|
|
Archived Offshore News
|
| |
|
Philips CEO Gerard Kleisterlee is planning to outsource Philips payroll and it is believed that Infosys is the top contender in the outsourcing race.In July this year, Philips created a ripple in the Indian Information technology services space when it outsourced some non core functions to Infosys. It is a part of Kleisterlees strategy to focus on core activities and drive productivity.
|
|
| |
|
If you think that outsourcing in India was just synonymous with accounting, call centres and financial services, here is some news. The latest to join the outsourcing wave in the country is design support services, in which architecture and building design is supplied to remote customers as a service.Growing at 30 per cent per annum, this could make India the design centre of the world, say its pioneers, who put highskilled design workers to work with advanced software.
|
|
| |
|
Consumers may have lost trust in offshore outsourcing, but more companies see the advantages beyond the stereotypes.Customer complaints about Powergen have dropped by 78 percent over the past 12 months, according to latest figures from the independent watchdog Energywatch, propelling the company from the very bottom of the satisfaction league for energy providers to second from the top.While clearer bills for the companys six million customers are one part of the equation, the firm has no doubt that the most significant change has been the repatriation of all backoffice operations including call centres from India to the UK.
|
|
| |
|
HCL Technologies Ltd has been ranked as the worlds no1 infrastructure outsourcing vendor by Brown Wilson Group for The Black Book of Outsourcing. Of the 276 global vendors qualified for this survey, HCL, EDS, CSC, Unisys and IBM took the top five spots. This report is a subset of the Annual Black Book Global User Survey.
|
|
| |
|
The pressure to reduce costs comes from several fronts, notably the strengthening rupee against the U.S. dollar, rising salary costs in India, and the need to spend on new service centers around the world to serve customers locally and compete with multinationals.The rupee has appreciated by about 12 percent against the dollar since the beginning of the year. The appreciation pushes down the revenue in rupees earned in the U.S. by Indian companies, even as staff costs in India rise. The U.S. is the largest market for Indian outsourcers, accounting for about two thirds of revenue earned abroad.
|
|
| |
|
It has been a whole decade since CIOs began offshore outsourcing. Small bits of development work went overseas before then, but the practice didn not really pick up until CIOs found themselves short handed on Y2K code fixes. From that point on, it exploded.Happy with the work done on Y2K code in India and elsewhere, many CIOs again looked offshore when the economy tanked and they were forced to cut IT budgets.
|
|
| |
|
Financial institutions looking to offshore their operations may not be looking to Ireland as a location of choice any longer, although the value created by existing operations is unlikely to see them leave for a lower cost location, according to a recent survey by Deloitte. In addition, Ireland is being increasingly seen as a location for higher value operations looking for an alternative location, leading to the creation of more skilled jobs. If Ireland is to continue to attract offshoring business and the increased employment associated with it it needs to set out a viable model for incoming companies to establish their offshoring operations here. Increasingly it is being seen that companies are using Irelands advantageous tax rate and EU membership as an entry point to doing business in the European single market.
|
|
| |
|
Western banks are turning to eastern Europe as an alternative back office outsourcing venue to India as the sub continent becomes overcrowded and expensive, according to a property report.The report by CB Richard Ellis Group, a US real estate services group, showed that building back office operations in eastern Europe next year will be a priority for western banks.
|
|
| |
|
Infrastructure Management Outsourcing IMO has gained impetus in todays business scenario as CXOs want to keep their workforce agile and focus on their core business competencies and business strategy. By exercising this option, the total Cost of Ownership TCO is optimized while managing the complexities of todays diverse IT environment. It also helps in providing flexibility to transition and transform to the next generation of infrastructure and applications without investing in retraining or expensive skill upgrade.
|
|
| |
|
The study titled transforming and offshoring finance processes, shows that offshoring does reduce costs significantly, however selectively integrating transformation and process improvement efforts into the globalization efforts of a company can increase these savings by over 50 percent. Earlier research on Lift and Shift from the Hackett Group showed that simply moving current state processes offshore provided significant savings to the tune of US Dollar120 million annually. With the combination of process Transformation and Lift and Shift, the savings went up to US Dollar185 million annually.
|
|
| |
|
Flexibility has toppled cost savings as the number one reason that UK organizations choose to outsource. Three quarters of the 650 UK CIOs in recruitment firm Harvey Nashs annual survey flagged up responsiveness and flexibility as the key benefits driving them to outsource.
|
|
| |
|
Independent Outsourcing Advisors can certainly help avoid failures. However, be sure the advisor has significant experience that can be brought to bear. They will have seen different situations first hand and can help the client avoid the same pitfalls. Lack of planning, lack of follow up in execution, miscommunication, not understanding cultural differences, poor process, et cetera, are just a few of the areas that an outside advisor can help with.
|
|
| |
|
India will continue to be the favoured destination for IT offshoring despite rising wages and surging rupee. According to industry experts, emerging destinations like the Philippines, Brazil, Russia and other countries in East Europe do not, at present, pose a threat to India. It will take at least five year for these emerging countries to pip Indias position, they say. Reports suggest that on average, an IT workers salary in India is growing at about 12 percent annually. The rupee , too, has risen by around 12 percent against the dollar this year. Despite this, an India software engineer gets only onefifth of what his counterpart in the US or Western Europe earns.
|
|
| |
|
Alsbridge CEO and Collaborative Outsourcing pioneer, Ben Trowbridge, says, as the outsourcing industry moves into 2007, higher priority must be placed on staying cost competitive and staying ahead of global trends in the sourcing market.Companies want to see the results of their sourcing projects turn out successfully, observed Trowbridge. In this regard, we believe our predictions of the market will prove beneficial to industry leaders and buyers in all stages of the sourcing lifecycle.
|
|
| |
|
An outsourcing relationship requires give and take. Even the best contracts include gray areas that can be interpreted in various ways. The deal must work for both companies, so mutual benefit is the goal. For example, look for ways to increase the outsourcers revenue within its core competencies.Everyone knows of a horror story related to outsourcing . As a result, many IT people seem to think of outsourcers as an axis of evil that should be eliminated or at least squeezed for every penny. However, outsourcing, like any business relationship, is more nuanced than that.
|
|
| |
|
Indias outsourcing industry has moved on from being a low,cost provider and is keen to enter the realm of partnership.The strongest impression at Indian outsourcer HCLs New Delhi conference last week was of the offshoring sector trying to reposition itself as a corporate partnership option rather than just a cut,price commodity provider.As the sub,continents economy continues its explosive growth, the price advantage that its businesses exploit is eroding. And Indian suppliers are increasingly facing the same issues as top,tier technology consultancies across the world.
|
|
| |
|
Travel agency Thomas Cook has signed a US Dollar 400 million outsourcing contract with Accenture for management of software applications and technology infrastructure, plus finance, accounting, and human resources services.Accenture will perform services for the US Dollar 17 billion a year travel company through a shared services center in the United Kingdom, but also will use personnel in other countries throughout the world. Much of that will likely come from India, which Accenture expects to be its largest geographical unit by years end. Bermuda based Accenture announced earlier this year plans to increase its India based head count by 8,000 people to 35,000 by 2008, compared with 30,000 people in the U.S.
|
|
| |
|
In little over a year, we have seen the rupee appreciating by over 14 percent hovering around Rs. 39 per dollar. To a large extent it has been more of a case of the dollar falling against all currencies, contributed to by subprime losses in the US economy. Combine that with a surging Rupee fueled by rapid economic growth in India and you have a recipe for trouble as far as our USdependent software exporters are concerned. This rapid change in the currency has been instrumental in fomenting concerns across the boardrooms of leading IT companies. Business heads have been putting their noses to the grindstone trying to find the right approach for this export driven business where the bulk of revenues accrue as dollars.
|
|
| |
|
A common pitfall encountered in both captive and outsourced operations originates from unrealistic ramp up expectations, whereby project planners try to start up too many new offshore seats too quickly. Quality is sacrificed for quantity. The most important offshore lesson that new project managers have to learn is that quality has be achieved before ramping up large numbers of seats, or quality will never be achieved.The planning and preliminary implementation processes for shifting IT enabled work to offshore locations are similar for back office work, customer service operations, and knowledge process outsourcing.Here we map out the process of offshoring in a manner that allows firms to choose between outsourcing and opening a captive facility once they have completed an assessment of the types of work that could be shifted.
|
|
| |
|
Few trends in the hedge fund industry have been as dramatic as the outsourcing of middle and backoffice functions. And most of the time, outsourcing means India. So why is one major hedge fund administrator abandoning the subcontinent after just two years.Citing the difficulty and escalating costs of hiring skilled workers, among other factors, Spectrum Global Fund Administration is pulling the plug on its operations in Bangalore, and will soon transfer nearly 100 middle and backoffice jobs back to the United States. The move, expected to be completed by the end of the year, brings down the curtain on a twoyear effort by Spectrum in India and is being seen by some as the start of a much larger migration from India in coming years.But Shankar Iyer says Indias moment in the outsourcing sun is far from over.
|
|
|
|
|