Outsourcing News

India Takes Outsourcing to New Heights

The TPI Index, released Wednesday, revealed that the region's outsourcing contracts contributed US$12.8 billion to the global outsourcing market in 2007, a 30 percent increase over 2006. The quarterly index analyzes global outsourcing contracts valued over US$25 million………..
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HP and Deutsche Post seal outsourcing deal

Under the deal, Deutsche Post plans to outsource part of its global IT activities to HP. The Germany-based firm forecast IT cost savings of at least €1bn over the next seven years.

If the agreement is finalized – expected mid-2008 – HP will scoop up about 2,500 Deutsche Post employees who provide data centre services including network, application and infrastructure management at offices in the Czech Republic, Arizona and Malaysia………..
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Integrating IT (Outsourcing and Application Service Providers (ASP))

When it comes to outsourcing part of the business, traditional areas like IT infrastructure remain constant, but a recent report suggests the areas of application development and maintenance (ADM), and business process optimization (BPO) are playing a larger role………….
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Asia Pacific leads outsourcing market with double digit growth

Outsourcing growth in the Asia Pacific region was double the global average in 2007, according to the latest TPI Index.

Although the number of contracts signed in 2007 grew by just four per cent, their total contract value increased 30 per cent year over year from US$9.9 billion to US$12.8 billion and annualized revenues showed a 13 per cent increase, nearly double that of the global average. ………….

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Certification for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

The ISO 27001 certification, the new industry standard for information security management system (ISMS), was conferred by the British Standards Institute (BSI)-China.

With this certification, Accenture guarantees confidentiality, integrity and availability of the valuable information it manages for the company and on its clients’ behalf.

“Accenture takes pride in providing our global clients and company stakeholders the assurance of a comprehensive information security management system that ensures business continuity amid today’s threats,” said Beth Lui, country managing director.

“Passing the stringent requirements for ISO 27001 certification reinforces Accenture’s credibility as a leading global delivery services company for both IT and business processes and its commitment to provide the highest quality industry standards of services to our clients.”

An Information Security Management System (ISMS) is a systematic approach to managing and ensuring the security of critical company information. The certification encompasses people, processes and IT systems.

ISMS provides a set of management standard specifications on the types of security controls that an organization should implement to recognize and address security risks by establishing controlled procedures, policies, and best practices for information, personnel, network and physical security.

BSI-China, one of the world’s leading certification bodies, recommended the certification of Accenture BPO to ISO 27001 standard last June, with the company subsequently passing the audit.

The certification covers the non-voice processing deals of Accenture’s BPO organization in the Philippines, including the service delivery operations, client services organization, business operations organization and shared support services.

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Customer Care Technologies building a better tomorrow

As the profession of customer service expands worldwide, a trend I’m seeing is that more customer care teams are open to deploying a wide variety of tools they can't do without — such as routing, interactive voice response (IVR), workforce management, call monitoring and customer relationship management systems — in a hosted fashion. Besides fostering a working environment that accommodates at-home agents, hosting also broadens labor forces for call centers to encompass regions throughout the world.

As long as consumers feel entitled to service that is available by phone or on-line at a moment’s notice, companies will need agents to assist customers. Now that essential customer care technologies are accessible through a delivery mechanism such as hosting, companies can expand their workforces of people who communicate with customers to include local populations for whom commuting isn’t a viable option, as well as global populations in regions where customer care is truly a gainful way to earn a living.

It’s tempting to attribute the emergence of hosting simply to the ubiquity of high-speed Internet service. But I would say that hosting, like the growth of customer service as a profession, is a cultural phenomenon. Just as companies are broadening their methods of interacting with customers (see chart below), they are also broadening their methods of delivering technology that helps them serve customers better. As customer care teams become less dependent on where they’re located to serve customers effectively, they will increase their reliance on hosted systems.

This begs two questions: How do organizations know when they’re serving customers effectively, and how can they improve their value to customers? To answer these questions, we need the assistance of a second key category of customer care technology, performance management, which is vital not only to sustaining call centers, but also to sustaining the businesses they’re part of.

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Indian IT services to reach the best service around.

Indian user companies compete for staff with Indian outsourcing companies and Indian operations of multinational companies, which hire new staff by the thousands each quarter. Staff attrition is however not the key reason why companies are outsourcing, said Arun Gupta, chief technology officer, at Shopper's Stop, a top Indian retail chain. Driving outsourcing in India is a growing demand for new technologies and applications. Shopper's Stop has six IT projects in progress with another 12 projects planned for the next six to 12 months.

Rather than creating and managing a large IT organization in house, the company is working with service partners to support its 45 IT staff, Gupta said. Some of the functions it outsources are network maintenance, desktop and server maintenance, monitoring ERP applications, and software development, he added.

A number of large banks and telecommunications service providers are already outsourcing key IT operations, though the key winners so far have been multinational services companies. Many Indian outsourcing companies had neglected the Indian market in favor of exports, according to a survey last year by Gartner. But that may be changing as the weakening dollar puts pressure on rupee realization from exports.

IBM, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro together accounted for 26.1% of IT services vendor market share in India last year, according to Gartner. IBM was the top vendor, with 11.2% market share. TCS and Wipro occupy the second and third positions with 10.9% and 4.1% market shares, respectively.

Indian IT services to reach the best service around.

Indian user companies compete for staff with Indian outsourcing companies and Indian operations of multinational companies, which hire new staff by the thousands each quarter. Staff attrition is however not the key reason why companies are outsourcing, said Arun Gupta, chief technology officer, at Shopper's Stop, a top Indian retail chain. Driving outsourcing in India is a growing demand for new technologies and applications. Shopper's Stop has six IT projects in progress with another 12 projects planned for the next six to 12 months.




Rather than creating and managing a large IT organization in house, the company is working with service partners to support its 45 IT staff, Gupta said. Some of the functions it outsources are network maintenance, desktop and server maintenance, monitoring ERP applications, and software development, he added.

A number of large banks and telecommunications service providers are already outsourcing key IT operations, though the key winners so far have been multinational services companies. Many Indian outsourcing companies had neglected the Indian market in favor of exports, according to a survey last year by Gartner. But that may be changing as the weakening dollar puts pressure on rupee realization from exports.

IBM, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro together accounted for 26.1% of IT services vendor market share in India last year, according to Gartner. IBM was the top vendor, with 11.2% market share. TCS and Wipro occupy the second and third positions with 10.9% and 4.1% market shares, respectively.

Go where the winners go - World Stock Markets Assess!

After crashing to a record low Monday, India's Sensex market opened Tuesday only to immerse again within minutes, this time dropping 11 percent before activating an automatic halt for one hour. The market did recover later in the afternoon to close down about 5 percent. At one point during the day, 1,190 of the index's 1,198 stocks were down. It is clear that India, despite being one of the quickest-growing economies in the world, is not resistant to the global economic sufferings.

Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram continued to recommend investors to "remain calm" and ignore the turmoil in Western markets. He said the Indian economy was expected to grow at 9 percent this year and 8.5 percent next year.The financial crisis in the United States has spread global fears, including in India, which relies on the United States for exports and outsourcing contracts.

"The rate cuts will soothe a little bit of jangled nerves at this time. I think it will have a definite positive impact on the market and also the Asian markets, because there's been a very sharp 30 percent drop across Asia," said Ketan Gandhi, 43, director of financial services for Pioneer Invest Corp., a financial services and brokerage house based in Mumbai. "So it will kind of sentimentally help improve things."

Reference Link: Abcnews

If there is a will, there is a business piracy warning.

Piracy, protection breaches and intellectual property theft are some of the risks of outsourcing and off-shoring business functions, a Deloitte whitepaper has warned. The worldwide information technology and business process outsourcing market deserves almost $500 billion, according to the global firm. "Many outsourcing and off-shoring first step fail to live up to their possible or the expectations of the parties," Deloitte outsourcing advisory services leader Peter Lowes said.

"Even bigger, a fair number of them fail outright, leading the company to either extract the operations back in house or to start anew in the search for a reliable, mutually beneficial partner. "A risk intelligent approach can help organizations recognize the expected benefits and improve relationships among constituents impacted by outsourcing/off-shoring."

A growing trend identified companies have greater reliance on offshore entities not just for specific projects and back-office functions, but for core business processes. Risks identified included increased competition for global talent has contributing to shortages of qualified talent.

Volatile political environment in some popular offshore locations can hamper business, the paper warned.

Deloitte whitepaper is available at www.deloitte.com/RiskIntelligence.