Outsourcing solutions from TCS

Tata Consulting Services TCS small and medium business SMB unit is all set to tap the global market with its total outsourcing solutions developed in India. The company will market its solutions globally, starting with emerging markets like Latin America LATA, Middle East ME and Africa in the next two to three quarters.

Venguswamy Ramaswamy, global head SMB, TCS, said, We are in a process of adding new solutions to our existing ones
every quarter. As it is very cost effective to develop innovative solutions in India, we want to leverage it and take these solutions to the global market.

TCS SMB unit, based on IT as a service model, started in March 2008 to provide basic end to end solutions like providing hardware and software solutions to SMBs.

As of now, the company has more than 30 clients in India. It plans to concentrate on client acquisition in the next one year and then ramp up its revenues in another two to three years. According to IDC, small and medium businesses in India have grown at a rate of 14.8 percent in the year 2007 2008.

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BSNL, C and W ink network sharing deal

Public sector telco giant Bharat Sanchar Nigam BSNL has inked an agreement with Cable andWireless India to offer managed network services MNS Public sector telco giant Bharat Sanchar Nigam BSNL has inked an agreement with Cable and Wireless India to offer managed network BSNL is focusing on broadband, network monitoring and managing MPLS networks for big corporates as the next big growth area. We have plans to invest roughly USD 10 billion on network expansion over the next three years, It is therefore important for us to partner with a leading and trusted telecom provider such as Cable and Wireless, who have one of the most resilient network infrastructures available BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal said.

As per the understanding, Cable andWireless India will support BSNL to expand its global network and provide better services to its customers expanding their global footprint, BSNL in return, will enable Cable and Wireless India to leverage its extensive domestic network reach throughout the country.

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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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Designing Your Organization for BPO and Shared Services

This article provides guidance on organizational design (OD) for organizations that are undertaking or contemplating a shared service or business process outsourcing (BPO) initiative. It comes from the series, "Guidelines for Shared Services and BPO," developed by Alsbridge to reflect a shared understanding of good practice in outsourcing. Related columns will discuss the following areas: developing a business case, change management and SLAs and service levels, charging and benchmarking.

Organizational design is sometimes used to mean simply the design of an organization chart. However, this article uses a broader definition which covers the operating model, the organizational structure (including the organization chart), the roles, competencies and job descriptions.

For shared services and BPO the model has three main areas, as follows:

• The service management organization is the shared services/BPO operation itself, undertaking the various transaction processing or administrative activities. Some shared services/BPO operations will deliver specialist and expert services. This organization may be an internal shared service center, serving one or many internal customers, or external, which is typically the outsourced/BPO option.
• The retained organization is the term used to describe what is left behind when the shared services or outsourced activities are transferred to the new service provider. There are two aspects to the design of the retained function. First there is a need to design an organization that is effective in "receiving" the service delivered by the shared service/BPO provider. This will require an organization where there is clarity of responsibility for inputs and outputs to and from the provider. Second, there is a need to design a retained organization that is effective in performing its role in supporting the business.
• The governance layer term refers to the activities that are necessary to manage a customer/supplier relationship, including the management of service level agreements, performance reporting, billing, and issue resolution.

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Is Mysore becoming the next BPO capital?

Think IT, think South India. Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad have seen unprecedented growth in the last decade owing to the growth of the information technology sector. But, could Bangalore be 'Bangalored' by its own neighboring town? Could Vijayawada or Madurai be the next BPO boomtowns?

Mysore is known as much as for Mysore Pak as it is known for Brindavan Gardens and the Chamundi Hills. This sleepy city has been witnessing a quiet IT revolution since 2003.

According to a NASSCOM - A.T Kearney study, Mysore is all set to breakout into the big league on the BPO scene because of availability of talent and the city’s proximity to Bangalore. So, while the big firms like Infosys, Wipro and HCL are setting up big global trading and delivery centers here, it’s the smaller firms that are actually able to dig in their heels into the local talent pool.

HTMT Global Solutions is one of the first BPO companies is to set-up shop in Mysore. Benjamin Franklin, the Deputy GM at HTMT tells that the 250-seater facility is far exceeding his expectations. Set-up just 1.5 years ago, it has seen some of it’s first employees now become team leaders. The response from the city has been so good that HTMT is already looking to expand by over 500-seats.

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New BPO service on the offing

Insurers in Europe and the United States are increasingly considering policy administration business process outsourcing BPO, says a new report by London based independent market analyst . Facing challenging market conditions, both life and non life insurers are seeking to reduce costs and gain flexibility. Often times, however, these goals are stymied by rigid policy administration platforms, which are frequently built in house, Datamonitors report states.

The report concludes that insurers need to reduce costs and become more efficient in order to protect profit margins during this and future soft markets. Further, insurers in the mature markets of North America and Western Europe that are struggling to find new pockets of growth need a flexible policy administration system that enables quicker time-to-market. Policy administration BPO can effectively increase efficiency and flexibility, as well as free resources that can then be expended on value-add functions, according to the research group.

Insurers are increasingly targeting the policy administration function to improve their competitiveness, says Jonathan Steiman, a financial services technology analyst with Datamonitor and the reports author. Business process outsourcing, which is often less capital intensive and less time consuming than other options, is being considered by more and more insurers.

Steiman warns, however, that along with the benefits come some risks. Outsourcing the policy administration function can greatly improve an insurers operation, which is imperative in todays market, but insurers are still wary of losing control of the customer and becoming over-dependant on a single vendor. Many of these risks, Steiman adds, can be mitigated with a comprehensive service-level agreement SLA.

Datamonitor's report notes that both large and small insurers will adopt BPO. Currently, insurers with fewer than 5,000 employees currently have the lowest policy administration BPO adoption rate, however, this is likely to change. According to a Datamonitor survey of 200 global insurers conducted in the first quarter of 2008, small insurers are heavily weighing a BPO strategy, which is evidence of the need to lower costs and concentrate limited resources on value-add functions in today's competitive marketplace.

The survey also found that large insurers those with more than 20,000 employees are increasingly likely to outsource policy administration. Typically, these players engaged in off-shoring via captives, or company owned facilities. The captive route has not been as fruitful as expected, elevating their interest in outsourcing to a third party.

The trends captured by our survey are incredibly interesting, notes Steiman. On the one hand, we see small insurers looking to outsource in order to improve competitiveness. On the other hand, we see large insurers, many of whom already having gone overseas with captives, being drawn to outsourcing because of the maturity and expertise that BPO providers now possess.

Many of today's BPO arrangements can be classified as traditional, or your mess for less, BPO. In other words, insurers look to BPO providers to perform the same functions on the same platforms, but for less money. The savings in traditional BPO are typically driven by moving the process offshore to low-wage countries.

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