Source:www.moneycontrol.com

Indian information technology, or IT, companies are following their global customers to different corners of the world and some are moving towards Russia, reports CNBC-TV18.

Indian IT companies are saying hello to Russia. That is because Russia has what Indian IT companies desperately want- highly skilled talent. An IDC survey of 20 West- European and US companies outsourcing to Russia, found Russians excelled at high-end software.

An attrition rate of just 4% sweetens the deal. IDC adds that developing new products in Russia costs at least 30% less than in Western Europe or the US.

The question is whether India should be worried and the answer is an emphatic no. That is because IT companies, like TCS, want to use Russian talent to advance their outsourcing capabilities.

“We will definitely look at Russia, sometime in the future. I cannot give you a timeline now. That is a market we will look actively to create a resource base,” said N Chandrasekaran, COO, TCS.


Already companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel, Google and Capgemini have set up development or offshore centres in Russia. Besides, Russia itself offers a market.


“In terms of the domestic market opportunity, according to the Russian Ministry, they expect it to be a USD 40 billion industry by 2010. It is almost three-fold from 2006 levels. Oil and gas, banking and financial services are some of the areas where there are opportunities,” said Ashwin Mehta, Senior Research Analyst, Ambit Capital.


Analysts also say the moolah in offshoring is in high-end work, a sector in which the Russians excel. Also, an offshore development centre there will help Indian IT companies get outsourcing business for the East European markets, of companies based in the US and Western Europe. So, we might soon see Diwali celebrated in Russia!

Source:www.informationweek.com


Offshoring can cut costs dramatically, extend support and capabilities, and provide hard-to-find expertise, but careful management is the only way to ensure success.

Outsourcing offers businesses the opportunity to cut costs and boost productivity -- if it's done right.

Offshore locations feature low-cost workers who can cut your labor costs by 50% or more. Tapping workers in India or China also affords the possibility of round-the-clock technical or customer support -- when domestic staffers sign off in the evening, their Asian counterparts are just waking up. Companies can also transform labor costs from fixed to variable by working with an outsourcer. Need extra manpower during the holidays? A service provider can put more bodies on your account during crunch times. Finally, outsourcers can provide quick access to domain and technology experts who may be in short supply locally.

Despite these advantages, reports abound about outsourcing gone bad. Dell infamously had to repatriate some customer service operations after customers complained they couldn't understand foreign phone reps. The bottom line: Outsourcing isn't about blindly throwing work over the wall; it needs to be thought out and aggressively managed. Here are some pitfalls to watch for, and how to cope.
Many outsourcing projects fail because of lack of internal oversight. Forrester analyst Christine Ferussi Ross says businesses should establish formal vendor management offices staffed with professionals experienced in IT operations, contract negotiations, and procurement. Also needed is an individual with the diplomatic skills necessary to maintain vendor relationships over time. "Outsourcing implies some give and take," says Ross.

Only 47% of 615 companies recently surveyed by Forrester reported having a centralized vendor management office.

Costs also need to be managed, or potential savings can evaporate quickly. Of concern lately for those outsourcing to India is the rising rupee, which has gained about 14% against the U.S. dollar over the past year. Businesses need to negotiate up front the extent to which their vendor is willing to insulate them from currency fluctuations. Labor costs in India are also rising -- by as much as 15% per year -- so companies interested in outsourcing for the first time might do well to scout out locations that haven't been oversold, such as South America and China, and even second-tier cities in India. Not everything needs to be in Bangalore.

Deciding what to outsource is almost as critical as the decision to outsource itself. Not all IT projects or customer groups are created equally. Outsourcing the development of non-critical applications or customer service for low-revenue customers are good places to start. Dell's mistake was offshoring service and support for its high-end business customers.

Regardless of what you outsource, the security of your company's and your customers' personal and business data must be a top consideration. When weighing vendors, it's worth a trip to their facilities to inspect first-hand their security technologies and policies, even if that means a long flight. Most major offshore outsourcers, including India's big four of Wipro, TCS, Infosys, and Satyam, have sophisticated security processes in place. Even so, it must be negotiated up front who is responsible for what if a breach occurs.

Outsourcing needn't be fraught with peril, but it does need to be well managed.

Source:washingtontimes.com


Shipping services for Americans overseas is reaching all the way to U.S. highways.

Across the nation, foreign management of toll roads and other infrastructure is raising money for projects that otherwise would not be built.

In Virginia, Australian companies would operate four toll roads in the state when construction is completed on tollways planned for the Washington area.

The foreign companies compete for public-private partnership contracts that state governments increasingly give out to avoid draining their tax revenue on highways.

"In real dollars, there's a lot less dollars available for publicly funded infrastructure than there used to be," said Michael Kulper, vice president of the transportation consortium Fluor-Transurban Inc. and an Australian citizen. "More and more of the state budgets are being consumed by maintenance."

Fluor-Transurban is finishing a deal with Virginia that would build 70 miles of "HOT lanes" along the Capital Beltway's normal traffic lanes and south to Fredericksburg.

For motorists, the HOT — high-occupancy toll — lanes mean they would pay between 10 cents and $1 a mile to bypass Beltway traffic. The rates would vary throughout the day, depending on the density of traffic on the Beltway. Buses and high-occupancy vehicles could use the toll road for free.

Transurban Group is the Australian consortium that would collect the tolls and maintain the roads. Fluor Corp. is an Irving, Texas, engineering and construction company that would build the HOT lanes.

Source:www.businessweek.com

It's a familiar scenario: A product you purchased recently has developed a problem, so you call the company's toll-free number and are connected to a "customer service associate" in India or the Philippines. You describe your problem but have a hard time understanding what the company representative is saying. You try several more times to communicate why you are calling but cannot get information that you can comprehend. You ask to be transferred to someone in the U.S. and are then put on hold for what seems like an eternity. You hang up in frustration and vow never again to purchase anything from this company.

More and more businesses are outsourcing not just manufacturing jobs but services ones too. On the face of it, this seems like a smart financial move: By slashing labor costs 25%, 50%, or more, companies that have had slim profit margins are now able to enrich the bottom line and keep shareholders happy.

Outsourcing customer service, however, is not only unethical. It's bad for business.

Here's why.
Good Word of Mouth and How Not to Get It

The most valuable commodity a business has, and the most difficult one to come by, is positive word of mouth. There are lots of ways to engender this. You can build a superior product. You can create a memorable marketing campaign. You can get publicity by doing good works in the community. All of these will inevitably get people talking about your company, which is harder and harder to make happen in our increasingly crowded marketplace.

The problem with outsourcing customer service is that this practice creates nothing but negative word of mouth. Time is precious, and what customer wants to spend an inordinate amount of time in an often vain attempt to communicate with a company employee who is halfway around the world and cannot speak English effectively? It is easy to measure the savings a business gets by farming out customer-service jobs to countries whose median income is an eighth of what it is in the U.S. What too many businesses either fail to see or refuse to take seriously, however, is that companies that value short-term profit at the expense of meaningful customer service risk sacrificing long-term profits and the company's own reputation. Beware: It's harder to repair a poor image than it is to maintain a good one in the first place.

Smart businesses recognize that the surest way to hold onto their current customers and create new ones is to place customer satisfaction front and center, not only in their mission statements but in their day-to-day operations. This means that customer-service representatives must be able to communicate clearly. This also means that these employees should be fluent not only in the primary language of the customer base but in their culture, customs, and idiosyncrasies as well. The root of "customer" is "custom," and customs are largely a mystery to those who live and work outside of the culture.

Source:home.businesswire.com


Virtusa Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTU), a global IT services company that provides IT consulting, technology implementation and application outsourcing services, has been named the top IT Systems Outsourcing Vendor in the Brown-Wilson Group's annual “Black Book” survey of Top Outsourcing Vendors in the Wealth Management Industry.

The Wealth Management IT Systems Outsourcing rankings are based upon eighteen criteria of operational excellence, including technology innovation, client relationships and trust, breadth of offering and customization.

“Outsourcing is becoming more popular as wealth management industry executives become more comfortable with the robustness of the outsourcers’ systems and capabilities, especially in times of regulatory change,” noted Doug Brown, co-author of “The Black Book of Outsourcing” and a principal of Brown-Wilson Group. “Virtusa is at the top of a very exclusive group of high-quality IT systems outsourcers in this evolving, fast-growing industry.”

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized by Brown-Wilson Group in The Black Book of Outsourcing for our innovative work in the wealth management arena,” said Kris Canekeratne, Virtusa Chairman and CEO. “For financial institutions that offer wealth management services, the focus must be on how IT can deliver more agile solutions to increase operational efficiency and improve customer experience. Virtusa’s software platforming approach has enabled our wealth management clients to enhance their customer-facing applications–opening accounts faster, offering new products and services seamlessly, and providing superior customer service to their high-net worth clientele.”

Black Book’s Top Outsourcing Vendor Rankings in the Wealth Management Industry Report will be released at tomorrow’s FS Outsourcing Wealth Management Industry Summit in New York, where Virtusa executives will present on “Emerging Trends in Building Agile IT Solutions in Wealth Management.”

About the Black Book Top Outsourcing Vendors & Top Advisors Rankings

The Black Book initiative sponsors the only annual, independent, non-biased ranking of 300 outsourcing advisors and 4,500 vendors as completely scored from over 20,000 outsourcing users' and clients' ballots. The Top 50 Best Managed Global Outsourcing Vendors ranking is based on twenty-six measures of leadership excellence, including client satisfaction with senior management direction, leadership impact on outsourcing results, business transformation practices, client relations management, and indicators of C-level officer commitment. Sublists in twelve categories of outsourcing cover over 500 outsourcing functions, in 40 industries, from multiple organization sizes and locations. Sublists are rankings based on eighteen criteria of operational excellence and client satisfaction with outcomes. Surveys are conducted each year, currently in the fourth update, beginning in March with results announced in June.

About Virtusa Corporation

Virtusa is a global information technology (IT) services company providing IT consulting, technology implementation and application outsourcing services. Using its enhanced global delivery model, innovative platforming approach and industry expertise, Virtusa provides cost-effective services that enable its clients to use IT to enhance business performance, accelerate time-to-market, increase productivity and improve customer service. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Massachusetts, Virtusa has offices in the United States and the United Kingdom, and global delivery centers in India and Sri Lanka.

Source:www.upi.com


The private armies employed by the United States as auxiliary forces in the war in Iraq have come under criticism following an incident that drew the ire of Iraq’s prime minister, who demanded their immediate withdrawal.

However, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s wishes are far removed from the economic realities of the war, at least as far as the Bush administration is concerned, and the prime minister’s edicts will carry little impact, if any.

If the deployment of tens of thousands of armed contract workers in Iraq may seem somewhat unethical given that they are held accountable to neither Iraqi nor U.S. laws, their involvement in the war is nevertheless a wise business decision that will save the U.S. taxpayer billions of dollars.

The most prominent of these private security firms is an outfit called Blackwater USA, which retains some 20,000 or so armed employees. Blackwater’s employees, most often former Special Forces personnel recruited from dozens of different countries, provide security to many U.S. agencies operating in Iraq, including the U.S. Embassy and U.S. diplomats stationed in Baghdad.

On Sept. 16 a Blackwater unit providing security for a convoy of U.S. diplomats traveling in Baghdad is alleged to have indiscriminately opened fire after coming under attack. The result left 11 Iraqis dead and 13 wounded, among them women and children. The incident prompted Maliki to demand that Blackwater curtail its operations in Iraq, a request that was ignored. Given the scope of Blackwater’s operations in Iraq, asking it to leave would affect most U.S. operations in the country. Not to mention the setbacks it would have on the war effort.

But why is the United States turning over part of the war effort to a civilian mercenary force? Given its size, Blackwater, one of several such companies operating in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, constitutes the second-largest foreign force in Iraq after the U.S. military. It has its own military base and operates about 20 aircrafts, including armed helicopters.

Why? It’s a question of logistics and economy.

First, the tens of thousands of contractors who are assigned to guard buildings, installations, military bases and provide protection for U.S. officials allows the Pentagon to maintain a smaller force in the country, avoiding further taxing an overstretched military fighting two wars.

Financially, the Pentagon contracts with security firms, which in turn pay their employees. So where are the savings? Well, consider the healthcare costs alone attached to a returning veteran in need of medical attention over a lifetime. In that regard alone, privatizing part of the war carries a huge advantage as far as keeping costs down. Contract workers who are wounded in action are not the responsibility of the U.S. government.

In a March 2007 article in The New Statesman titled “Iraq: the Hidden Cost of the War,” Andrew Stephen quotes two economists who predict that several decades of care for the wounded veterans of the Iraq war will amount to $2.5 trillion, a figure the author says the Pentagon is trying to suppress.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor and an economist who served in the Clinton administration, and Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist from Columbia University, say Stephen has "established not only that the number of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is far higher than the Pentagon has been saying, but that looking after them alone could cost present and future U.S. taxpayers a sum they estimate to be $536 billion.”

Providing long-term care for just one soldier suffering from severe brain injury could end up costing a minimum of $4.3 million, according to the report. Since the start of the conflict, more than 1.4 million U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq. According to The New Statesman, more than 200,000 veterans from the current Iraq or Afghanistan wars have been treated at VA centers since the start of the conflicts.

“Every person injured on active duty is going to be a long-term cost of the war,” Bilmes told The New Statesman. This of course does not apply to the private army contracted by the Pentagon.

With the cost of the war to the U.S. taxpayer draining approximately $200,000 every minute, according to the National Priorities Project, Washington will not find it difficult explaining to the Iraqi prime minister the need to go on with business as usual.

Source:pr-gb.com


Human resource outsourcing is extremely popular and well accepted area in any established organization. One of the most simple reason why HR outsourcing is gaining important these days is it act as a cost-saving mechanism. Today companies know that HR outsourcing is a necessary business device not only to cut shot cost, but also bring value to their enterprises. Further HR outsourcing arrangement is a huge commitment over a comprehensive time period. HR outsourcing services concentrates on the distinctive ability. You can earn value to your best-in-class skills and capabilities to lower your operating costs and enhance your bottom line.

The Advantages of HR Outsourcing

Organizations of every form and dimension are pursuing HR outsourcing plans today. Most are looking for ways to boost up their business act, productivity and competitiveness. Key reasons to tap HR outsourcing benefits include:

• Enhance abilities in key aggressive areas
• Partner with specialists to augment innovation
• Increase the aptitude to concentrate on core competencies
• Lessen costs
• Speed time to market place
• Improve business act

However it involves a variety of issues. For example: Will the supplier begin to use space in the obtainable facilities, or the unit would be transferred to their facilities? Would existing guarantees transfer to the present supplier? How would the edifying interface among the two organizations be managed? How would company huge processes, procedures, and so be addressed? Etc. All these and many others would require to be warily considered.

When thinking the outsourcing of human resource services, organization should be very apparent with respect to its company’s expectations. It should clearly explain the services themselves - in other words, precisely what it wishes to be delivered. It is for eternity a good plan to calculate these against the present services, approximately go for a benchmarking exercise. At the very least, this would offer helpful statistics for use downstream, when reflection of suppliers is undertaken. It is essentially been noticed lot of positive result where the management stands before and after outsourcing Human resources. Path of human resource outsourcing is very helpful for any upcoming and established organization.

Source:www.fishupdate.com

IRELAND'S role as a major player in the aquaculture sector has been underlined at an international workshop and "foresight" exercise held yesterday to coincide with the World Seafood Congress. The event was opened by MEP Sean O’Neachtain and attended by around 70 delegates from across the world.

“Ireland has a reputation in Europe as one of the world leaders in open aquaculture production,” Mr. O’Neachtain said. “As we experience both dwindling stocks and an ever increasing demand for seafood products, aquaculture appears to be the most realistic and sustainable way to provide quality fish products to consumers.”

The Workshop, which was funded under the EU 6th Framework Programme, was designed to provide anyone with an interest in offshore fish farming the opportunity to submit their thoughts on the next steps for future development. This information will now be included in a comprehensive report outlining the way forward for the European aquaculture industry and submitted to the European Commission in February 2008.

“The Irish fish farming industry is now producing more than 60,000 tonnes of fish per annum at a value of over €100 million,” said Mr. O’Neachtain. “In fact, production value doubled over the last 15 years. In real terms, the industry has created over 1,600 jobs.”

Speakers at the Workshop described experiences in the USA, Spain and Ireland in farming a variety of fish and shellfish in offshore conditions. Future trends in offshore aquaculture were discussed by Donal Maguire of BIM.

The objective of the EU project funding the Workshop is to investigate the opportunity and usefulness for the aquaculture industry of promoting offshore fish farming through a “technological platform” – a consortium of international experts and stakeholders. Achieving this objective requires the collection, validation and collation of data from a diverse range of sources on the opportunities and requirements of European offshore aquaculture and it’s evaluation to assess the appropriateness of a technological platform as a suitable promotional vehicle.

The Dublin Workshop, it is said, is a key part of this process.

Source:www.computerweekly.com


The AA has replaced its IT management team and cancelled its £50 million outsourcing contract with IBM, two weeks after the EC approved the sale of the AA to Saga's private equity owners, Charterhouse.

"We will be ending our relationship with IBM over the next 12 months," an AA spokesman confirmed.

AA and Saga will continue to trade as separate companies, although a group management team will oversee areas such as finance and IT, a Saga spokeswoman said.

Andrew Gisby, former IT manager at Saga, replaces Trevor Didcock as the AA's IT director. Didcock joined the AA in 2004, six months before private equity group CVC Capital Partners and Permira purchased the AA for £1.7bn from Centrica.

Didcock left the AA as a result of the merger and following a review of management, an AA spokesman confirmed. Jim Cameron, former IT director at Saga, will be group IT director over both the AA and Saga. Gisby will report to Cameron.

A study commissioned by the GMB union in August accused the AA of under-investing in new laptops for patrols. The AA categorically denied the claims made by the GMB's report and said it had invested £37m in its IT infrastructure over the past three years.

"As would be expected in any market-leading business, plans and the necessary investment - around £9m - are already in place for replacing the Vixen unit, which may not be a laptop-based unit. Technology moves on and we will implement a replacement at the appropriate time," an AA spokeswoman told Computer Weekly in August.

Source:www.chron.com


Oil and gas companies with offshore installations in the Gulf of Mexico whisked workers onshore and shut down some production Thursday while monitoring a disorganized weather system that could gain strength as it moves into the basin.

"It's not really a storm yet, but if it does form, it'll already be on top of everybody," Devon Energy spokesman Chip Minty said.

Many oil and gas platforms dot the central and east-central parts of the Gulf directly south of Louisiana and Mississippi, near the coast as well as more than 100 miles offshore in thousands of feet of water.

They include Royal Dutch Shell's Mars platform, the Gulf's most prolific producer at 160,000 barrels of oil and 121 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. It's 130 miles southeast of New Orleans.

And 185 miles southeast of New Orleans is Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s Independence Hub, the world's deepest offshore production platform, which began production in July. It had been producing about 250 million cubic feet of gas per day and can ramp that up to 1 billion cubic feet per day, or about 2 percent of all natural gas production in the United States.

Both are among platforms that have been fully evacuated with production shut in as the system approaches.

"In order to ensure the safety of our workers, we are removing all personnel from our operated facilities in the eastern and east-central Gulf of Mexico," said Anadarko spokesman John Christiansen.

The Gulf has about 4,000 offshore platforms — 834 of those manned — which provide nearly 30 percent of the nation's crude oil production and about 20 percent of the its natural gas production.

Companies are watching the weather system off western Florida, remembering havoc wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Those storms destroyed more than 100 platforms and shut in 92 percent of oil output and 83 percent of natural gas production.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which oversees Gulf oil and gas activity, said operators reported Thursday that they have shut in 27.7 percent of the Gulf's 1.3 million barrels of oil per day and 16.7 percent of its 7.7 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

A shut-in involves closing safety valves below the water's surface to prevent oil and gas releases.

Approaching Louisiana
The National Hurricane Center said the low-pressure system was moving northwest and was expected to reach the central Gulf early today. The center anticipated that it would come ashore in southeast Louisiana.

AccuWeather said the system could become Tropical Storm Jerry today before moving inland.

In addition to the Independence Hub, Anadarko evacuated and shut in production at its Constitution, Neptune and Marco Polo oil and gas platforms, which collectively produce 145,000 barrels a day.

Shell said all of its Gulf platforms were being evacuated and production shut in on Thursday. Shell's net operated production in the Gulf is about 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The threat to production, along with a falling dollar and lower U.S. interest rates, contributed to upward pressure on oil prices, which closed up $1.39 to a record $83.32 a barrel in trading Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude closed up 62 cents to settle at $79.09 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange.

Source:www.merinews.com



Legal Process Outsourcing is the latest trend. Big corporations are reaping the benefits. New job opportunities are being created. LPOs seem to have a bright future in India in the coming years. A report.

OUTSOURCING TO India and other lower-cost developing nations is the hottest topic in today’s global marketplace. Major corporations benefit from having work done at a quarter of the price, while the developing countries benefit from the huge influx of income and job creation. The latest industry to join the outsourcing rat race is the legal sector. Legal outsourcing has already created 12,000 job opportunities in India alone and this figure is expected to rise to as many as 79,000 by 2015.

Less than positive opinions expressed by some young Indian Law school students have left me baffled. Why would any young lawyer not want to be part of this exciting and growing sector? Young attorneys can earn a relatively high salary in comparison to domestic Indian firms. There are questions that are being raised regarding the quality and level of work being done by Indian attorneys working in LPOs.

Ramneek Sidhu, from Delhi Law School says, “After investing three years in law school, I don’t want to be caught dead working as a clerk in an LPO.”

Nishita too agrees with this view and further adds, “A lawyer in an LPO is definitely earning good money but at the same time is not justifying his/her profession. There is no direct litigation involved which is the essence of being a lawyer.”

Is it true to say that attorneys within Legal Process Outsourcing companies are nothing more than glorified law clerks, or are they really starting to become more heavily involved with the practice of international law?

Brij, a young attorney working with an LPO feels quite differently to both Ramneek and Nishita. He believes that he is making a sound progress in his career graph by working with an LPO. He says, “Many lawyers nowadays, whether in India, the US or the UK rarely see the inside of a court room. Working within an LPO and not a law firm allows me to keep in sync with the latest developments in US law. The legal thought process that any young attorney must develop over time comes from studying, reading and writing legal briefs and memoranda. I hope that I demonstrate my passion and emotion for law in the arguments I raise in the legal motions and documents I prepare. I know that the work I do is being utilized in the US by firms practicing US law for the benefit of real clients. Although, I don’t physically get to meet the clients who ultimately benefit from my endeavors, in today’s legal world this is by no means abnormal and just a fact of life. Our country is on the verge of becoming a major economic player on the world stage, I believe that I am contributing significantly to this and putting myself in a much stronger position to develop as an international attorney, as and when India opens its doors to foreign law firms.”

Palak, an attorney, opines, “The kind of exposure and opportunities provided by the LPO industry to lawyers is something which I could not have imagined when I graduated. Since my association with LPOs, my skills and knowledge have been under constant development. We aren’t just paralegals. We’re involved in hard core legal work and play an important role in the fate of cases and client matters being handled overseas”.

Vishal Aggarwal, Country Manager of a leading LPO in India says, “In the past, the work in legal services consisted mainly of support work including basic paralegal, secretarial, and litigation support. However, we are continuing to see increasingly higher value work being outsourced from the US and UK to Indian LPOs. Offshore legal process companies such as LawScribe have moved beyond traditional back office legal support services to increasingly more complex core legal work including legal research, patent and trademark searching and drafting, document drafting and due diligence.”

Mark Ross, UK attorney, LawScribe Director, and Legal Offshoring guru passionately believes that we are only in the nascent stages of this exciting and emerging industry. He says, “In the course of the next two to three years, a vast number of qualified Indian attorneys will be working within the industry. I believe the Indian government and the Bar Association will be left with no alternative other than to formally open up the market to foreign law firms and allow Indian attorneys to practice US and UK law from within India’s borders. Once this happens the substantive nature of the work being performed in LPOs, captive arrangements and US and UK Law Firms’ Indian offices will continue to increase. Many Indian attorneys will wish to remain within domestic Indian firms, however the lure of practicing International Law will prove extremely difficult to resist for others.”

LPOs are not just a fad or a passing phase. The trend has shifted from domestic law firms to an increasingly competitive global marketplace with massive scope and job opportunities. The clock is ticking fast and with time LPOs in India will be a much sought after industry to work with.

Source:www.whatpc.co.uk


Not very many years ago the idea of any organisation that had no foreign connections or markets arranging for large sections of its non-core activities to be handled by outsiders was virtually unheard of. Today, outsourcing certain business sectors to specialist providers is a fact of business life.

Driven by market and other pressures, smaller businesses need to invest all their time and resources into core areas of their business. What they do not want to do are the back office functions, including non-core activities such as accounting, payroll, VAT, employment and human resources, and health and safety.

With some of these tasks, such as payroll and VAT, it is simply a matter of efficiency and cost effectiveness.

With others, there are additional problems in keeping abreast with complex and ever-changing legislation to contend with. No matter whether the business is large or small there are opportunities for an outsourcer to take the strain.

Commercial organisations now look to their accountants to help them compete effectively by providing them with a range of added value services. In many respects, the accountancy profession has become the commercial world's first port of call when looking for help with outsourcing.

Unfortunately, the accountancy profession has not got to grips with the opportunities that outsourcing provides. Firms should be looking to generate business for themselves, both in an advisory capacity and as the recipients of outsourced work from clients. Practitioners should be well aware of the benefits to their clients of outsourcing non-core functions and should know them well enough to be able to identify those who should be taking this route. Of course, only the largest firms have the expertise to offer a wide range of outsourced services, but whether it is HR or IT, they should be able to recommend the right specialist.

As for the services that firms themselves can offer: management accounts, VAT preparation and payroll are prime examples. All these service are easy to provide, but can be extremely lucrative if the firm is well organised and geared up with a processing system to handle the work in the UK, or whether they outsource the work overseas.

When it comes to generating new business, there are also opportunities to acquire new clients who only require outsourced services. Where large practices face conflicts of interest they may be happy for their client to outsource work to a smaller firm that is not seen as a competitor. Some of the more progressive independent practices have housed their payroll facilities under a separate identity which they can then market to companies that do not use any of the firm's other services.

Source:www.informationweek.com


Worldwide competition for IT professionals is becoming a pervasive problem, making hiring and retaining qualified--let alone top--IT talent a major concern for most organizations.

The IT job market hasn't been this good since the late 1990s, but it's a demanding market, too. As technology and business environments continue to change rapidly, IT professionals are required to learn and apply new skills to compete in a global economy. Today's IT jobs require more than just strong technical abilities; they also demand industry and business knowledge, as well as effective communication and interpersonal skills. My most recent research conducted in association with the Society for Information Management, to be revealed Oct. 9 at SIMposium in Memphis, Tenn., shows that retaining IT pros has surpassed IT-business alignment as the No. 1 concern for IT executives.

The market for IT professionals is still the fastest-growing sector in the U.S. economy, with more than 1 million new jobs projected to be added between 2004 and 2014. Six of the 30 occupations projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to grow the fastest in this time period are IT related. IT job prospects are expected to be good as demand increases because of rapid advancement in technologies, new business opportunities for leveraging applications, and the number of baby boomers expected to retire.

But there may not be sufficient IT talent to meet this growing demand. The IT hiring downturn during the early part of this decade and the fear of offshore outsourcing have caused a drop in enrollment for computer science and information systems courses at many universities. In the past decade, the number of students majoring in computer science has dropped 40%. A report from UCLA's higher-education research institute shows an even steeper decline of 70% between 2000 and 2005 of freshmen who planned to major in computer science. The loss of IT skills and IT professionals will only accelerate the shift of IT jobs overseas. If nothing is done to turn this trend around to meet the anticipated strong demand for IT workers in the United States, organizations will be forced to source their IT resources overseas, reinforcing a self-fulfilling prophecy that everything is moving offshore.

HEAD COUNT, SALARIES ON THE RISE
Harris Interactive reports that, in the second quarter, organizations moderately increased IT head count and salaries to attract and retain skilled and talented IT professionals. In the current employee-driven market, it's difficult to retain talented IT professionals, who have historically displayed high turn-over rates.

The turnover of skilled IT people is expensive and disruptive to organizations. Whenever a talented professional leaves, costs are incurred for hiring and training, as well as the cost of losing the professional's knowledge about his or her company. Recruiting and hiring IT professionals isn't cheap. The cost of hiring skilled IT people varies depending on the type of job and the specific skills required, along with other intangibles. Gartner estimates that IT employee replacement costs are 2.5 times the annual salary of an IT professional leaving the organization. Recruiting includes the cost of advertising, recruiters, traveling, interviewing, and training, as well as the productivity lost as the new IT professional comes up to speed.

Retaining IT professionals has taken on a new sense of urgency. Important considerations such as how to retain skilled IT professionals in the improving IT job market, how to prepare for offshore outsourcing, and how to ensure that IT professionals have the required business, technical, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the era of globalization are all important.

Source:www.chennaionline.com


It's now the turn of the logistics industry to promote outsourcing as the only way for manufacturers to reduce the escalating supply chain management cost. And the fast growing organised sector of third party logistics solution providers - 3PL companies - are proving to be good at it. Growing at 25 per cent, per annum, India's 3PL industry is poised to expand its market manifold.

Leading 3PL players, who are participating at Logistics 2007, a three-day exhibition being organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Chennai, said the logistics industry is getting restructured, focusing more on enhancing its knowledge offerings which promise huge cost savings in supply chain operations, reduced lead time and safe transportation of high value goods.

"Logistics is not a new name of transportation business. It is about offering total supply chain solutions, from ensuring delivery of components 'just in time' to manufacturers, to door deliver finished products 'on demand' to end customers, it encompasses the entire movement of goods, within and without an organisation," said G Ragunath, deputy general manager - Marketing, TVS Logistics Services Limited.

He said 3PL companies help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their tier-I, tier-II suppliers effectively implement manufacturing best practices such as lean management and vendor managed inventory. Logistics takes off the anxiety from manufacturers on the timely availability of components and drastically reduce the inventory cost.

"With the entry of 3PL companies, there's a lot of clarity on what constitutes core business of stakeholders across the supply chain - in a typical production scenario, manufacturers manufacture and suppliers supply, while logistics companies take over everything that take place in-between - from handling of materials to packaging to documentation to transportation," he said.

He said OEMs can achieve a direct cost saving of over 15 per cent by partnering with 3PL companies. "As 3PL companies have dedicated fleets that do not depend on daily orders, adopt scientific practices for route optimisation and employ trained manpower, they can effect a reduction of transit time by over 30 per cent. Realising the benefits, practically all automobile manufacturers have made 3PL operations integral to business. The size of the organised 3PL market in automobile could be conservatively estimated at about 5 per cent of the turnover of the automobile industry in India," he said.

TVS Logistics has registered a turnover of Rs 250 crore in the last financial year.

A spokesperson of AFL Pvt Ltd, one of the leading 3PL companies which currently caters to the needs of electronics and IT hardware industry, said 3PL operators essentially consolidate warehousing operations and transportation, based on a resource sharing model.

"Many 3PL companies partnering with electronics players focus on door-to-door distribution - delivering laptops and desktops directly to the end customers, following 'hub and spoke' model of distribution. They provide reverse logistics solutions - carrying old products received from customers on exchange offers back to manufacturers; defective management solutions - replacing un-repairable products with fresh electronic goods. Earlier, it used to take 10-15 days before a customer got his defective mobile instrument replaced. However, after the advent of 3PL solutions, a mobile company can assure replacement within a maximum of three days anywhere in the country," he said.

On the changing business dynamics in the logistics industry, Sanil Kumar, sales manager, GATI, Chennai, said logistics services are increasingly sold based on pallet locations, rather than on floor space. GATI operates 'mechantronic warehouses' - fully automated warehouses - of about a million square feet across the country.

"We offer customised logistics solutions for customers of different sectors as billing, documentation, and statutory requirements differ from sector to sector. Once we acquire an account, we spend a couple of months to understand our customer's business and hire, train human resource and streamline our operations and establish physical infrastructure, such as warehousing, to suit the particular needs," he said.

Source:www.infoworld.com


As companies get more comfortable with outsiders managing security, the amount of security services being outsourced is growing steadily

As one of the world's largest outsourcing providers, Wipro Technologies is ramping up its security services business in a big way.

While the massive Indian company has had a security practice in place since 1998, Wipro officials say that the group has seen dramatic expansion over the last several years as customers gradually warm to the idea of offloading IT systems protection to external specialists.

With five individual areas of business, nearly 1500 workers, 170 customers, and a claimed internal growth rate of 100 percent per year, the Bangalore-based outsourcer contends that the time for security outsourcing take off has already arrived.

Faced with an ever-changing IT threat landscape and increasing pressure in the form of compliance mandates, businesses worldwide are getting over their fear of leaving security in someone else's hands and choosing outsourcing as a means to solve their problems, Wipro executives said.

"Attacks are getting more sophisticated, data leakage has become a huge concern, and customers understand that constantly implementing new policies and technologies has become a challenging task," said Prasenjit Saha, global head for security services at Wipro.

"We're working with customers to build the comfort factor, and most often, the projects start small, but as customers see what we can deliver and we build confidence under the co-managed model, we're slowly taking over more work," he said.

Since security budgets began rising in 2003, Saha claims that Wipro's services unit has flourished. Among the areas of rapid growth for the firm are such projects as access management, security event management, data monitoring, and compliance automation.

And while pricing has admittedly driven much of the growth of Wipro's business thus far, the executive said that his company is now winning deals based on its level of expertise.

"I have feeling that going forward, if we are focused and can provide good solutions that meet requirements, customers will increasingly look at outsourcing," Saha said. "It will be a cycle, but these deals won't always be driven by cost-savings, they will also be driven by our ability to outperform internal security."

By expanding its footprint slowly within customers over time, the executive contends that any negative perceptions of security outsourcing are being rapidly conquered.

"If you look at the positioning we're taking with customers, our objective is to work as strategic security partner and provide integrated solutions and services; some people feel it is a risk to outsource security, but those who have made the leap see the efficiency, and they're expanding their projects," Saha said.

Source:canadianpress.google.com


Scotiabank (TSX:BNS) is expanding its relationship with IBM Corp. in a new IT outsourcing deal that's expected to cost $480 million over the next six years.

Under the arrangement announced Thursday, IBM will manage the big Canadian bank's information-technology operations, including its data centres, branches and automatic banking machines.

The deal extends a contract signed in 2001, when IBM began to manage Scotiabank's IT operations and will provide a new "international" framework that will adapt to the bank's needs as it expands abroad.

"A lot of the agreement covers the very same scope that the original agreement covered," J.P. Savage, Scotiabank's chief technology officer, said in an interview.

"I covers our data centre operations, which includes both our mainframes and our midrange services, as well as our distributed desktops and our branch environment," Savage said.

He leads a number of teams within Scotiabank that determine what is needed from the IBM-managed IT infrastructure. In the original outsourcing deal in 2001, about 450 Scotiabank employees and 100 remained with the bank to oversee the relationship with IBM.

In addition, the bank kept software development in-house, with about 600 Scotiabank employees plus outside contractors.

Those parameters remain unchanged under the new deal but "what's somewhat different going forward is there's a bit of an offshore component here, with respect to what I would call more traditional operational jobs - monitoring, and those kinds of things," Savage said.

Bank of Nova Scotia is one of Canada's largest financial institutions and the most international of the country's Big Six banks.

The Scotiabank group and its affiliates operate in about 50 countries.

Because of IBM's expertise and global reach, the bank will be able to quickly gear up its IT capacity in the event of large-scale acquisitions or introduction of new computer programming, Savage said.

"As you can imagine, if you go out with a program that's going to have an impact on market share, that drives capacity requirements throughout the organization and we have to be responsive to that. So this allows us to be more nimble," Savage said.

The agreement calls for Scotiabank to pay IBM on a monthly basis on a per-service basis. The bank can also increase or decrease the services it gets from IBM.

"So this creates quite a lot of flexibility from the organization for growth," Savage said.

IBM Canada's Mark Wilson, who led the computer company's negotiations with Scotiabank, said a lot of work went into creating a "whole new global framework" for the relationship to the bank's growth.

In addition, IBM is bringing to the bank a new range of capabilities, including a centre in Brazil that will deliver select services to Scotiabank over time.

"It's one of our global centres for server operations, so they'll be doing monitoring and operations of computer servers over time in Brazil," Wilson said.

Scotiabank's servers are in Canada and will remain there, he added.

"We're not moving any servers or any customer information to another country. We're just taking advantage of skill pools in different countries and making sure that they (will) provide services to Scotiabank."

IBM Corp. is one of the world's biggest information-technology companies, with global revenues of US$91.4 billion in 2006 from the sale of computer hardware, software and services.

Source:www.forbes.com


SBM Offshore said it expects the first sale of its Liquified Natural Gas offshore production facility, called LNG FPSO, within 18 months, and also announced a development partnership with Germany's Linde AG.

SBM said it now considers the LNG FPSO ready for marketing and added that it can now establish the cost and delivery time of each unit.

Spokesman Sebastiaan de Ronde Bresser told Thomson Financial News that SBM is already in talks with potential customers and that 'every major oil company and anyone who wants LNG is a potential client'.

The LNG FPSO is an offshore liquified natural gas production facility that allows the development of stranded offshore gas fields as it produces, liquifies and stores gas.

SBM said capital expenditures on each unit is 2 bln usd.

To shorten the design and delivery cycle time of the LNG FPSO, SBM said it decided to form a partnership with Linde.

'Linde and SBM have complementary skills and relevant experience to produce a reliable LNG FPSO solution in the shortest possible time,' SBM said.

SBM also said it has entered into a deal with the IHI shipyard of Japan for the engineering and construction of LNG hulls.

IHI has been commissioned to design a 230,000 cubic metre multifunctional LNG ship hill.

Global marketing efforts for the LNG FPSO start today and the first unit is expected to commence production of gas in 2012.

Linde and SBM said they are both confident that there is a strong upcoming demand for this type of facility.

Source:www.thehindubusinessline.com

“The few dozen TPI clients analysed, have unlocked at least $3.3 billion of total commercial value.”

Estimating that US businesses could be sitting on $9.9 billion in potential infrastructure savings through outsourcing, a latest Forrester study has found that companies that have outsourced, in the past, ended up with 12-17 per cent cost savings.

“The few dozen TPI clients analysed, have unlocked at least $3.3 billion of total commercial value. Firms at the high and low ends of the deal sizes saved closer to 12 per cent, while firms in the middle of the bell curve saved more than 17 per cent,” Dr Paul Roehrig, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, said in the latest report, for which Forrester partnered with outsourcing advisory firm TPI.

While price remained a key driver, mature clients were seeking additional benefits such as access to skills, better service delivery, predictable delivery cost and sharper focus on the core business.

“Outsourcing is about jettisoning non-core business processes, to enable value accrual by focusing on business-critical work rather than enabling work that can be done better and cheaper by other firms. Outsourcing can be the force multiplier that helps firms focus on the core business rather than ancillary support functions,” it said.
Transactions data

To get outsourcing savings information for clients, Forrester asked TPI to provide data from recent transactions. Data from 53 separate IT outsourcing transactions from 2003 to 2006 were analysed – all of the deals included infrastructure management services, and 22 of the deals also included applications services.

The report concluded that from a pure cost-savings perspective, against the base spend (what it would cost without outsourcing), the few dozen TPI clients had unlocked at least $3.3 billion of total commercial value. The 37 clients who signed deals with a total contract value of $500 million or less saved about $1.3 billion.

“We know the global infrastructure outsourcing market is about $77 billion per year (EMEA is about $33 billion; the US is about $44 billion). And we know only about 30 per cent of businesses outsource infrastructure components now. That means that the potential US infrastructure outsourcing market can conservatively be sized at about $110 billion per year. If we assume our rough rule-of-thumb savings of about 15 per cent, it means that we can conclude that the potential latent asset US businesses are sitting on by not outsourcing more infrastructure services is about $9.9 billion per year,” Forrester said.

Source:www.hindu.com


The Indian Embassy in the US has contracted an American firm to outsource its visa collection and delivery processes at its five diplomatic missions from October 1.

Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen said the new system will offer "speedy and efficient" service against the backdrop of a growing number of Americans travelling to India.

Travisa Outsourcing Inc will handle the outsourcing service for the embassy in the capital and the Consuls General in Chicago, Houston, New York and San Fransisco.

Sen said the outsourcing was necessary due to rapid transformation of India-US relations in recent years which has "manifested in an unprecedented growth of business travellers, tourists and other US residents to India and the introduction of several non-stop and additional travel services between the two countries".

The burgeoning cooperation in the economic, commercial, technological, educational and cultural fields and the "increasing close bonds" of the Indian American community with their country of origin has led to increasing demands for visa and other consular services, Sen said in a statement, adding "severe constraints" posed by space and shortage of trained personnel had made it difficult to provide efficient service.

Travisa Outsourcing will charge a service fee of $13 per visa application and offer same day collection at its visa application centres and next day service for applications received by post. It will also have a 24/7 call centre manned by bilingual staff.

The Indian envoy also said the consular wings of the missions will continue to offer services after office hours or on holidays for emergency travel on extreme compassionate grounds 365 days a year.

Source:www.pharmaceuticalonline.com

BR Pharma Ltd., a leader in the procurement of pharmaceutical products for comparator trials and named patient programs, recently announced that Angus Cameron, the company’s head of business development, will moderate a roundtable discussion, titled “Sourcing Comparators for Global Trials,” at this week’s ISPE (International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering) 2007 Berlin Conference in Berlin, Germany.

The September 19 roundtable will focus on guiding pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies through the process of efficiently and cost-effectively procuring comparator drugs for use in clinical studies. Among the topics to be discussed: advantages and disadvantages of various methods of sourcing; the importance of managing the supply chain and maintaining a documentation trail; and pitfalls to avoid in the sourcing process. Participants in the roundtable will include Aptuit, Inc., which provides a comprehensive suite of drug development services and competencies to more than 600 biotechnology and large, fully integrated pharmaceutical innovators worldwide.

"With the costs for delays in many pivotal clinical trials exceeding USD 1 million a day, locating a specific comparator drug and managing the logistics of providing that drug for a clinical trial is a complex, time consuming process outside the expertise of many pharmaceutical companies," Cameron said. "Outsourcing to a specialist firm, which takes on and manages the entire process, can often be the timeliest and most cost-effective approach for pharmaceutical companies."

“Every day lost in a clinical trial has consequences in time and money, thereby compromising the trial program,” Cameron said. “The business of the drug company is to innovate, develop and market pharmaceuticals. This is most successfully done by leveraging the contact network and experience of a dedicated specialist firm, which already will have in place an immediate sourcing network that includes original manufacturers as well as a network of validated manufacturer approved wholesalers. Outsourcing the procurement of comparators to a qualified third party will provide a single point of contact for all sourcing, regulatory, logistical and administrative issues that surround obtaining the drug. It also will assure validity of the supplied comparator throughout the supply chain.”

Source:www.rockymountainnews.com


First Data hopes to save $150 million annually in an outsourcing plan that targets nearly 6,000 of its technology employees.

The company says it's adopting the plan "to more efficiently compete on a global scale, better utilize our global talent and footprint, and leverage the labor pool in lower-cost locations," according to a securities filing from the company Monday. First Data estimates it has 6,600 technology workers, 90 percent of whom are in-house employees.

First Data spokesman Colin Wheeler declined to specify a number of employees who could be affected by the outsourcing.

The company has 2,000 Denver-area employees, many of whom work at the corporate office.

The filing presents information given to potential investors in new debt from the Greenwood Village-based transaction processor. First Data is trying this week to sell $22.4 billion in loans and bonds that will allow buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to buy First Data for $29.8 billion.

The credit markets have significantly deteriorated since the deal was announced in April. KKR, as the buyout firm is known, is trying hard to get the debt sold. Part of the effort is convincing Wall Street that First Data will have the cash flow to make the payments.

The global outsourcing plan is the largest of several cost-cutting initiatives. First Data also is consolidating 12 data centers and seven "command centers" in the U.S. into three and two over the next several years. The company announced that plan soon after Ric Duques became CEO in the fall of 2005.

First Data said it will incur charges of about $125 million to $150 million to implement the initiatives.

As First Data prepped to sell its debt, it modified several terms to make the loans more palatable for investors. Still, the sale continues to be rough going.

"We just think that that's too leveraged of a deal for the current credit market," Wesley Sparks, portfolio manager and head of U.S. credit strategies at Schroder Investment Management in New York, told Bloomberg News.

Source:in.reuters.com


Indian outsourcing companies are shifting some of their operations to China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Kenya in a bid to stay competitive as higher wages, expensive property prices and a rising rupee eat into profits.

Back-office services companies thrive on doing jobs such as taking customer calls, payroll management and accounting at a fraction of the cost for big multinational firms or governments.

But costs in India are climbing on the back of a robust economy that has lured skilled workers to other sectors, forcing companies to look elsewhere to stay in business.

"If I was only in India, probably I would have been worried to death," said Partha Sarkar, chief executive of HTMT Global Solutions Ltd.

The Bangalore-based back-office services provider used to generate all its revenue from India by providing services to its clients in the United States. But India now accounts for little over half the total, and rapid expansion in the Philippines and Mauritius has helped it offset the impact of a stronger rupee. It plans to enter China and Vietnam soon.

The company sees its 2008 revenue jumping to $150 million from $97 million in the last fiscal year.

"Three years back, I was completely exposed to rupee-dollar," Sarkar said. "Now it doesn't worry me. I have diversified my currency and country risk."

In July, Infosys Technologies, India's second-largest software services exporter, said it would buy three of Royal Philips Electronics' back-office services units in Thailand, Poland and India to expand market presence.

The back-office services unit of the third-largest software exporter Wipro Ltd plans to set up two facilities in China to tap growing business opportunities there, its chief executive T.K. Kurien said.

India's English-speaking workforce, a big factor in winning call-centre jobs, faces competition from countries like Kenya.

"When compared to India, we are better off in terms of salary and cost per seat, and we have a large pool of Kenyans with clear accents," said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in Kenya's Information Ministry.

Source:www.livemint.com


In the past three months, GetFriday, has seen more than 300% increase in its business in terms of customers

Finding a new job for an out-of-work software engineer in the US or having a repairman fix a broken window pane in Geneva is all part of the day’s work at GetFriday, a Bangalore-based company that offers such services, termed virtual assistance, to individuals and small businesses across the world.

This is outsourcing up-close-and-personal. Companies offering such services remotely support faulty home computers, file individual tax returns, tutor schoolchildren online and run personal chores. The business could be worth $2 billion (Rs8,100 crore) by 2015, up from $250 million in 2006, according to an April 2007 study on person -to-person offshoring by Evalueserve, a global knowledge services firm.

In the past three months, GetFriday, a division of TTK Services Pvt. Ltd, part of the TTK Group, has seen more than 300% increase in its business in terms of customers: from 200 customers in June, it now services 700. To cope with the demand for more work, it has, over the past six weeks, hired 80 employees to take its staff strength to 120. “There is still a three-week backlog of requests to deal with,” said Sunder Prakasham, chief executive of TTK Services, who conceptualized and launched the service in August 2005.

Mphasis Ltd, a Bangalore company that is part of Electronic Data Systems and is better known for the back-office and software applications work it does for large companies, files up to 10,000 tax returns for individual customers in the US. “We deal with various levels of complexity; for instance, if the client has used returns from the sale of a ranch in Texas to fund a round of gaming at a Vegas casino, we go back with annotations to the chartered accountant firm in the US which outsourced the task to us,” said Sachdev Ramakrishna, vice-president, strategic marketing, Mphasis.


“Cost arbitrage is not the only reason personal tasks are being outsourced to India. For instance, we get the bulk of our business from accountancy firms that prefer to focus on high net worth clients and pass on routine tax filings to offshore firms,” said Ramakrishna, who added that the Mphasis’ billing rate of $75-80 for filing a return is comparable with what an accountancy firm in the US would charge.

There is a similar trend in support services for individual users of computers. More than 40% of the $100 billion IT customer-support market in the US is outsourced. In India, this has spawned businesses such as iYogi, a start-up company based in Gurgaon, offering remote support for computer users primarily in the US and the UK.

“Ninety per cent of computer malfunctions are software-related, which are problems a user can fix himself if he is guided by an expert on the phone,” said Vishal Dhar, president, iYogi. Launched in early 2007, iYogi aims to have one million customers by 2011, up from the current 55,000.

“Remote technical support, education services and health care are the three segments where we expect the highest growth in offshoring of personal services,” said Alok Mittal, executive director at Canaan Partners, an early stage venture capital (VC) firm, which, along with SVB Financial group, invested $3.1 million in iYogi in April.


Tutor Vista, an online tutoring service based in Bangalore, has also raised a total of $15 million in VC funding from investors such as Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners to fund a growing business that now has more than 100,000 registered users primarily in the US and the UK. Tutor Vista has a network of 600 tutors, spread across 28 Indian cities, who receive 60 hours of training before they actually start to tutor a student online. “Personal offshoring is finally a consumer marketing business where service providers have to spend on marketing and brand building if they are to attract and retain customers,” said K. Ganesh, founder and chief executive officer of Tutor Vista.

Source:newsinfo.inquirer.net


LARGE firms that have fueled the global information technology outsourcing boom and have put developing countries such as India and the Philippines on investors' radar screens are getting to be picky, according to a recent study.

"We do believe that the boom years for IT outsourcing growth have come and gone," said Brian Tumpowsky in a statement. "Buyers are learning to be more selective and strategic in the way they approach outsourcing and, as such, the pace of growth is slowing."

Tumpowsky is co-author of the 2006 Global IT Outsourcing Study conducted by Diamond Management and Technology Consultants (DMTC), a Chicago-based IT management consulting firm.

DMTC's study reveals that buyers are still prematurely terminating contracts, and questioning the value of onshore outsourcing. They are also struggling with the basics of determining what to outsource, measuring effectiveness and managing a global pool of resources.

Buyers are concerned about contract renegotiations, extensions and terminations to seek additional outsourcing opportunities.

In 2006, 8 percent of offshore buyers said they plan to decrease their levels of outsourcing over the next 12 months. This is compared to DMTC's previous study in 2004 in which none of the buyers said they would decrease the amount of outsourcing they were doing.

Firms are reining in outsourcing for three reasons: either they mistakenly outsourced a process or function that is core to their business and are now bringing those back in; their provider over-promised and under-delivered; or, the complexity of managing and measuring outsourcing projects and relationships overshadowed the benefits.

This however does not signal the death knell for IT outsourcing.

DMTC said the industry is alive and will continue to grow well into the future, although at a slower pace.

The pace of growth has declined significantly over the past several years. In 2004, 86 percent of all buyers told DMTC that they were going to increase their level of offshore outsourcing--albeit at a slower pace than in years past. By 2005, that number had slipped to 70 percent and currently sits at an all-time low of 64 percent.

The good news is, overall, the percentage of buyers satisfied with their IT outsourcing decisions remains quite high, with 71 percent of buyers saying they were happy with their offshore providers. In 2005, the offshore satisfaction rate was only 62 percent.

The study polled hundreds of senior executives mainly based in the United States and Europe and studied industry trends over the past 12 months in the areas of spending, buyer satisfaction, outsourcing impact and leadership of the changing outsourcing market.

Source:www.consultant-news.com


Accenture is providing BT with finance and accounting (F&A) services under a five-and-a-half-year business process outsourcing (BPO) contract. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under the terms of the contract, Accenture is providing services related to management reporting, financial planning and analysis, month-end close activities and budgeting/forecasting to BT's operations, initially focused in the UK. The services are being delivered through Accenture's Global Delivery Network using delivery centres in India.

This contract complements three current BPO agreements between the two companies, which include a contract to provide a full range of finance processes to BT Global Services in the United States, Europe and Asia, and contracts to provide BT with a range of human resources and learning services on a global basis.

Source:www.arnnet.com.au


Survey finds majority of manufacturing companies outsourcing operations losing hard dollars due to outdated processes

Companies that outsource parts of their operations without appropriate processes in place could ultimately lose the potential cost savings outsourcing promises.

Survey results released Wednesday show that 85 percent of 800 manufacturers polled outsource part or all of their manufacturing operations, but two-thirds of those reported they use manual, time-consuming processes such as phone calls, faxes and e-mails with spreadsheets. The US-based survey, conducted by manufacturing product life-cycle management (PLM) vendor Arena Solutions and consulting firm Symphony Consulting, also revealed that 52 percent of manufacturers who outsourced and depended on manual methods lost money due to communication and documentation errors.

"While outsourcing offers significant financial merits and enables companies to focus on their core strengths, it is not free of challenges," said Bijan Dastmalchi, co-founder and senior consultant at Symphony Consulting, in a press release. "Outsourcing manufacturing without the proper infrastructure and control is a recipe for failure."

Specifically, costly errors led to rework, scrapped inventory, excess materials and product recalls, according to Arena Solutions. Areas that posed challenges for companies outsourcing manufacturing include coordinating new product introductions, managing changes, and communicating information across organizational and geographical boundaries.

"Shepherding a product from design through manufacturing is difficult, but introducing outsourcing into the process pushes it to a significantly higher level of complexity. Despite the cost savings associated with outsourcing, the management task becomes even more difficult and carries greater risk," Dastmalchi said.

Fewer than one-third of survey respondents reported they use PLM systems, but those that did reported having fewer outsourcing issues compared with peers depending upon manual processes. For instance, those using PLM reported they have 32 percent fewer problems with new product introduction, 29 percent fewer problems with environmental regulatory compliance and 26 percent fewer problems with product change management.

Source:economictimes.indiatimes.com


In September 2006, when Indo Arya Logistics director Yogesh Arya was poring over his plan to build India’s largest warehouse, he was not sure whether this was a step his company was ready for.

In a tightly held private company like his, almost all investments are funded entirely out of internal accruals. A Rs 50-crore warehouse, which would be huge enough to accommodate two Melbourne Cricket Club grounds, seemed more of an ego trip than a business decision.

The risk of not getting enough customers to fill the space was there. Nevertheless, Mr Arya pursued the project, thinking that if the warehouse didn’t bring in sufficient revenues, the premium on the land he bought certainly will.

Today, only three months after the warehouse was made available, Indo Arya has rented every sq ft of space the company possibly can. In fact, enticed by this huge demand, Mr Arya has commissioned work on adding another 2,00,000 sq ft to the existing 5,14,000 sq feet facility.

The fact that the warehousing segment is seeing significant investments is not limited to Indo Arya. By 2008, Third party logistics service providers (3PL), with the likes of TNT, Transport Corporation of India (TCI), Blue Dart, Gati and Safexpress, are looking at creating more than 25 million sq ft of warehousing space in India.

Analysts suggest that the segment alone will see investments of almost Rs 2,000 crore in the next three years. There is a reason for this. “On the demand side, the need for warehousing is entirely outsourcing driven,” says Krishnakant Thakur, analyst at Edelweiss Securities.

Outsourcing wasn’t an option till 2006. “With the phasing out of Central Sales Tax (CST), manufacturers need not manage their own warehouses and can comfortably outsource it to a third party,” Mr Thakur adds.

Earlier, in order to prevent being taxed under CST, manufacturers had to maintain multiple warehouses to show movement of goods from one company warehouse to another. Today, they are more than willing to outsource it to a warehouse management company and concentrate on their core business.

Indo Arya, for instance, is undertaking warehouse management for a clientele base which includes companies such as ITC Foods, Pantaloon, Reliance, Nestle, Coca-Cola and P&G among others.

“It makes sense for the companies to outsource. They save on costs, time and also enjoy the benefits of a lean supply chain,” says Mr Arya. Bolstered by the growth prospects, Indo Arya is also contemplating a 20% equity stake dilution to fund investments. The company has an ambitious plan to set up warehousing capacity of two million sq ft in the next two years.

On the supply front too, 3PL service providers are more than willing to invest in warehouses because of substantially higher margins than any other segment of supply chain management.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com


A closer look at the $4.2 billion homegrown telecom giant’s big outsourcing gambit suggests several similarities with that of the global fast food icon McDonald’s . The Big Mac does not run restaurants anywhere in the world and outsources everything right from procurement to supply chain management to even making its chicken patties and milkshakes. Instead, Mcdonald’s ’ focus is only to be a slick marketing machine , enticing more and more people to step inside the golden arches. Similarly , at Bharti, it’s IT and network management is outsourced, so is the running of its 6.5 lakh retail outlets across the country, and more than 80 per cent of its customer care call centres.

“Bharti’s strength is brand management , people management and customer management. We went through a list of activities where others were better than Bharti, and decided to let them do it for us. We went to the very best companies in the world. No way in the world would we know telecom equipment better than Ericsson who actually makes them,” Kohli says.

In hindsight, Bharti’s pioneering move would seem like a no brainer given the market conditions in 2002-03 .

Bharti was the dominant private sector player in mobile communications but was up against state run behemoths such as MTNL and BSNL and nearly half a dozen ambitious private sector rivals. Bharti had to scale up massively and yet remain twinkle toed. “In 2004, there was enormous competitive pressure on Bharti and it had to constantly keep an eye on regulatory changes. That can really stretch the management’s bandwidth . The Bharti-IBM deal freed up the management to focus squarely on customer acquisition and delighting them,” says Ashish Kumar, relationship director, at IBM for Bharti.

What differentiates Bharti’s outsourcing deal with vendors such as IBM, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens is the revenue share model instead of the conventional fee-based service. “We follow a tiered revenue approach whereby our rewards are directly linked to the growth in Bharti’s topline,” explains IBM’s Kumar. All the quality parameters are customer oriented and there are penalty and bonus clauses built in.

IBM has a dedicated army of 1200-1300 employees servicing Bharti, and almost 80 percent of the people resources at Ericsson and NSN service Bharti’s infrastructure. Today Bharti does not have on its rolls too many people with high operational skill sets in the areas of IT and infrastructure management . “Earlier we had a team of 100 people running the networks. Today it has been pared down to the bones. There are just a handful of people at Bharti who look after the governance and review of our partners,” says Kohli.

“As Bharti focusses on brand management , Ericsson on the other side is rolling out Bharti’s internet protocol (IP) based core network, so that they are ready to fire on all cylinders wherever the new 3G telecom policy is announced ,” explains Ericcson’s Granryd.

The Bharti outsourcing deal with Bharti has been so successful for both Ericsson and NSN that between themselves they’ve added close to 150 similar clients across the world. Mittal and the top brass at NSN, Ericsson and IBM say, they that they are inundated with queries from several Fortune 500 companies on their successful outsourcing partnership. Last year, even the venerable Harvard Business School came out with a case study on Bharti’s strategy.
Bharti’s road to outsourced success was not easy. When the decision to farm out IT to IBM was taken, there were more than 250 anxious employees in Bharti’s in-house IT team who worried about their future. All of them absorbed by IBM with a personal assurance from Mittal that they could come back to Bharti within two years if they didn’t like the new set-up at IBM. “Not one has wished to come back,” gushes Kohli.

For IBM too, its relationship with Bharti became a trophy and an example of its new ‘On Demand’ model of customer relationship. Sunil Mittal was invited as the key note speaker at two successive IBM CEO forums in Shanghai and Rome, and at its annual analyst meet in India as well. Earlier this year, in an interview to CD, Virginia Rometty, senior VP, Global Business Services, IBM cited the Bharti deal as a perfect example of business transformation outsourcing.

Source:afp.google.com


Indian IT firms that thrived on the outsourcing boom in the West are themselves headed offshore, from Malaysia to Mexico, to escape the double sting of surging salaries and a rising rupee.

Tata Consultancy, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and smaller companies are stepping up acquisitions and opening more facilities closer to US and European clients to cut costs -- the reason why work was farmed out to India in the first place.

Salaries of software professionals rose 18.7 percent in 2007, a survey showed Tuesday, while the rupee has gained almost 10 percent this year to near 10-year highs against the dollar.

That's eroding the cost advantage once enjoyed by the 50 billion dollar information technology industry, which bills two-thirds of sales in dollars but whose expenses are almost all incurred in rupees.

IT firms are "off-shoring" work to time zones and locations nearer their clients in a reversal of the trend that made Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, the favourite back-office of the world's biggest companies.

Bangalore also gave the English language a new slang verb: being "bangalored" in the US meant a person had lost his job because it had been handed to an IT company in India that would do it for a fraction of the cost.

The term looks set to lose its pejorative punch as the same IT industry, which employs 1.63 million people at home, creates and sustains thousands of jobs abroad.

This week Wipro opened a facility in the Mexican city of Monterrey to service American and European clients and Satyam launched a software centre in MSC Malaysia, a government-designated high-tech zone.

"In the past, we viewed off-shoring as India-centric, but we do not do it any more," said Satyam founder B. Ramalinga Raju, who on Monday opened the centre to support business in the US, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

"We look at off-shoring as delivering through high-quality workforce in lower-cost countries," he said.

Hyderabad-based Satyam has hired 300 mostly-Malaysian IT engineers to man the facility, whose workforce will rise to 2,000 in four years to cater to clients such as GlaxoSmithKline, one of its top 10 customers.

Malaysia was chosen because of its "competitive cost environment," said Raju, whose company is distributing work to locations where "it makes the most business sense."

Source:searchcio.techtarget.com?


Companies that outsource IT functions save between 12% and 17% of the cost of doing the work in-house, a new report from Forrester Research Inc. finds.

The savings take into account the expense of moving the work to an outside provider, advisor and legal fees, severance for any employees let go, taxes and ongoing management of the deal. Moreover, the discount is conservative, said Forrester analyst Paul Roehrig, because it does not factor in harder-to-quantify benefits that can be accrued in a good outsourcing deal.

"There's additional skills that you would get, technology expertise, predictable delivery costs, none of which is included in these savings figures," said Roehrig, who covers sourcing and vendor management at the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm.

The Forrester study was done in conjunction with TPI, a global advisory firm in The Woodlands, Texas, that specializes in structuring large outsourcing deals. The firm publishes the TPI Index, a quarterly report on outsourcing trends based on data from its clients, primarily global 1,000 corporations. TPI reported that in 2006 it handled outsourcing contracts worth $21 billion.

The Forrester report analyzed data from 53 separate outsourcing transactions handled by TPI from 2003 to 2006. All of the deals include infrastructure management services; 22 also included application services. The savings rate was calculated by comparing the projected internal costs without outsourcing with the total planned cost with outsourcing. The average savings across all deals was about 15%, or about $3.3 billion in total commercial value.

"That's a big number. Even if you're 10% or 15% off, it's still a big number of commercial value that is locked up," Roehrig said. "The other side of the coin is that these outsourcing plays, at this level, shouldn't just be about savings. There are other benefits of outsourcing that have a multiplier effect on the dollars saved. Such as flexibility, such as a market presence in another part of the world, additional skills, technology expertise, all of which is not even included in these technology savings."

Source:www.fool.com


As Ben Franklin famously said, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." We all have to buy the farm one day, but we don't all have to do our taxes -- many of us can and do pay others, like H&R Block, to do them for us. In that regard, companies are no different from individuals.

In addition to taxes, corporations often have regulatory hurdles to clear. These seemingly mundane tasks aren't exactly what top brass at a hot, cutting-edge tech upstart wants to focus on.

Thankfully, there are companies to handle these back- and front-office functions for them. These outsourcing (not to be confused with offshoring) providers serve thousands of companies, providing added expertise, shifting burdens away from key management, and helping firms manage their cost structures. While companies might pay a premium for such services, the firms providing them free their clients to concentrate on more vital matters. And for investors, these helpful companies can yield impressive returns.

Companies helping companies
If you work in a major metropolitan area, chances are you've seen an Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM) truck. Iron Mountain, which plies its trade in document management and data protection services, has the lion's share of U.S. document compliance contracts, and a strong presence abroad. The company owes some of its success to Enron and its mass-shredding ways. Since Sarbanes-Oxley was signed into law in 2002, Iron Mountain's stock has more than doubled.

If you aren't sold yet, know that the company passes the "Oracle" test; it's one of Warren Buffett's top 30 holdings. While Iron Mountain is pricey at more than 40 times earnings, you can't help but like its growth prospects, given its greedy domestic market share and its proven ability to gain overseas footholds.

The business-services space offers a plethora of strong outsourcing companies. Names like Automatic Data Processing (NYSE: ADP), Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX), and First Data (NYSE: FDC) have posted solid gains over the last few years. Typically, management service companies help businesses both small and large handle such exciting tasks as payroll, benefits administration, job applicant screening, and complying with local labor regulations. While this sector is a bit overcrowded, and mostly fully valued, its occupants have been proven winners.

Think outside the cube
Don't just think cubicles and mailrooms when looking for outsourcing names. Companies that service regulatory and back- and front-office tasks also come from several other areas including the medical arena.

Parexel (Nasdaq: PRXL) performs regulatory and medical consulting, health policy and reimbursement services, and clinical trial management, helping pharmaceutical companies can focus on their drug pipelines. In a little more than 10 years, the company has gone from $10 to north of $40, rewarding those wise enough to recognize its helpful ways. At more than 30 times earnings, much of its value is baked in; however, competitor Pharmaceutical Product Development (Nasdaq: PPDI) might have a little more room to run, at a more reasonable 25 times earnings.

Yet another name that helps companies in the medical field with compliance issues is Waste Management (NYSE: WMI). Like Iron Mountain, chances are you've seen the company's trucks bustling about town. Medical waste isn't the only segment from which the company stands to profit, especially if states and municipalities enact mandatory eWaste programs. Environmentally conscious places like California and Maine have already done so, and more are likely to follow suit. Along with Allied Waste (NYSE: AW) and Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) the company controls more than half of the U.S. waste disposal market.

The advantages of being helpful
Companies that provide outsourcing services often enjoy strong, defensible moats around their businesses. Many of these companies enjoy steady work, because larger corporations are less likely to tinker with contracts that aren't part of their core business, and small businesses often have nowhere else to turn. In addition, outsourcing outfits aren't likely to attract a great deal of competition, thanks to the sheer scale required to get such operations up and running profitably.

The downsides here are obvious and few, the biggest being that regulations can change. In the event of an economic downturn, outsourcing names that handle functions like HR could face cuts, or prompt smaller business to pare back their reliance on pricey external help. Still, these same companies are often best poised to handle changes in the regulatory environment, since they typically have more resources dedicated to tracking these changes, and more experience in understanding how to roll with them.

Source:biz.thestar.com.my


High-level finance outsourcing services can be a potential avenue for Malaysia to differentiate itself from other business process outsourcing (BPO) markets.

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) director of strategic development Rick Sturge said China and India were currently catering to low-level finance outsourcing activities, which provided Malaysia an opportunity to venture into high-level services.

“There is a market (for Malaysia) to provide higher-value services, such as investment research analysis,” he told a briefing on BPO opportunities in Malaysia.

Sturge said traditional finance outsourcing focused on low-level transactional activities, such as general accounting services like sales accounting.

Higher-value offerings, he said, included financial-reporting services such as investment-research analysis and knowledge-process outsourcing.

Sturge said the “war for talent” globally was creating difficulty for companies to achieve continuity and consistency in providing services.

“BPO and shared-services operators are being pushed to deliver higher-value services to clients and this is putting a strain on their resources and talents.

“They have to address this by bringing in more skilled people in an effective and efficient manner,” he said, adding that BPO operators saw value in having CIMA-trained professionals due to their skills.

CIMA is a leading membership body that offers an internationally recognised professional qualification in management accountancy.

Sturge said CIMA professionals were equipped with strategic management skills and expertise in accounting, business and financial management.

“It’s about effective analytical work to make the right decisions, manage performance and risks and drive business success. That’s what we are training people to be,” he said.

Sturge, meanwhile, said the global finance-outsourcing market, which is estimated to be worth US$70bil annually at present, was expected to grow to US$100bil within three years.

Source:www.australianit.news.com.au


AN Australian Customs Service outsourcing contract with IBM has blown out by more than $40 million since it was signed three months ago, as the agency added GST and a contingency for rising processing costs to the estimated bill.

IBM was awarded the mainframe and mid-range computing services contract on June 5 when the deal was announced as a five-year, $160 million agreement that replaced Electronic Data Systems' long-standing mainframe deal with Customs.

But contract values published by the agency under a Senate standing order showed that Customs now estimates the cost of the agreement at $203.15million over the same five-year period.

The jump in costs is similar to a $14 million rise in the value of a $140million Department of Immigration and Citizenship contract that was recorded earlier this year, when Immigration added GST to its outsourcing bill.

A Customs spokeswoman denied the additional $43million on its IBM contract represented an increase in the value of the agreement.

"The value of the contract has not changed," the spokeswoman said. "The $160million figure is the tendered price over the five-year period of the contract in today's dollars, excluding GST for the volume of services sought by Customs.

It was awarded as Customs broke up its nine-year-old outsourcing contract with Texas-based EDS.

EDS first picked up the Customs deal in December 1997 when all of the agency's IT functions were outsourced under the federal Government's failed $5 billion mandatory outsourcing contract.

The EDS deal was worth $200million over five years and gave Customs the option for two two-year extensions.

Customs exercised both of those extensions and the documents published under the Senate order showed that EDS will pocket $693.98million from the deal by the time the final components of the agreement expire in the middle of next year.

Source:www.indiadaily.com


China may not be as gullible as America. It will not be easy for Indian IT companies to fool the Chinese as they did to the American taking advantage of American ‘excess of chiefs and lack of Indians.’

America was an easy market. Americans prefer to enjoy life and get tough work done by the immigrants (legal, H1B and illegal aliens). When it came to tough programming and technical work, the American corporations looked towards the India to get cheap labor of the ‘Indians’. But now American economy is headed for a deep recession if not a 1929-33 style devastating depression. The Indian IT companies cannot get any more money from the Americans and therefore they are looking towards China and Middle East.

Chinese market is different. In America 75% of the country’s wealth is held by people above the age of 50. There is a need for young ‘Indians” do the tough work that needs exercise of brain. China has no lack of ‘Indians.’ Their goal is to learn from Indian IT companies and get rid of these South Asian companies as soon as possible.

Wipro is looking to open additional development centers in China as it ramps up operations to cater to the growing customer requirements, a senior official said.

"We are looking at setting up more centers in China. In the next one year or so, we definitely will have more centers in China," Suresh Senapaty, chief financial officer of the Bangalore-based IT major said.

The New York Stock Exchange-listed Company already has three centers in China. He said Wipro has not seen any impact on its outsourcing business from the US subprime mortgage crisis. Experts say, not yet is true, but the long-term effect will be devastating for the Indian economy.

Source:www.guampdn.com


There is a critical piece of legislation currently being considered by senators, one that will have a major impact on the island's infrastructure and the upcoming military buildup. Bill 165, by Sen. Tony Unpingco, would outsource the management and operations of cargo-handling equipment at the Port Authority of Guam.

During a public hearing on the bill, Port General Manager Ken Tagawa noted the success of similar management contracts at other utilities. The Port Users Group, an organization of businesses that rely on Guam's civilian port, supports the measure, noting it would allow the port access to greater resources for cargo operations.

Although the bill is a scaled-down version of a previous attempt to more comprehensively outsource port operations, it still is a step in the right direction. Outsourcing is very much needed and long overdue.
A recent federal conference on Guam highlighted the importance of improving the port for the planned military expansion on Guam, but upgrades would also benefit the entire community. The shortfalls in current port infrastructure were made clear, as was the government of Guam's inability to make the major improvements necessary.

As an island community, we simply can't afford not to upgrade our port, and the sooner we can get it done, the better.

The best way to make this happen is to bring in a private partner, one with the experience and finances necessary to make the major changes needed, and to make them within the strict timeline required. The military expansion projects are on a schedule and won't wait; we need our port facilities to be able to handle the increased influx of cargo that will be coming into the island.

The failure of the government of Guam to implement outsourcing at the port earlier can be rectified now with the passage of Bill 165. The island's elected officials need to recognize the importance of this measure and expedite the process.

Source:www.globes.co.il


The company has acquired 90% of Horizon Technologies for NIS 10.5 million.

E&M Computing Ltd. (TASE:EMCO) has acquired 90.1% of outsourcing company Horizon Technologies LD Ltd. for NIS 10.5 million.

E&M Computing CEO Yoav Weinberg said, “This merger will undoubtedly enable the provision of support and leverage for new software development ventures in Israel and internationally.”
Horizon Technologies CEO Shai Liberti said, “The merger with E&M will strengthen the company’s ability to offer development and outsourcing projects.” He will continue at his post after the merger.

Horizon Technologies was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of Diskal Systems Ltd. The company provides outsourcing and project development services as well as providing offshore software development activity for Israeli companies. The company currently has more than 110 development, quality assurance, systems engineers and project managers.

Source:www.openpr.com


Due to tough competition in the industry, the pressure is growing on airlines to develop new sources of income and simultaneously reduce risks and costs. This will present flight operations with new challenges in the future.

The new service concept of Cockpit4u helps airlines to optimally fulfil the impending challenges in pilot recruitment and in the area of training, either immediately or step-by-step. With this, Cockpit4u entirely or partially assumes the training/recruitment activities from the flight operation, without the airline needing to compromise on quality. This can be a temporary cooperation, in order to compensate capacity bottlenecks, or strategically orientated.

“With our concept, airlines are in a position of being able to react dynamically to internal and external changes. They can compensate fluctuations while simultaneously optimising the costs and training productivity. In doing so, they concentrate on their core business, without committing internal resources in the time-intensive and cost-intensive area of training or in personnel recruitment.”, says Dennis Pilz, Managing Director of the company.

For the start of the new service concept, qualified cockpit crew applicants can register on the Cockpit4u database effective immediately. According to the requirements of the airlines, the selection of the applicants and subsequent training will be carried out to acquire the type rating for Airbus or Boeing.

Source:www.bnamericas.com


Brazil's telecoms outsourcing market is expected to grow 14.5% to 2bn reais (US$1.01bn) in annual revenues by 2011 from 971mn reais in 2006, according to a recent report by US tech consultancy IDC.

The market includes three main areas: data service management, voice outsourcing and full outsourcing. The latter is in fact set to grow 20-30% a year in Brazil and is growing faster than telecoms outsourcing such as data and voice services, IDC analyst Alex Zago told BNamericas.

For IDC, full telecoms outsourcing includes the management of private branch exchanges, infrastructure supply and network maintenance so as to ensure 24-hour service.

For many Brazilian operators full telecoms outsourcing "is new terrain, as in the past they focused more on gaining revenues from traffic," Zago said.

The service is a growth area because companies are investing to ensure higher performance and reliability of IP networks. With IP, it really makes sense to think of voice and data as a single service, the analyst added.

Full telecoms outsourcing used to be directed mainly at large banks, but it is now increasingly a reality for a wide range of sectors, especially manufacturing, he said.

In the future, Zago believes the public sector could be a strong one for this service in Brazil.

"In other countries such as Mexico we have already seen that the government no longer buys [telecoms] infrastructure and this could happen in Brazil because there is no need for the government to buy infrastructure such as routers, switches and telephony equipment," he said.

Source:allafrica.com


The Seychelles' public sector ICT workforce will shrink considerably as a result of the current restructuring being undertaken by the government.

In a recent interview the minister responsible for Information and Communication Technology, Jacquelin Dugasse said his ministry intends to outsource most projects to the private sector.

"This is an opportune moment for our young professionals to apply their trade in the private sector or even set up their own businesses," says Dugasse.

Amongst the ICT specialists who could lose their current employment with the government are several developers, designers, programmers, analysts, administrators and technicians. A government spokesperson said that in the last three weeks 57 employees from various professions, including ICT have been made redundant.

Critics have questioned the government's motives since ICTs have been identified as the backbone for the country's ambitious plan for the next ten years called Strategy 2017.

"This is ironic. Seychelles is already heavily dependent on foreign expertise in the ICT fields, yet we are now witnessing qualified local talents being made redundant," commented a chamber of commerce official.

The government has defended its decision to lay off workers, claiming it will enforce its role as facilitator and regulator rather than the major service provider. "We intend to refrain from employing people doing specialist jobs that the private sector can do more effectively, whilst contributing positively to Seychelles? prosperity," says the vice president, Joseph Belmont. The main opposition party has expressed dismay at the reasons given for the redundancy and has accused the government of handling the situation with insensitivity.

Source:www.itbusinessedge.com


Can General Motors create a set of best practices for outsourcing, a business sector that has to date appeared largely impervious to standardization?

It’s been about six months since we last wrote about the automaker’s ambitious $7 billion multi-sourcing intiative, which requires all suppliers to adopt standardized processes.

GM CIO Ralph Szygenda takes a downright altruistic tone when describing the project in a recent InformationWeek article.

What this shows is the IT industry and other companies want to work with each other if they believe it will solve business problems.

Maybe. The need for standardized processes has certainly never been stronger, thanks to the global nature of the supply chain. But it doesn’t hurt to have GM, a company that buys services on a multi-million-dollar scale, as its champion.

GM apparently is enjoying significant cost savings for its trouble, though Szygenda doesn’t get specific in the article. He says the effort has allowed GM to boost funding for new systems development by 30 percent.

GM spearheaded the development of standards modeled on the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) widely used by software developers. The new CMMI Model for Acquisitions will be published Nov. 1 by a CMMI steering group sponsored by the Department of Defense and a group of its top suppliers.

Observers aren’t sure how much the new framework will affect the larger outsourcing universe, since few organizations buy services on a scale akin to GM. But an IBM executive quoted in the article says both IBM colleagues and clients are following the initiative with much interest.

Source:pr-gb.com


In today's competitive world of business, Technology and advancement are best thing that has happened to humankind. Both are the two aspects of Progress. Every company wants to make an outstanding position in the business industry. The business sectors from almost all the world have been witnessing some great benefits especially the software companies. One of the primary reasons for this benefit is undoubtedly the software outsourcing.

There are numerous software outsourcing and application development company all across the world including India, China, United States of America, Thailand, Dubai and various other nations, offering software outsourcing services to businesses and companies who are interested in getting the software work of their company done by some other professional. But amongst them software outsourcing India is the most sought after destination, Studies reveal that India shares about forty four percent of the global Offshore Software Outsourcing market for software and back office services. The reason behind this is the cost of software outsourcing from India, it is estimated that the cost of hiring Indian software professional is about five times less than that of American and European countries. Apart from this the software outsourcing India has highly skilled software professionals to provide quality work, excellent professionalism and security that too at cheaper rates. Indian government has implemented easy policies for software outsourcing and dedicatedly improving the infrastructure as well as reliable communication facility and support for Software Outsourcing and Development to flourish thus contribute a major role for the success of software outsourcing to India.

Before handing over your entire project to any India software outsourcing and application development company it must need to verify and consider few things. Knowledge, skills and sufficient backup of the vendor about industry vertical approach depending upon the project must be me looked forth. Hand over your project to skilled outsourcing Company and do track record on the vendor as to know and help yourself to alleviate on their offered services. ISO or CMM level certification should be considered while hiring outsourcing company. The software outsourcing and web application development services needs an expert to handle software outsourcing work efficiently and must be trained enough to over come any kind of problem.

Source:www.business-standard.com


Tata Mutual Fund has tied up with Invesco, a UK-based global investment management house with nearly $500 billion under management, for the former’s new scheme, ‘Indo-Global Infrastructure Fund’ launched today.

The Indo-Global Infrastructure Fund would invest 35 per cent of its money into global infrastructure companies, mainly in other Asian markets.

The remaining amount would be invested in top-notch infrastructure companies listed on the Indian stock markets.

Ved Prakash Chaturvedi, managing director of Tata Mutual Fund explained that the new product will be a feeder fund in which Tata MF will collect money in India and invest in Invesco’s Asia Infrastructure Fund. Invesco, in turn, will invest the funds in various equities across Asia.

The global portfolio for the fund (ex-Asia) will be invested in an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) called Powershare. Invesco, which has been investing in Asia since 1962, has a strong focus and presence in China.

Some of the Asian stocks which it has invested into are Keppel Corp (Singapore), China Mobile (China), Macquarie Bank (Australia), China Resources and Power (China).

Tata Mutual Fund already has an Infrastructure Fund in India, which has been one of the best performing funds, giving returns of 66.66 per cent.

The new launch is the latest from an Indian fund house after the Reserve Bank of India hiked the total amount that the domestic fund houses can invest in overseas markets to $4 billion with a cap of $200 million per fund house.

The launch follows the relaxation in norms, allowing the fund houses to invest across sectors globally. Earlier, domestic fund houses could invest only in those foreign companies that had at least 10 per cent holdings in their Indian subsidiaries.

Principal PNB, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Kotak Mahindra and Sundaram-BNP have launched offshore funds in India, giving the domestic investors an option to diversify their portfolio into other overseas markets.

ICICI-Prudential has also launched an Indo-Asian Equity Fund recently, which is managed by Prudential Asset Management, the foreign partner of the domestic venture.

Tata MF’s alliance with Invesco follows a trend whereby fully-owned Indian mutual funds are tying up with a foreign partner for launching offshore funds in the country.

UTI Mutual Fund, the country’s oldest asset management company, has tied up with US-based Select Street Global Advisory (SSgA) for a ‘Global Navigator Fund’, an offshore fund for the Indian investors.

Similarly, Kotak Mutual Fund joined hands with US-based T Rowe Price for its ‘Kotak Global Emerging Market’.

Source:www.hindu.com


Public debate over outsourcing has been marred by two sets of serious muddles, frets the essay. “The first set of muddles relates to what is meant by outsourcing.” According to some, the word goes “beyond purchases of offshore arm’s length services to include, without analytical clarity, phenomena such as offshore purchases of manufactured components, and even direct foreign investment by firms.”

The second set of muddles is subtler, says Srinivasan. Even some economists who use the appropriate definition of outsourcing sometimes worry about whether arm’s length trade in services should be treated with the same analytical tools as trade in goods, or whether it presents different issues, he notes.

Outsourcing is fundamentally just a trade phenomenon.

K-stages:-The logic for a KMMM (knowledge management maturity model) in the Indian IT industry is strong, say Ganesh Natarajan and Uma Ganesh in ‘Unleashing the Knowledge Force’ (www.tatamcgrawhill.com). “In the current scenario where attrition of skilled manpower remains one of the critical concerns of all industry CEOs, the need to have a predictable and step-by-step movement towards knowledge management maturity cannot be over-emphasised,” they reason.

There are four stages in the progress towards knowledge maturity, one learns. The first is the pre-knowledge initiation stage, in which the organisation’s success in getting business is ‘largely due to being first in the market with a great product or idea, with no attempt to establish any processes for knowledge capture or dissemination even among current practitioners’.

Source:www.equitybulls.com


Satyam Computer Services Ltd has announced that the Company has been ranked the No.1 ITO: Global Process Consulting vendor by the 2007 Black Book of outsourcing. This Number 1 Global ITO: Process Consulting Vendor, especially coming from an independent and established source like The Black Book of Outsourcing, vindicates the investments by the Company in developing a strong process oriented organization since 1993. It also is a vindication of the ‘first mover’ advantage amongst India Inc. Companies, to invest and create a Quality and Process Consulting arm that extended the Company's internal process benefits to its clients. The respondents for the survey were from North America, UK, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific region.


Shailesh Shah, Head - Corporate Strategy Group, of the Company says "Satyam's process surety has established significant credibility in the market. Process Consulting has helped innovation to make it even more effective & efficient."


Black Book conducted this survey from March - May 2O07, consisted of 26 client satisfaction criteria on questions related to Senior Management in four focus areas: C-Level, Commitment, Human Capital Performance, Corporate Direction and Leadership Impact. Additionally, eighteen client satisfaction criteria on Operational Excellent questions were focused on innovation, reliability, trust, brand image, customer relations, security, viability and process improvement results.


Mohan Srinivasan, Head - Business Process Consulting said "This is a prestigious moment for Satyam's quality and process consulting business. The report captures the core purpose and quality ethos of the organization. The ranking bears testimony to our process focused enhancements for ITO deals. This day heralds the emergence of a new found resolve to contribute to the success of our customer’s outsourcing program, making it a pleasant experience all the way."

In addition to Process Consulting, the Company has also been ranked at Number 1 position in the following areas:

ITO: Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing
ITO: Application Services
ITO: Full Service ERP: SAP / Oracle / PeopleSoft / JDEdwards
ITO: Process Consulting
ESO: Integrated Solutions
ESO: Full Service PLM / End-to-End

Source:www.pr-gb.com

Business owners of booming business organizations know that in order to make their business successful, a great deal of time, endeavor and wherewithal needed to accomplish all day to day tasks. Every task from marketing and sales to financial record keeping must go well as each section is essential for success of business. Be it a small company or a corporation, every business has limited human and financial resources. Sensible utilization of these resources is the only thing that is needed for survival of any company. So as to keep pace with ever-increasing bookkeeping burden many businesses are taking help of accounting outsourcing services to get maximum impact of their limited resources. These accounting outsourcing services are enabling business owners to focus on their strategic means and core business function.

Accounting outsourcing services offer personalized and modified solutions that help businesses in reducing operational costs and rationalizing their business process. Such service providers understand the need of client’s industry and issues they face, which enables their client to tailor each task according to their internal and external business requirements. Accounting outsourcing service providers offer variety of top and middle level business services that include record keeping, financial consulting and functional procedures. Along with theses services they also recommend effective financial and accounting record keeping procedures that benefit businesses. Certainly, such service providers have expertise in taking care of financial tasks of businesses so that you may focus on developing your company. They are able to provide whatever your business need, be it only minor accounting help or major financial support and advice. The only purpose of these accounting services is to make your accounting task accurate and convenient without adding extra overhead in your budget.

If you are a business owner and want to capitalize all your resources to extreme, then accounting outsourcing is the best option for you. With this you will never need to worry about the overhead as the flexibility and cost effectiveness of such services help you to rationalize your resources and get the most out of your time and money. It is the fact that accounting is a tiring job and requires concentration and accuracy that is why most of the business owner prefer to take help of accounting outsourcing services. With expansion of internet, searching for the best accounting outsourcing services has become easier. You can make use of internet to find out the information regarding such service providers.

Obviously, it is a smart choice to outsource accounting tasks as it is able to achieve highest results through outstanding cost structure and perfection. Accounting outsourcing services offer instant operation and remarkable quality improvement to all clients for operational excellence. Accounting outsourcing services is therefore, a big support for businesses as they enable businesses to perform financial tasks properly. Accounting outsourcing services can relieve your accounting professionals of responsibilities they are not expert in and enables you to get rid of the extra overhead of training them. Use accounting outsourcing services that suits your requirements and double your growth rate.

Source:www.hindustantimes.com

First jobs were outsourced from Britain to India. Next it was healthcare, with hundreds of Britons travelling to leading hospitals in Indian cities for surgical operations and other medical procedures. Now another aspect of healthcare may be outsourced to India — that of looking after some of Britain's elderly or disabled.

The reason is the same — costs are much lower in India.

"I'm looking for a suitable site to set up a home for the elderly in Delhi or Noida,” said Ajit Prasad, who owns five nursing homes in Britain, three of them in high-end Surrey area. "My estimate is that it would cost people around 700 pounds per month." Staying in a home of a similar quality in Britiain would cost around 1600 pounds.

The financial aspect is crucial for the elderly since incomes invariably fall after retirement, while living costs keep rising.

"More and more Indians in Britain, after their retirement, are opting to return to their roots," said Dr Shiv Pande, formerly treasurer of the General Medical Council. "Such an arrangement, by which they can live in India, would certainly appeal to them."

Dr Pande said he knew of at least half a dozen elderly people who have gone back to India to stay in Haridwar or Nasik. "They are living on their own and will need more care as they grow older. They wish British owned old age homes of a decent standard would come up in India."

A local daily recently narrated the story of Steve Herzfeld, an American, who has been supporting his aged parents, who live in an old age home, for the past three years. He was finding his resources increasingly strained, and has now decided to relocate them to India.

The burgeoning pension bill, as more and more Britons live longer and longer, has led to serious thinking about allocating their care to old age homes in India. Only 30 per cent of the local authorities fund is available for the care of people without life-threatening or critical diseases.

Source:www.livemint.com


Companies that are eyeing or have presence in both countries include all the major players including HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Infosys Technologies Ltd and TCS

New Delhi: Alarge labour pool with multi-lingual skills, proximity to the Middle East and Europe, and a deep cost advantage vis-a-vis the US and Europe are factors making countries such as South Africa attractive offshore destinations for Indian back office and tech service providers.

Companies that are eyeing or have presence in both countries include all the major players including HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Infosys Technologies Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

HCL, which had put together a team three months ago to assess the business process outsourcing climate in Africa, has already picked Cape Town and Johannesburg to set up back-office units, details of which will be finalized soon.

“We have zeroed in on these two locations, but the business plan, the scale and size and all other details will be finalized by (an) internal committee,” said a company executive, who did not wish to be identified.

Wipro and Infosys declined to comment on their Africa plans, but an industry representative said both firms are exploring the possibility of setting up operations there.
“Representatives of Infosys and Wipro have visited South Africa to invest there, but the process is still at a very nascent stage. Wipro is looking at setting up a manufacturing facility there,” said Shipra Tripathi, director, Africa desk, at business lobby Confederation of Indian Industry.

Satyam Computer Services Ltd, which serves six of the largest firms in Africa, already counts more than 120 workers at customer locations in offices at Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The Hyderabad-based firm said in July that it plans to strengthen its presence in South Africa over the next two to three years to leverage untapped business opportunities and local employees.

TCS already has operations in both Johannesburg and Cape Town with 100 employees, and is in the process of setting up a global delivery centre in Morocco.
Other Indian tech and back-office companies are also speaking to government officials in African countries to understand the market there.

“Indian tech companies, such as Satyam and TCS, have approached us about possible investments... Other big outsourcing companies, such as Genpact and Convergys, have also been provided with information,” said Ray Ngcobo, chief director of the industry development division at South Africa’s department of trade and industry, in an email.
The main interest in Africa is likely to come from business process outsourcing firms—rather than tech services—thanks to language skill access and time zone advantages, especially to serve European customers. “We are in the same time zone as Europe and one hour ahead of the UK,” wrote Ngcobo.

Besides South Africa, Mauritius, Egypt, Ghana and Morocco are relatively mature destinations from a BPO perspective while Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia and Uganda are the upcoming destinations.

Offshore BPO services in Egypt, that provide large skilled multi-lingual workforce—English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Russian—contributed around $150 million (Rs615 crore) in 2005 and have been gaining momentum since then, according to a joint report by researcher Everest Research Institute and consultant AT Kearney.

The number of offshore agents has doubled since 2005 and is currently at more than 5,000, the majority of them working from Cairo and Alexandria.

South Africa has four key BPO locations—Johannesburg, which has more than 360 contact centres, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. Many of the big global tech and BPO firms such as IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Accenture Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Electronic Data Systems Inc., Unysis Corp. and Siemens AG operate from South Africa.
Africa is also emerging an attractive destination to play host to tech service delivery centres. According to the government-sponsored Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council, export of computer software and services, together with BPO services to Africa, increased from $96 million in 2005-06 to $164 million in 2006-07. “The South African market provides substantial opportunity in software products for banking, insurance, e-governance, telecom, power, healthcare,” says D.K. Sareen, executive director at the council.

i-Flex Solutions Ltd, a provider of banking and financial software solutions, has cut its teeth in the African market two decades ago and counts at least 100 banks there among its clients. “Africa is mineral rich and certain parts are oil rich, which means there is huge potential for trading, which (in turn) requires a strong financial system and product,” said a company spokesperson.

The untapped tech labour pool in Egypt and South Africa will likely drive more investment towards these regions than elsewhere in Africa, predicted Nikhil Rajpal, vice-president, global sourcing practice at Everest Research Institute.

Even small and mid-sized tech firms are getting aggressive on this score.

Bangalore-based consulting and tech services provider C Ahead Info Technologies India Pvt. Ltd, which specializes in business consulting and process re-engineering, has 15 people in Johannesburg.

“In the first quarter of 2008, we will be expanding to Cape Town with another 15 people offering similar services and will also be setting up a 300-seater disabled call centre in Johannesburg in the same period,” says Sandeep Sekhar, chief executive and chairman. “Last year, our revenues from Africa were less than 10%. This year, over 20% of will come from South Africa.”

Source:www.prleap.com


e-Zest, an outsourced product development company having office in Pune, India, London, UK and Walnut Creek USA, inaugurated its second offshore software development center at Pune on 24th August , soon after its seventh anniversary celebration on 8th August. It has now two state-of-art development centers at Pune equipped with world class IT infrastructure.

New development center is located at Kothrud, prime area in Pune which is well connected with local facilities and Mumbai (Financial hub of India). e-Zest has strategically selected this location for ensuring comfortable visits for clients/prospects travelling from abroad & also keeping in mind future expansion opportunities.

e-Zest leadership stated "The new development centre is in keeping with e-Zest’s growth strategy & new development center will help to cater our expansion plans in near future. We have gained horizontal expertise and now we want to grow vertically in focused domains. e-Zest has been involved in the development of some of the market leader software products globally. It’s core ability is also to build next generation software products for its client. e-Zest aim is to make its clients’ successful and this requires collaborative approach well above mere development relationship. We have plans to add 130 professionals with J2EE, .NET, EAI and DW/BI skills over the next 12 months."

On the inauguration day, e-Zest team members have performed various cultural activities hinting an artistic touch behind logical skills.

Top leadership at e-Zest has also expressed very positive feeling about these developments and credited the success to organization’s guiding philosophy of growing with client and results come from processes.