Discuss Outsourcing With other professionls

BPO Trainer Essential

A BPO trainer has to be an excellent motivator. The biggest challenge for him is to be able to persuade the BPO youngsters to abide by the rules and regulations of the organization he/she works for and also for the laws & regulations of the customer’s country. One of the biggest challenges is to create an interest and positive impression of the trainee’s current job and his/her firm. The trainer also has to make sure that every one in the training batch completes the training successfully. The toughest part for the trainer is to identify weak trainees, provide them individual feed back to improve on all the parameters. The trainer has to share ‘believable’ experiences and provide them with innovative real life case studies.

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Opportunity in the midst of crisis

Predictions about the future are both easy and hard. Easy because no one can prove you wrong; hard because if you run a BPO business, as I do, you will end up making resource allocation decisions based upon your view of the world and being wrong will not be without consequences.

However, having been a keen follower of Indian BPO over the last several years, I am bemused at reactions to events in western economies. These have ranged from projected revenue declines, to job losses, to the ‘Obama Effect’ (whatever that might be), to hiring freezes, sabbatical programmes, redeployment of staff, etc. It is easy to panic in the current environment because the world economy looks quite dangerous right now. Despite that, my view is that the opportunity for Indian BPO has never been better.

It is, however, a different opportunity from the past and will need a very different response than before. Not everyone will be able to react swiftly enough but the companies who do so will be able to move their businesses to a different level of evolution. To me the opportunities far exceed the threats.

BPO will grow

There is no doubt in my mind that Indian BPO has the solutions to many problems that western companies are facing. Most western companies are seeing falls in revenue, some pretty dramatic. The only way to respond to a fall in revenue is to cut costs. Offshore BPO is one of the best and proven ways to restructure costs in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.

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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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TPI sees slowdown in outsourcing

While numerous studies have been pointing to a possible softness in IT budgets next year, the closely watched TPI Index of global contracts shows a definite slowdown in outsourcing. The Houston, Texas based TPI, the worlds largest sourcing data and advisory firm, released the quarterly numbers of global outsourcing deals on Thursday. About 128 outsourcing contracts worth only USD14.4 billion in TCV total contract value were signed in July September, the third quarter of calendar 2008.

Compared to the previous quarter, contracts dropped 22 per cent, and both TCV and ACV dropped 50 per cent quarter on quarter.

Though the third quarter is typically the weakest quarter of the year, this year it was lower than the historical average by almost 20 per cent, TPI said.

What is more disconcerting is that, according to the TPI numbers, there was only one mega deal valued at just over USD1 billion compared to the reported deals of more than USD9 billion in value in each of the past three consecutive quarters. The last time the industry had one or fewer mega deals in a quarter was in 1996. The softness in outsourcing in the financial services industry continued in Q3.

The silver lining is that despite the softness in the Q3 numbers, the full year for 2008 looks to be on course for a strong overall result as transactions involving the transfer of certain backoffice operations as part of an outsourcing arrangement are expected to increase in the coming quarters.

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HCL expecting huge outsourcing deals

HCL Technologies CEO, Vineet Nayar, has said he sees deals worth about USD2 billion, on which decisions would be made by clients in the next 90 days. Revealing this in a conference call with analysts after announcing results for the quarter ended September 2008, Nayar said, I havent seen something like this in the last 3 years. He cited outsourcing advisory companies as saying that deal flows would slow down. Despite this, I feel that Indian service providers would see a larger deal flow should decisions go in their favour, referring to the same deals.

Of these deals waiting to be decided on, 45 per cent are from the manufacturing sector, 25 per cent from the media and entertainment segment while financial services brought in the rest, according to him.

He also clarified that 55 per cent of deals that HCL Technologies pitches for is populated by non Indian MNCs as competition. That is, no other Indian provider figures in these deals we pitch for. Also, for 34 per cent of these deals, or five deals, in this context, we have to compete with only one large player.

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Outsourcing challenges

Offshore outsourcing is no longer a novel idea. It is an accepted business practice and for many the offshore operation has become a significant part of their overall operations. So it is essential they succeed in this endeavor. However the reality is that better than 50 percent of offshoring initiatives fail to meet original expectations. Successfully managing offshore projects requires that you understand the major challenges. These have broken down into two categories, External and Internal.

External Challenges

Staffing and retention

Competition for the right skills in countries like India is very high, you need to determine whether the vendor has and can offer you the staff with right level of experience. Once you establish a team, you need to proactively manage staff retention.

Time Zone Differences

Your staff in the US will need to get used to staying up late and/or coming in early for telecons with the offshore team.

Country and vendor infrastructure

Both can be issues, you need to determine if your project needs special tools and/or other infrastructure.

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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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US Manufacturing Business Outsourcing & 3rd Party Services Expenditures, 2007-2012

DUBLIN, Ireland — Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7abb4d/us_manufacturing_b) has announced the addition of the "US Manufacturing Business Outsourcing & 3rd Party Services Expenditures, 2007-2012" report to their offering.

This Excel-based Data-rich Deliverable (DRD) that is part of the Manufacturing subscription includes market intelligence on IT: Outsourcing expenditures for the Manufacturing vertical. Outsourcing & 3rd Party Services consists of expenditures on services rendered by 3rd parties, including IT outsourcing companies. These services include, but are not limited to, managed and hosted services (from a provider other than a telecom operator), application development and integration and IT support/Help desk. Manufacturing includes establishments engaged in the mechanical or chemical transformation of materials or substances into new products. Size of business includes SOHO (1-4 employees), Small Business (5-99 employees), Mid-Sized Business (100-999 employees), and Enterprise Business (Over 1000 employees). The Expert Guide for this deliverable is Stephanie Atkinson. Forecasts are from 2007 through 2012 and include annual growth rate, as well as percentage of total market.

Table of Contents

Sources: Our segment and market forecasts, which include business expenditures, market demographics, and usage and adoption statistics, are built using multiple sources, including our proprietary research. These sources include, but are not limited to:

- Secondary research

- Government data and statistics (e.g. department of commerce, federal communication commission, bureau of labour statistics and us census bureau)

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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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