BPO looking for more workers—Arroyo

MANILA, Philippines—President Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday said a business process outsourcing (BPO) company has denied reports that it had laid off hundreds of Filipino employees and was in fact looking for more workers to hire.

The President said Malacañang was alarmed by reports that Advanced Contact Solutions Inc. (ACS) had laid off 700 workers, and verified these with the company itself.

“We checked with that center, ACS, and they totally denied it,” she said in a speech at the launch of the UP-Ayala Land Techno Hub at the University of the Philippines on Friday.

According to Ms Arroyo, ACS said it had been receiving calls from other call centers which expressed interest in hiring the laid-off workers.

“But ACS said we’re not laying off anyone, we’re looking for more,” she said.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines called the attention of the Department of Labor and Employment to the supposed mass layoffs, urging the DOLE to redeploy the displaced workers to other BPOs.

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Recent fraud case has alerted Kolkata's BPO hub to its security troubles

Ever since the recent BPO fraud, wherein, a young woman working at a call centre was arrested for splurging Rs. 200, 000 with credit cards of her company's US clients, the IT hub in the Salt Lake area is going full throttle to ensure tight security control by involving the police.

As Oney Seal, the Miami-based CEO of Databazaar.com, says, "It is high time we all came together to ensure an all-encompassing cyber security. We must follow best practices and certain standard certification and auditing by authorities like ISO or BS7799 (British Standard),"

"Law enforcement agencies need to be trained in potential areas of security fraud so that when an incident occurs, the police should have some idea of the problem," said Seal, whose company, a wholesale distributor, exporter and e-tailer of computer and printer supplies, has its sensitive back-end office in the IT hub.

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Search: in Satyam BPO Names New Chief Operating Officer

India-based Satyam Computer Services has appointed Vijay Rangineni as the chief operating officer of its outsourcing arm Satyam BPO as the company strengthens its focus on specialty offerings.

Rangineni has 20 years of experience in the services industry. He was previously chief operating officer of GE Money, India. He is an alumnus of Kellogg's School of Management, Illinois, and holds a Masters' degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas.

Rangineni said: "Satyam BPO's strong foothold in the specialty sphere has made the organization a leader. My focus will be on taking this leadership position forward by looking at creating more such leadership opportunities, especially in operational excellence."

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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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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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WNS Holdings set to bag Aviva's BPO operations

BANGALORE/MUMBAI: WNS Holdings appears to have emerged as the highest bidder for insurance giant Aviva’s BPO operations — Aviva Global Services (AGS) — with an offer of over $200 million. The deal covers acquisition of Aviva’s captive unit, outsourced operations parked with vendors and an assured business from the UK-based insurance firm for a five-year period, sources said.

Private equity giant Warburg Pincus-controlled WNS is believed to have pipped rival outsourcing firm, EXL Services, and a multinational player — rumoured to be Capgemini — in a rather prolonged bidding process that marks the successful sale of a large captive BPO unit in the country.

When completed, WNS is set to absorb around 6,500 employees of Aviva’s consolidated operations spread across Bangalore, Pune, Noida, Chennai and Colombo.

Among recent deals, this is complex, not only because of the complications associated with a captive unit, but also because it involves the consolidation of multiple legal entities.

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