Featured Blog Posts – October 2009 Archive (14)

Egypt has been there for quite some time. Now more African countries are going to join the BPO bandwagon. Kenya has been smart enough to pick up one or two BPO secrets from Egypt. Now Ghana is the latest country, which is in the race in a big way. A prominent US-based BPO advisory company, Avasant has been hired by Country’s Ministry of Communications. The company has been trusted with the responsibility of promoting Ghana as the new age BPO destination. “Avasant is on a two year contract to… Continue

A streamlined IT value chain with capable actors can provide more added value at a lower cost level in a sustainable manner. This requires the IT organization to understand the fundamental aspects and dynamics of the business processes. Understanding how the Business makes money and which risks it faces is for many IT organizations however still a major challenge. Most IT organizations therefore still base their sourcing decisions on traditional IT silo’s.



Read the whole article… Continue

BPO Employees Opinion Survey 2009 attempted to study the general opinion of the BPO/Outsourcing professionals on various important issues like Layoffs, Job insecurity, Employee satisfaction etc. Many responses were on the expected lines barring a few findings, which gave us new areas of research for the future. Also, the findings of this survey helped us explore the probable pattern of the job related movement of these professionals, in the post recession scenario. The survey…

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Better opportunities for Mid-size IT firms in the upcoming times?



Third party maintenance contacts going to be a norm in the upcoming years?



These are few questions making rounds in the Indian IT-BPO circles. The buzz is: the Indian Big trio---Infosys, Wipro and TCS may face slower growth rate in the upcoming years. The slowdown of the top players will definitely affect the IT industry as a whole, but the lag of the leaders will actually be the boon for the mid sized IT… Continue

Offshore outsourcing has paid back. That has been shown by many Indian companies which have originally been established as local business organizations and now expand internationally, being global giants and creating jobs in these countries where they traditionally have been outsourced from. Infosys,… Continue

A Fortune 500 bank is evaluating options to slash its infrastructure management and data centre partners from 10 to two, while one of the world’s top five retailers is looking at reducing its technology vendors from 80 to 30, reported Economic Times.



Meanwhile, a Fortune 50 drug maker that once wielded a 100-odd vendors’ list dealing in data mining, drug distribution and supply chain management, now wants it reduces by half, reports another newspaper.

What do these trends… Continue

A shrinking market is what driving Indian IT majors seek opportunities elsewhere other than USA. And Japan is the latest destination, where all major Indian software and outsourcing companies are flocking in search of some good business. Even a few years ago, Japan used to be only an insignificant part in the whole scheme of things. The big companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys had small teams working in Japan. But recession has changed everything. These days, Indian techies are flying to Tokyo… Continue

“Not just a place to take a vacation”- that’s what the Philippines is now becoming with the trend of the BPO sector in the country. Right now the Philippines ranks 2nd in the offshore BPO services globally. The country would be hosting its first Outsourcing summit organized by the Business Processing Association of… Continue

IOF stays true to its name as the global appeal continues to spread.



The International Outsourcing Forum (IOF) provides just that; a truly international networking forum in which outsourcing professionals, IT and BPO companies keep abreast of industry developments.



The addition of the Sri Lankan Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) to the already impressive line up of attendees further broadens the global scope of the forum. Attendees will arrive in… Continue

Managed services… You have already heard about this concept, haven’t you?

Just in one sentence: Good – cheap – fast: You can have two of them



Managed services is a concept implying a form of outsourcing without assets and/or personnel transfer. The value added (a service) is offered for money and the service provider bears the risk and is also responsible for managing of the service. Which means: The buyer does not have to do anything more…



“One… Continue

Last month I had a meeting with one of my old friends, who is now VP–HR in a fairly large IT setup. He informed me that he is planning to lay off a couple of hundred people in his company, in a phased manner. What surprised me was that he mentioned that out of them around 80% are ‘difficult employees’. I wondered aloud what was his definition of a ‘difficult employee’. What he told me was interesting and forms the basis of this post.



“In every department/organization there are few… Continue

For those of you following the emerging markets of Africa as an alternate destination for outsourcing, BPOVoice recommends an important event - Outsourcing & Contact Centre East Africa 2009



This event is organized by Aitec Africa whose core business since 1987 has been focussed on ICT publishing, event management, professional development and training in Africa. It has been a market-leading pioneer in terms of spreading knowledge on the Internet, computing and… Continue

Indian BPO sector is abuzz with one question: how rupee-dollar equation is going to affect India’s position as BPO capital of the world in the long term. And how big scale the impact is going to be?



It is for sure: with global economic meltdown causing dollar take a nose dive, Indian outsourcing companies are going to face some hitches. While plummeting dollar value remains a risk to the entire global economy for a number of reasons, it becomes a threat to India’s sunshine industry.… Continue

Russell Metcalf's advisory experience includes both boutique and Big-4 positions, most recently with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the Shared Services and Outsourcing practice. BPOVoice interviewed him to know about his views and opinion on Dell’s recent proposal to acquire Perot System , advise for the companies for the post recession scenario and more importantly on how difficult is it for an average employee in any country to understand that his job which is being outsourced is good for…

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