Tata CEO sees opportunity as US banks cut back

NEW YORK: The economic crisis may present a growth opportunity for India's top outsourcing firm, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), as US
financial services companies look to cut costs, but that opportunity is likely some months away, the company's CEO said on Wednesday.

It does not make sense for Wall Street firms to run their own "captive" back-office information technology operations that perform functions such as order processing, TCS Chief Executive Subramanian Ramadorai told Reuters.

"Captives will disappear, in my opinion," he said in an interview. "It's one of the big ticket items that will give them the savings they want."

TCS, part of India's Tata Group, provides services such as consulting, system integration and back-office outsourcing. Last month, it bought Citigroup Inc's back-office unit in India for $505 million, a deal that is expected to close by early January.

Ramadorai did not hold discussions with Citi while in New York this week, but added: "We continue to meet them."

As clients consolidate, Ramadorai said he saw further opportunity for Tata.

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Genpact yet to feel slowdown impact: CEO

NEW DELHI: Country's leading BPO company Genpact on Monday said that it is yet to feel the impact of the ongoing global turmoil on its revenues.

"The company is yet to feel the impact of the ongoing slowdown on its revenues," Genpact CEO Pramod Bhasin told reporters on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit 2008 here.

He, however, said that "clarity would emerge in the next three-four months if there has been any impact on the company's finances".

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Outsourcing one bright light in sea of global gloom

MANILA: Business outsourcing may not be the most glamorous industry in the world but it is one of the few bright lights amid the doom and gloom
of the global financial crisis.

The two countries which have benefited the most from outsourcing, India and the Philippines, expect to see some initial pain from the financial turmoil but the industry is confident it will ride out the storm.

In the Philippines the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry expects growth this year of between 35-40 per cent on revenues of around seven billion dollars.

"We are part of the solution, not part of the problem," Oscar Sanez the chief executive of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) said in a recent interview.

The BPO sector expects annual growth of around 40 per cent with revenues hitting 12 billion dollars by 2010 and employing one million people compared with 300,000 this year.

In India, where the industry generates some 40 million dollars in annual export revenues, the story is much the same although it admits that it could expect some initial pain.

The sector traditionally views bad times as offering opportunities as Western companies cut costs by moving work to cheaper destinations offshore.

India leads the world when it comes to outsourcing with more than half the global business while the Philippines is a distant second with around 10 per cent.

Both countries place a great deal of importance on the sector as its growth creates jobs and much-needed revenue.
Rick Santos, the Philippine country chairman for global property services company CB Richard Ellis, told AFP that the crisis would "actually drive more BPO business to the Philippines".

"You will see many more companies having to go offshore just to survive," he said.

He said he expects about 502 million square metres (5.4 billion square feet) of Philippine office space to be leased this year, up 52 per cent from 2007.

India and the Philippines are the preferred destinations for European and American banks and IT companies for outsourcing their back room and call centre operations due to the highly educated work force and English speaking skills in both countries.

Sanez said that despite the financial turmoil he was confident the BPO industry in the Philippines will continue to see growth.

"Judging from the investor meetings we've been having recently our clients will want to ramp up their outsourcing activities in order to accelerate cost savings," he said.

"The Philippines is in a very strategic position due to its strong and successful experience with BPO particularly with large American and British multinationals giving it a high level of credibility and trust especially in critical times."

He conceded that in the short term there could be a "bit of distraction" due to management and ownership realignments in the banking sector.

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Slowdown cools attrition in outsourcing industry

Bangalore: First they tried bonuses. Then award programmes, and long-term planning for career. But the US financial crisis has helped Indian outsourcing firms do what they couldn’t quite do on their own: get employees to stick around.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) companies have struggled for years with a labour pool largely defined by young workers who hopped from one employer to another, and stayed with one, on average, for only 11 months. But that was before several of the world’s largest banks collapsed, the credit markets froze, and people started to worry more about whether or not they had a job than how good a job it was.
The BPO industry’s churn rate has come down below 20% in the third quarter, down from 35% in 2007, and the low 20s earlier this year.

At outsourcing firm Genpact Ltd, often considered an industry benchmark, attrition dropped from 31% last year to 24% in the first half of this year. “Is that the impact of the market around us, or the impact of the absolutely outstanding work that Piyush Mehta and his team are doing?” asks Genpact’s human resources head Piyush Mehta. “I don’t want to completely exclude what we have done, but it is mostly the market impact.”

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Outsourcing deal for HP

Godrej Industries Limited GIL, the flagship company of the Godrej Group, has shifted its entire information technology staff to Hewlett Packard HP, India. The move is a part of the outsourcing deal that GIL has signed with HP, for its in-house IT operations. The IT workforce of GIL have been transferred to HP, and operations have been outsourced to the company. We have not laid anyone off, said Adi Godrej, chairman of GIL. He declined to give the size of the deal.

Industry sources pointed out that the company would make a significant saving with this deal. Earlier this year, the Future Group had inked a similar deal worth about USD 150 million Rs 741.1 crore with Wipro under which more than 250 employees of Pantaloon Retail were moved to the IT company.

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Outsourcing trends

A recent report from TPI shows a slowdown in the signing of outsourcing deals . According to the report new outsourcing contracts in Europe fell from 75 to 56 in the 2nd to 3rd quarter of this year and the only one significant mega deal was signed during the 3rd quarter. This has got people within the industry wondering whether we are about to see the decline in outsourcing contracts as more end users keep a close eye on the bottom line, maybe bring services back in house or just dont do anything at all.

Despite TPI’s reports, organisations are going to turn their back on outsourcing altogether. Instead we may see a change in the nature of outsourcing deals.

In the past couple of years the mega deal has been consigned by many to the outsourcing scrap heap in favour of multi sourcing that is choosing separate suppliers for different processes.

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Indian cities top global outsourcing list

The Top 8 Global Outsourcing Cities includes as many as six Indian cities led by Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi National Capital Region, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. Dublin Ireland and Makati City The Philippines are the other two cities in the list, according to a study by Cyber Medias Global Services and investment advisory firm Tholons. Indias representation in the top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing cities has grown to four, from last years three, with the addition of Jaipur to the list at No 31.

The other three cities in the list include Kolkata at No 6, Chandigarh at No 12 and Coimbatore at No 17.
Cebu City The Philippines, Shanghai China and Beijing China lead the list of emerging global outsourcing cities.

The Top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing Cities 2008 list has nine entrants Quezon City, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Jaipur, Singapore City, Chengdu, Guadalajara and Mandaluyong City.

Six Chinese cities are a part of the top 50 emerging cities for global outsourcing list, compared to Indias four.

These are Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Dalian, Guangzhou and Chengdu.

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Outsourcing the Drug Industry

By Pete Engardio and Arlene Weintraub

In her swank headquarters just blocks from some of Mumbai's worst slums, Swati Piramal is midway through an impassioned pitch about revolutionizing the world of drug discovery. Sanskrit passages of the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Hindu text that guides her business philosophy, adorn the office walls of her company, Piramal Life Sciences. Its logo is gyan mudra, a finger gesture used in yoga meditation resembling the Western sign for "A-O.K."

Journey now to Bangalore. After a crawl through the city's notorious traffic and a bone-rattling ride over a cratered road that washes away with each rainfall, the four-wheel-drive van arrives at the glistening, ocean liner-shaped headquarters of Jubilant Biosys. The laboratories inside are world-class. But when equipment fails, repairs often take a week, scientist Ajith Kamath explains sheepishly. Lunch is Domino's pizza with toppings that include corn, Indian paneer cheese, and hot spices. Turns out Jubilant is co-owner of India's Domino's franchise.

At first glance, companies such as Jubilant and Piramal may seem too undeveloped -- or perhaps just too culturally remote -- to rub shoulders with the world's top pharmaceutical makers. But judging from all the deals taking shape in India, they may have a critical role to play in the industry's future. In recent months, Western executives have been flocking to India's hastily built science parks, looking for allies in the never-ending quest to develop blockbuster treatments. With little fanfare, they've started a process that could lead to wide-scale outsourcing of drug research to Asia.

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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/