environment, government support and business environment.
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The BPO boom

Chennai emerges as a destination of choice for several companies developing BPO activities.

BUSINESS Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the new buzzword in Information Technology (IT) circles. Typically, it involves the farming out of day-to-day operations of companies in the advanced countries to entities in developing countries to take advantage of lower wages. The development of IT facilities makes this possible. While BPOs could be in the form of call centres, medical and legal transcription facilities, airline ticketing and accounting operations, the basic idea is to lower costs for companies in the advanced countries. IT enables the transmission of data on an almost real-time basis so that data from any location can be processed at any other location in the world. The United States market has been particularly lucrative for Indian BPO companies because of the 12-hour time lag, which enables even day-to-day operations to be carried out seamlessly in India when the U.S. markets close for the night.

A call centre at Tidel Park.

Companies located in Chennai have taken advantage of the interest in the BPO segment. Several companies have established bases in Chennai to cater to the needs of companies operating from overseas markets. Speaking at a seminar on BPO held in Chennai recently, Romi Malhotra, Chief Executive Officer and Managing director, Scope International Private Ltd., a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, said that the city suffered because of "perception-related problems", something which he said was far-removed from reality. He advocated "proactive selling" by the State government in order to enable Chennai to emerge as a destination of choice for BPO activities. Scope employs 3,000 persons at its centre in Chennai; that number is set to increase to 5,000 soon.

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BPO to earn $13B - BPO News

THE business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country aims to earn $13 billion in revenues and generate one million jobs by 2010.

If this will be achieved, this would mean a total of $6.7 billion in annual salaries that can be distributed through spending in various sectors of the country’s economy, said lawyer Jamea Garcia, executive director for talent development of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP).

Garcia was in Cebu last Tuesday as one of the panelists during the business forum hosted by JobsDB.com at the Cebu City Marriott Hotel.

Cebu, said Garcia, is known as the second biggest home of BPO companies, after Metro Manila. She said that as of BPAP’s last count, BPO companies in Cebu employ a total of 16,400 workers.

Based on data from BPAP, 30 percent of the projected combined annual salaries for 2010 would be spent on food while 10 percent will go to housing-related expenses, and five percent for transportation and communication. BPAP also said 20 percent will go to taxes and the rest would go to other expenditures.

“Achievable”

Garcia said the targeted revenue in the next two years is “achievable,” considering the 50 percent growth in the BPO industry in the last three years. BPAP has laid out a roadmap that will help the industry achieve its goals. The roadmap considers the supply of qualified personnel as the “most important” factor in the BPO industry’s continued growth.

“Talent will drive the growth of the industry,” said Garcia.

Majority of BPO companies in Cebu, and in the country in general, are contact centers while the rest provide non-voice services that include back office management, animation, transcription and software development.

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Satyam BPO ranked second globally

Computer on Monday announced that Satyam BPO, its business process outsourcing arm, has been ranked second among the world’s leading BPO vendors in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing.

Satyam BPO was also ranked fourth on the knowledge process outsourcing vendors list. More than 4,000 organisations were evaluated in compiling the lists.

For the third consecutive year, Satyam has been ranked among the top 10 in Brown-Wilson Group’s Black Book of Outsourcing. In 2007 and 2006, Satyam BPO, formerly Nipuna, had been ranked in several categories including KPO, energy and utilities.

Growth areas win

The Chief Executive Officer of Satyam BPO, Mr Venkatesh Roddam, in a statement said “The categories in which we have been ranked this year (BPO and KPO) are the key growth areas that we have been focusing on. Recognition from the Brown-Wilson Group reflects our capabilities to offer transformation services through superior delivery.”

Source : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/