Source: Money.cnn.com



Effective immediately, Siemens IT Solutions and Services will operate large parts of the local IT and telecommunications infrastructure for the industrial company Evonik at all its sites in the US. The corresponding outsourcing contract will run for four years and is worth around $42 million USD.

Evonik Industries is an international industrial company with the business areas of chemicals, energy and real estate. The contract just signed is part of a global framework agreement for IT services with Evonik Industries and governs the long-term collaboration between the two companies. The Siemens subsidiary Services for Business IT Ruhr GmbH (SBI Ruhr) played a significant role in the contract negotiations with Evonik Industries. Under this contract, Siemens IT Solutions and Services will operate large parts of the IT and telecommunications infrastructure for Evonik Degussa Corp., the US subsidiary of Evonik, at all of its US sites. This includes two computer centers, servers, telephone systems and all PCs.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services is thus successfully continuing its strategy of cooperating more closely with the other Siemens Groups and expanding its business in those areas in which, for example, the industrial sectors are strong.

About Siemens IT Solutions and Services

Siemens IT Solutions and Services, Inc. is one of Siemens operating companies in the United States. Siemens IT Solutions and Services is an internationally leading provider of IT solutions and services. With its comprehensive know-how and specific sector knowledge, this division of Siemens offers solutions and services from a single source - from consulting to systems integration to software development and management of IT infrastructures.

Source: ITweb



The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has decided to move its IT function back in-house, after only two years of outsourcing it to Accenture.

In a recently issued public notice, the JSE said it would re-assume management control of its IT functions as of 1 November.

“We wanted to regain control and have more flexibility,” says JSE president Russell Loubser. “We used to have it in-house and a number of years ago we saw that it worked well for the London Stock Exchange to outsource the IT function. At this stage though, we prefer to take back control of IT as we will have more flexibility.”

In 2005, the JSE signed a R200 million deal with Accenture to embark on a drive to update its legacy systems to next-generation technology. The project was codenamed “Project Orion”.

Loubser says the monetary amount attached to the deal will not be affected by the changing of the terms of agreement with Accenture.

“We will be using exactly the same people with virtually no change. Instead of the responsibility falling with Accenture, it will now fall with us.”

Accenture would not comment and referred all media queries to Loubser's office.

Loubser says Accenture is also happy with the new deal. However, he says the JSE might now have to look at employing a CIO, a post that does not currently exist at the bourse.

“We have very good IT people who stayed behind when our people went to Accenture and we also have very good IT people coming back in from them, but we must consider that we will probably need to employ further resources in terms of a head of IT.”

Outsourcing started to catch on in the profession as more U.S. corporations and firms realized with the nine-to-13 hour time difference between countries such as India and the United States, work that typically could not be finished before junior level associates or other staff returned to their desks in the morning, can be transmitted electronically to India and completed overnight.

Labeled a "popular ioption” issue, sending legal work to foreign countries has started to appeal to the legal industry as it provides fast turn around and money saved.

While the advantages of outsourcing legal work to India are recognized by some, others fear sending legal work to foreign countries will compromise its quality, which possibly could affect a practitioner's reputation or even bring forth a malpractice suit.

Among the disadvantages or the ill-effects of the legal outsourcing is only one worth considerable according to people is that you lose some of the control over the finished product that is the lack of understanding by the lawyer or lack of communication may lead to misunderstanding which may further lead to disinteresting case or building up of fatal reports.
Mostly research, brief writing, patent proofreading, prior arts searches, document review and various paralegal function is the kind of legal work that is outsourced to foreign countries and it's clear there is a possibility mistakes could be made in such a work.

Still, the legal community remains conflicted over the quality of work that is being outsourced. some people believe that you get what you pay for. If you want to pay $199 for your research project, you will get research worth $199.

hence it can be summed up that legal outsourcing is gaining popularity due to its victory with more advantages and less disadvantages.

Source: Business.inquirer.net

The Philippines' business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is expected to post a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 62 percent, outgrowing three other primary destinations: China, India and Malaysia.

The results of an intelligence report by independent ICT research and advisory firm XMG showed that the Philippines is poised to generate revenues of $4.1 billion by yearend to corner 1.4 percent of the global market.

"The Philippine outsourcing industry has far exceeded all analyst expectations," XMG founding president and chief analyst Lauro Vives said in a statement. "The Philippines is experiencing an unprecedented growth rate of 62 percent CAGR, and will surpass Malaysia."

Malaysia's revenue forecast by year-end is estimated at $3.6 billion, achieving 38-percent growth and cornering 1.2 percent of the global market share. In 2006, Malaysia and the Philippines was neck-and-neck with 1.04 percent and 1.02 percent, respectively, of the share of the global revenue pie.

XMG's market study also scrutinized the performance of two other top Asian offshore locations, namely India and China.

India is estimated to corner $34.1 billion in total revenue by year end 2007 at 29.5 percent CAGR and settling in with 11.5 percent share of the global market. Despite the lower growth rate, XMG estimates India will continue to lead the offshore segment through 2010 with at least 15 percent share.

China is estimated to have 4.4 percent share of the global market with 2007 total revenue figures forecasted to hit $13.1 billion while growing at 47.9 percent CAGR.

Source: offshoringtimes.com

Call it reverse outsourcing or localising globally, varied accents and foreign faces are fast becoming the norm at Indian BPOs abroad.With wages on a rise companies like Wipro are saying it is absolutely essential to have centres outside India.Wipro has just established a centre in Atlanta with 500 people and says that going ahead 30 per cent of its entire workforce will be global. It plans to open 5 to 6 centres in places like the Philippines, Mexico, Shanghai and Berlin in the next two years.

We have one centre in north, multiple centres in Europe, one in the Fareast and probably one centre in China, said TK Kurien, Head, BPO Business, Wipro.

Wipro has just established a centre in Atlanta with 500 people and says that going ahead 30 per cent of its entire workforce will be global. It plans to open 5 to 6 centres in places like the Philippines, Mexico, Shanghai and Berlin in the next two years.

Infosys, which runs a global internship program called Instep has about five per cent of global workforce and says that will increase.

Primarily because we are doing more consulting type work and would like to have more local people for consulting relationship management and we would like to hire more for client facing activities, said Gopalakrishnan, CEO, Infosys.

Europe is becoming the next growth market for companies, Wipro anticipates that 40 per cent of its entire revenues going ahead will come from this region.

With Germany alone contributing 20 per cent of that, localising helps companies win over local governments thereby ensuring they get more complex and sensitive work which bill higher.

Source :offshoringtimes.com

Even as large global corporations transition to the second wave of outsourcing, the technology sector is heading towards the Third Wave in the making, according to The Hackett Group. The Third Wave, which would mean a transformation and scale up much different from the labour arbitrage market, would come up much faster than one anticipates and has the potential to challenge labour and cost arbitrage model. Some of the services providers in India and Eastern Europe could potentially find the going tough.

The President of The Hackett Group, Wayne M. Mincey, said, As offshore market matures, transformation and process improvement are likely to play a key role in business process sourcing decisions. The ability to provide transformational services and support provides a significant opportunity, and possibly the greatest threat that offshore markets like India will face in the coming 5 to 10 years.

Bigger savings

The findings of Hacketts research shows that while the potential for companies to reduce costs by offshoring back office operations is dramatic, companies can potentially increase these savings by over 50 per cent by selectively integrating process improvement capabilities into their globalisation initiatives.

Addressing a press conference here, the Chief Research Officer of The Hackett Group, Michel Janssen, said as opposed to Lift and Shift model where companies simply move current processes offshore, the emerging model seeks to transform the way services get delivered and has the potential to bring higher savings. These would be more so in the areas of finance functions, human resources and process related business.

Over the past five years, much of the first wave of offshoring has focussed on the low hanging fruit of basic transactional processes that could simply be moved offshore for labour arbitrage. But in the second wave, there is greater opportunity and the necessity to integrate transformation into offshore initiatives.

This is further complicated by rapidly increasing cost base after migration to the offshore market. Improvement of process, particularly related to transactions could bring about significant cost advantages, he explained.

The best way forward is to offer integrated transformation and process improvement. Offshore solutions would have to combine changes to the business process during and after offshore move to ensure higher value creation.

Source : offshoringtimes.com

Although security measures are already incorporated in some BPO companies, it is high time the checks are stringently implemented. With the increase in Information Technology Enabled Services, it has become a cakewalk for hackers to intrude in business matters. It is not just the aid of IT services, but mainly the psyche of the people working in these BPO companies. Every BPO should have their security policy and the employees should be asked to strictly follow them.

The recruiting process for these service providers should have number of rounds during the interview session so as to intake quality people at work. A check on their previous work performance records and personal as well as professional background details is a must. Any BPO should have proper domain knowledge and highly secure database. It is the responsibility of every employee to maintain the integrity of data received from customers. Equipments used should be tracked for any on-going illegal transactions and firewall protection should be developed which may prove as a hurdle in fraud delegations.

The servers for intranet and data-intake should be separate.Being a boon to the Business entity, outsourcing should not just be understood as a cost-saving measure to hand over a part of work of the business firm to a third party service provider. Instead, BPO in a wider sense is the cost saving transaction of non core processes by a business firm with an external source specialized in the concerned business process under strict guidelines for the security of database and other assets of the firm. At the end of the day, it is the business firm that gains output by the security of its assets. Precaution at the earliest will pave way for the proper execution of business delegations with the BPO industry. This will increase confidence of the existing and future clients, provide bigger deals and develop a satisfied customer.

Source:offshoringtimes.com

The UK is outshining its overseas peers in terms of the number of outsourcing deals signed during the second quarter of this year.Appetite for outsourcing shows no sign of abating just yet as the number of deals signed with companies providing such services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa EMEA demonstrated stellar growth at the beginning of this year, according to a new report from Forrester Research.The UK led the charge by closing more than a third 36 per cent of the 84 deals signed during the period of growth, with the total number of deals closed equating to more than 5.4 billion , a rise of 1 billion compared to the same period in 2006.

The UKs deal prosperity showed a seven per cent gain on the number of contracts it closed during the period studied by Forrester Q2 2007 and, although they also showed solid performance during the quarter, left German and Dutch outsourcing providers nestling in joint second place in the deals signed league.

In terms of deal specifics, Q2 2007 included 11 per cent more contracts including more than one service referred to as service bundles than a year previously.
Almost half 45 per cent of all deals included infrastructure services, with Forrester referencing IBM Global Services 371 million , 10 year renewal deal with insurance giant Royal and Sun Alliance. Deals with helpdesk and support services and desktop services included also proved popular during the period with 44 per cent and 31 per cent of partnerships formed including such services. With 84 deals closed and more than 5.8 billion spent, Q2 2007 blew away the results of Q2 2006, said the reports author Andrew Parker in an executive summary.

IBM Global Services showed the best performance in terms of number of deals and aggregate deal value, leaving its competition far behind. The runner up here was Capita, which closed one megadeal. Smaller deal sizes gained in popularity again this quarter, and buyers maintained their love of five year contracts.

Forresters study specifically focused on so called mega deals worth more than 10 million from a pool of 25 IT service providers active during the second quarter. As part of its research it interviewed key players including BT Global Services, Capgemini, EDS, Fujitsu

Services, HP, IBM Global Services, Infosys, LogicaCMG and Unisys among others.

Source: financialstandard.com.au

Financial services companies need to change their perception around outsourcing IT functions overseas, according to a panel of IT experts at yesterday’s Future of Banking and Financial Services technology conference.

Derek Goh, executive general manager in IT and Management services at Challenger Financial Services group said that the debate around whether to outsource IT functions should go beyond a review of the economic benefits or the chances of a public backlash arising from potential loss of jobs at home.

Instead he says it’s about finding out what is right for the company. “You can’t look at IT in isolation but in the context of the whole company.”

For example, Challenger looked within Australia for the best software company to provide some fund management functionalities but couldn’t find one despite doing the search for three months. But when they looked overseas, they found a software company in India that was the best match for what they needed.

Goh said that economic benefit or the cost of offshoring is no longer the main reason why some financial services companies go overseas. “The price points have moved. There’s no price differentiator anymore say, between India and getting the service locally because Indian companies have moved up the value chain.”

BT Financial Group’s head of IT infrastructure Richard Boxall said that being able to seek talent overseas, when needed, helps the company to stay competitive.
“It is a big component of the financial success of the group especially since sourcing those people locally is incredibly difficult."

Source: offshoringtimes.com

Even though the offshoring model remains strong, there are signs that the appreciating rupee and rising wage costs have begun to affect the profitability of offshore firms. While business for large Indian firms is still growing by over 30 percent, the supply of manpower is not keeping pace with that growth. That may lead to a wage war further affecting the already eroding profit margins of companies. What then is the way out for offshoring firms. One way to beat the twin effects of rising salary costs and rupee inflation, says Forrester Researchs Apte, is for firms to improve productivity and move towards repeatable solutions. Indian firms like Wipro, says Apte, have been able to improve productivity number of lines of software code written by engineer every year by 4 to 5 percent.

Others like Infosys are working towards a model where growth in revenue and margins doesnt depend solely on its head count. Infosys Gopalakrishnan is trying out alternative pricing models such as those based on risk to reward equations or transaction based pricing where Infosys gets paid for the volume of work achieved and not for the number of people assigned to a project.

If you look at the last five quarters, you will find that we have been able to increase revenue per employee quarter upon quarter, he says.
Accenture is also moving away from pricing its services on a per totransaction basis to one that is outcome based, says Vaish. So, for one of its telecom customers, Accenture is paid per customer and not per call.

This way it is in Accentures interest to eliminate the reasons for which a customer calls the centre and improve quality of service. That calls for re toengineering the process, says Vaish adding that over the next 3 to 4 years 50 percent of Accentures contracts will be outcome based. Accenture will inject technology into various processes and standardise them to achieve higher volumes without proportionately increasing head count.

Desphande says an emphasis on specialised talent has worked well for Tejas Networks India, a Bangalore based maker of optical networking products where he is the lead investor and chairman. This year Tejas will double its revenues to Rs 400 cr. The company, which has raised US Dollar 50 mn in funding so far, will soon go in for a public listing.

Chadha believes investing in products is a sound strategy for IT companies because the margins can be between 60 percent and 80 percent, insulating them from the rupee appreciation. However, he says they face problems in their ability to find talent. There are not too many engineers in India who can understand product creation for the US market, which is why that model hasnt taken off in a big way, he says.
According to Aron, only one fourth of Indias engineering talent pool has the ability to work for western clients, directly or indirectly. Further, he says ,only a tenth of Indian engineers have the ability to work directly for a multinational company like Motorola or Intel or Microsoft.

Source: personneltoday.com

As the scope of services to be outsourced has widened, and full-scale business process outsourcing has become a serious option, the decision to outsource is more complex than ever.

The timeline from initial feasibility study through to contract signature will typically be many months. Organisations invest significant time and effort into ensuring they have defined the right scope of services, secured the appropriate buy-in and identified the best partner.

However, what happens when the deal is done? The thorny issue of how to manage the ongoing relationship to deliver real value for both parties is an area that receives much less attention. Having worked on both sides of outsourcing deals - both as providers and advisers - my colleague Ian Hunter and I have identified a number of areas on which to focus that can be key to making the outsource a success.

Maintain continuity

As already mentioned, getting to contract can be a complex and time-consuming process. Typically, a dedicated programme team is established and this group will know and understand every nuance of the outsourcing agreement. Late nights spent deliberating the finer details of the service to be provided can take their toll and, once a deal is signed, members of the programme often return to their day jobs or move into other roles within the organisation.

The outsourcing contract then becomes the responsibility of a new team to manage, and this is often where problems can begin. In our experience, it is critical that companies - and their outsourcing partners - maintain a level of continuity between the team that does the deal and the one that subsequently manages the relationship. No contract, no matter how well drafted, will capture all the subtleties of what is required.

The early days of a contract will often be somewhat traumatic, so ensuring the team understands and stays true to the spirit of what you were trying to achieve will be key to clearing any initial hurdles and getting through those difficult first days.
Build supplier management skills

Supplier management as a discipline has traditionally been the preserve of the procurement function. Procurement professionals will be invaluable during the establishment of an outsourcing programme, but beware the temptation to leave the management of the ongoing contract to them. Knowing the function is critical to getting to the heart of the drivers of cost and service in an HR outsourcing arrangement. As such, having the right mix of effective contract management and subject matter expertise is really important.

In our experience, it is often easier to equip HR professionals with the necessary commercial understanding than to give procurement colleagues the functional knowledge and experience to get the best out of the HR outsourcing suppliers. Getting the right balance of these skills on your account management team is what will make the difference - don't let procurement take over.

Measure what matters

One of the benefits of moving to an outsourced arrangement is the ability to be able to specify a level of service for which the outsourcer is contractually and commercially responsible. The ability to measure performance, both in terms of cost and service, will often represent a big step forward and the visibility this provides can be a key catalyst for changing behaviours.

For some reason, people seem to care far more about something they have paid for directly. While this visibility is very helpful, there can be a temptation in the early days of a contract to measure everything that moves.

This is understandable, as the confidence that the service will be delivered to the required standard will only come with time as trust in the relationship builds.
However, part of the transition to this way of working is for the organisation that has outsourced to focus on what it needs to be delivered - the outcomes - rather than internal detail of how the service is delivered - the process. If you specify and then measure the individual detail of how each part of the outsourced service should work, it is unlikely that you will achieve the desired levels of cost reduction or service improvement. You need to be clear on the end result you're looking for and measure that - and allow the outsourcer to use their expertise to deliver accordingly.

Fragmented career paths

Outsourcing elements of your HR function, particularly core transactional delivery, will mean outsourcing parts of the service that are where many HR professionals have traditionally learned their trade.
Many HR generalists have started their careers in HR administration and have acquired a broad range of technical knowledge and expertise as they have progressed through the ranks.

If you want to be able to continue to grow generalists, work with your outsourcer to identify formal opportunities to second or transfer staff between your organisations. This can be valuable in providing the development that ensures you retain fully rounded HR staff in-house.

Our Expert
Jane Saunders is managing partner at Orion Partners, a consultancy specialising in providing independent advice to organisations considering outsourcing HR. She has co-authored a book with fellow Orion co-founder Ian Hunter - see opposite page for a chance to win a copy.

Source: itbusinessedge.com

Echoing its findings from earlier this year, outsourcing advisory firm TPI says that outsourcing business is sluggish in the U.S. in the third quarter, but looking quite lively in Europe and Asia.

While U.S. members of the Global 500 are nearly as likely as their European counterparts to sign outsourcing contracts (43 percent vs. 52 percent), new scope is down 50 percent in the U.S. from the same period last year. In contrast, it’s up 36 percent in Europe and 72 percent in Asia-Pacific, reports PCWorld.com.
Despite the slowdown in U.S. demand for outsourcing, big Indian outsourcing firms tallied a 37 percent increase in U.S. customer revenues. Still, companies like Tata Consultancy Services are making an effort to broaden their customer base beyond the U.S.

TPI did have a somewhat different take on the BPO market in its latest index. Though TPI characterized it as slow in both quarters — calling it “tepid and lumpy” in Q2 and “sluggish” in Q3 — it agreed with analyst firm Nelson Hall that North America showed the strongest activity in Q3. Earlier this year, however, TPI said Asia-Pac was the only region where BPI business grew.

India has become the hub for the globe for all types of Information Technology services. It is also globally known that Indian IT service providers are not offering solution of cost effective service only, but they also offer value addition by better productivity and quality. Currently India is booming as the leading Software Outsourcing destination in all over the world.

With its high-quality and cost-effective services, global outsourcers were able to give their organizations a cutting-edge in the competitive field of business. India provides an entire range of outsourcing services. Today almost any service which can be off shored can be performed in India. Be it call center services, engineering services, creative services or data management services, just name the services and you can outsource it to India.

India is equipped with well trained and skilled manpower. These talented individuals available in India are well verse in English having the ability to communicate well in English. In India, organizations are always updating and honing their skills to enable them to provide better and high-quality services. The cost factor of outsourcing to India has been yet another reason why outsourcers have been increasingly outsourcing to India.

In the current scenario, Software Outsourcing has become the biggest trend in the Information Technology Industry. IT companies overseas are getting more and more interested in the arena of Offshore Software Development. These companies are also interested in the combination of reduced cost, better quality and faster time to the market services. Not only the cost but the methodology, ability and core competition are playing the key role among the points of attraction towards these companies.

To conclude, the cost effective software outsourcing India has proved advantageous for most of the software companies as their business has gain a huge profit by investing those saved money on the growth and expansion plans. That's why outsourcing is one of the reasons for its ever increasing popularity and demand.

Source: Pcworld.com

The total contract value of outsourcing contracts signed in the third quarter of 2007 was down 16 percent, with the actual value of the contracts signed shrinking as well, according to outsourcing adviser TPI. At the heart of the decline: the slowing pace of contract awards in the U.S. TPI's numbers show that U.S. companies are also keeping a lid on outsourcing growth, with new scope down 50 percent from last year.

Conversely, Europe and Asia are showing growth in outsourcing deals year over year, with Europe accounting for more than a 50 percent share of global market deals. New scope is up 36 percent in Europe and 72 percent in Asia Pacific, according to TPI. Competitor EquaTerra also found that outsourcing growth was strongest in the Europe/Middle East/Africa geography.

Almost as many Global 500 companies are inking outsourcing deals in the U.S. and Europe (43 percent of leading U.S. companies and 52 percent of leading European companies), says TPI. It's just that the American deals are smaller.

Mega-deals-those once popular billion-dollar-plus behemoths-are still getting signed (by General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Credit Suisse, Reuters and the U.K. Post Office, among others). They're just getting less "mega." The average size of the billion-plus contract in the first quarter of last year was US$9.6 billion. In the third quarter of 2007, it was down to $2.4 billion, TPI reports.

Major India-based vendors have seen their U.S. customer revenue increase 37 percent, despite the slowdown in overall outsourcing in the Americas, says TPI, adding that "the latter exemplifies the diversity in the global outsourcing industry as well as India's expanding influence and strength." Meanwhile, EquaTerra's third-quarter survey revealed increasing interest in offshoring outside of India. Wage inflation, U.S. dollar weakness and changing buyer demands are driving the expansion of delivery centers in China, Central and South America, and Central and Eastern Europe, EquaTerra notes.

Source: EzineArticles.com

An emerging entrepreneur requires certain key attributes to attain success – the most relevant being the confidence to venture into risky propositions; among others, a promising entrepreneur should be equipped with energy, inspiration, motivation, dedication and innovation. Together, these elements ensure success and realization of entrepreneurial goals.
An aspiring entrepreneur is constantly involved in identifying prospects, analyzing progress and taking steps that help to maximize efficiency, productivity and growth. This implies that he/she proposes attractive packages to potential investors who subsequently contribute their capital after assessing the financial viability of the project. In line with this, an entrepreneur has to focus his/her resources on the business and not just in it. This entails a persistent search for means that reduce costs and provide optimum results. One such practice is outsourcing.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is becoming an increasingly used practice by businesses. In this mechanism, businesses employ external sources who provide their expertise and services to perform operational functions. Many entrepreneurs realize the benefits and the scope of outsourcing and rely on it to hire skilled professionals who offer exceptional services.
Entrepreneurs have recognized the various challenges that can appear and how outsourcing can help significantly to save time and money.
Bearing all these factors in mind and the rising need to satisfy investors, more and more entrepreneurs are tapping into the power of outsourcing to thrive and to prosper.
Services Entrepreneurs Can Outsource
A modern business requires a variety of services in addition to its area of excellence in order to thrive.
This implies that if a business were to depend on internal sources for all its needs, it would call for professionals in diverse fields to do the job and then stay without any work until the next project arrives.
In order to avoid such waste of time, skills and money, it is almost essential to outsource.
Outsourcing ensures that experts in different fields perform the tasks to utmost ability on time and receive compensation upon completion.
In this manner, one does not need to be an expert in everything but just the decision-maker.
Professionals available to provide their services are in numerous fields.
Some of the most popular service areas in which entrepreneurs can outsource are:
• Web design
• Copywriting
• Telemarketing
• Lead Generation
• Ezine content
• Web Content
• Reports
• Articles
• Software applications
• Graphic design
• Videos
• Audios
• SEO
• Reciprocal Linking
• Press release and article submission
Benefits of Outsourcing For Australian Entrepreneurs
Australian entrepreneurs have grasped that outsourcing is the key to a flourishing business in the contemporary world. Outsourcing provides several benefits to entrepreneurs:
• Entrepreneurs can save time as professionals provide specialized and customized services to them who, in turn, provide feedback in the form of required changes or approval of the work.
• The time conserved can be focused on other high-profile business operations that involve elaborate thinking and decision-making.
• Entrepreneurs can significantly lower their costs by outsourcing as there is no obligation for around-the-year compensation. Also, the undervalued currency of the developing nations compels professionals from these countries to provide their services at rates that are considerably low in the developed world.
• Outsourcing enables entrepreneurs to develop strategies that will provide them an edge over their competitors in the modern global market.
Websites Offering Outsourcing
The advent of the Internet has led to certain revolutionary changes in the way business is performed. The Internet drives today’s commercial market; entrepreneurs need to rely on the Internet to employ people, attract investors, engage customers, sell products and presently, to outsource as well.
Many websites serve as a liaison between entrepreneurs and service providers; these websites help entrepreneur’s list projects that need help and consequently choose among qualified professionals.
Some of the websites offering similar services are:
• http://www.RentACoder.com: This website provides entrepreneurs with a pool of thousands of software coders who can be reviewed and selected for specific software-related projects like program creation.
• http://www.Elance.com: Elance.com asks entrepreneurs to post projects and then select professionals from a list of bidders who believe that their skills match the project specifications. In this manner, the entrepreneur has the flexibility of choosing the right person with the right qualifications at the right price.
• http://www.Scriptlance.com: Scriptlance.com primarily connects businesses to programmers; however, they also list other projects related to writing, web design, graphic design, search engine optimization and so on.
• http://www.AbsoluteCovers.com: This website provides cover designs to entrepreneurs for their varied products.
• http://www.BannersMall.com: BannersMall.com designs exceptional banners for entrepreneurs to advertise their products and services.
• http://www.AustralianBusinessWebsites.com: This website specializes in designing websites for entrepreneurs according to their demands and requirements.
How Outsourcing Can Make Your Business More Attractive to Potential Capital Investors
1. Outsourcing can help to provide a much more professional image to a business.
2. Outsourcing helps to leverage on the talents and abilities of others.
3. Outsourcing can help to create a team of experts – willing to help under a specified timeline at costs significantly lower than a full-time employee.
4. Outsourcing can help to outsmart, outmaneuver and outsell the prevailing competition.
5. Outsourcing can give a business an extreme makeover.
6. Investors look for a business that has a solid foundation, a fantastic product or service and a strong marketing follow-up plan Outsourcing can help to achieve all three of these elements.
7. Outsourcing allows you to leverage expert skills and can blow your competition out of the water – virtually overnight.
8. To ensure remarkable progress and success in the fiercely competitive global market, outsourcing is definitely the way to go.

Source: http://www.gamasutra.com

A new report from outsourcing advisors Amritt Ventures has found heavy outsourcing vendor turnover over the past year, with some 27 percent of developers saying they've fired three or more vendors. Gamasutra talked with Amritt's Gunjan Bagla to learn more and see what steps could be taken to better ease future outsourcing transitions.

54 percent of the developers surveyed by Amritt said they expected outsourcing ventures to rise in the future, compared with 37 percent holding steady and only nine percent saying they expected to do less.

But the turnover results have been less than promising with the majority having gone through and fired at least one vendor, compared with 31 percent who have continued using the same.

According to the survey, it's not just art that's typically outsourced, with an increasing number turning to overseas developers for programming (22 percent) and testing (26 percent).

Bagla admits that, especially with the increasing complexity of next-gen games, outsourcing programming is a higher risk proposition, but adds, "if you think back to just three years ago, many studios would not have considered outsourcing art at that time either."

To minimize the risk, Bagla says a number of initiatives have to take place, including "excellent cross cultural communication skills, training in how to work across 8-12 time zones, tight definition of requirements," and "an extremely robust feedback loop where people on both sides can start to build trust each other."

Surprisingly, the most common issues developers complained about were not late delivery and high cost, which fell at the bottom of the list, but poor quality at 27 percent and too many programming and art iterations at 14 percent.

A "significant number," notes Amritt, cited the time zone differences as problematic. Bagla says that while some vendors have shifted or staggered their own schedules to better match their overseas partners, it's becoming increasingly common, and helpful for both sides to share some of the burden.

"In a creative industry like ours, you do want to create the sense of a virtual team," he said. "Spreading the pain of waking up early or sleeping late is one way to encourage a co-equal feeling. Rank-and-file vendor staff who can start to affiliate and identify with their stateside colleagues often experience a rise in productivity."

"Of course," he jokingly adds, "many professionals in the North American game industry prefer to work unusual hours anyway; for them a team in China or India is perfect."

Another ten percent of those surveyed said cultural differences also hindered the outsourcing process. "The obvious issues are around language, use of terms and the different socio-economic milieu that surrounds workers in Asia and Eastern Europe," explained Bagla. "What is more subtle and harder to address has to do with the indirect way in which Asians communicate. Their efforts at politeness and deference sometimes appear as inconsistent and even deceptive to an American."

Despite Amritt's training workshops that address just this matter and help foster a sense of being open and direct in dealing with developers, Bagla says "it is hard for them to understand that may get rewarded for challenging the client."

In the end, Bagla says, better matches make all the difference, though it may take time to find that match. "There are vendors who may do an excellent job of satisfying one client but may fail in another situation," he explains. "One has to match vendor capabilities for a particular project with requirements on that project; this means not only technologies and platforms but also time frames and experience levels."

"Sometimes clients who are disorganized share the responsibility for a failed relationship," he concludes. "All parties are learning and some are better learners than others."

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com

Offshoring can often help companies realize substantial cost savings by sending certain functions overseas, where labor costs are a fraction of those in the United States. However, there is more to consider than just the lower labor costs of employees in India verses their domestic counterparts. In this day and age of heightened security sensitivity, its important to make sure that in addition to going after cheap labor, you are not buying yourself a slew of security exposures as well.The decision on whether or not to outsource should not rest solely with the CFO. The chief security and compliance officers should also be involved because of the many security and regulatoryrelated issues involved with offshore outsourcing.

Data risk exposures

There are two major issues to consider when addressing offshore security and data risk. The first is granting offshore engineers access to computer systems located within your companys network. Are you monitoring the activities of the overseas engineers. If the work thats being sent offshore is projectbased, are you ensuring that access is removed when the project is completed. Do you have security professionals monitoring the activities of the offshore engineers. While all of these activities are critical, they add both complexity and cost to IT offshoring projects.

It is also important to review what type of work is safe to send offshore. For instance, outsourcing production support overseas entails a high degree of risk. Engineers providing production support generally need to have highly privileged access in order to provide said support. Such access also simplifies illegal activities such as data theft and industrial espionage. Give a clever engineer enough access, and he or she can not only steal data from you, but they can also thwart any monitoring software designed to detect such activities.

You should consider projects that dont entail sending sensitive customer information offshore, or granting remote access to your internal network. Software development doesnt require providing sensitive customer data offshore. The development work can be performed offshore, then the code can be securely transmitted to your company. You may consider creating a special offshore/development segment of your network allowing your offshore engineers to work, while not providing access to the rest of your internal systems.

Think about the type of information that youre sending overseas. Will it include sensitive information such as medical records, or tax returns. While privacy laws for electronic data are relatively new here, they are almost nonexistent in many foreign countries. Even where there are legal prohibitions to data theft, the actual number of prosecutions are minimal. Simply put, there just isnt too much risk in committing data theft in many overseas countries, particularly if the victims are foreigners, in this context, that would be you and me.

Background checks

Much of the newhire vetting thats commonplace with background checks performed here in the United States just cant be done in many foreign countries. For example, India just doesnt have the capabilities to perform what would be considered a thorough background check by American standards. In addition, drug testing is generally not done as