Archive for December, 2010

IBM Workers Could Lose Outsourcing Protection

December 10th, 2010

As IBM shifts more of its production offshore, an increasing number of its former employees have turned to a federal program that provides benefits to workers displaced by foreign competition for job training support and income assistance. But their eligibility for such help could be short lived.

IT and other services workers were added to the Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance program under the 2009 stimulus bill, which is set to expire Dec. 31. With Congress pre-occupied with the Bush tax cuts and other issues, many fear the program will lapse.

Under TAA, workers who’ve lost their jobs due to offshoring can get government subsidized training for new occupations, income supplements, healthcare tax credits, and other benefits.

Workers laid off from IBM facilities in Plano, Texas, and Oklahoma City filed for TAA assistance last month, according to a notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register. That follows a notice on Monday that said former workers on IBM’s Hartford Financial Services contract have been declared eligible for TAA help. An IBM spokesman declined to provide details on the job cuts at those locations.

IBM workers and contractors laid off from operations in Armonk, NY, Cambridge, Mass., Columbia, S.C., Research Triangle Park, NC, Cambridge, Mass, Piscataway, NJ, and other locations have also have been deemed eligible for TAA assistance in the past year, according to federal records. IBM reduced its U.S. workforce from 115,000 to 105,000 between 2008 and 2009, according to the IBM employee group Alliance@IBM. IBM employed 134,000 U.S. workers as recently as 2005.

Many IT vendors, from HP to Microsoft, have moved some work to foreign locations, but IBM clearly has made offshoring part of its corporate DNA. At one point, it even tried to patent the process.

In recent years, IBM has shifted numerous functions, from programming to help desk support, to countries where costs are lower and the company can gain access to high-growth emerging markets. The strategy has allowed IBM to grow its share price and maintain strong profit margins even during the tight economy, and it gives it the chance to bid on domestic IT work in developing markets on a relatively even footing with local players.

For instance, India’s Bharti Airtel, one of the world’s fastest growing telecommunications providers, this week handed IBM an $80 million contract to manage its Bangladesh operations. IBM’s overall relationship with Airtel is now worth more than $2 billion, and the company has won numerous other contracts in foreign markets where it conducts offshore operations.

But while Big Blue’s offshoring strategy is good for the company, its shareholders, and customers who enjoy lower prices, it’s hard on individual U.S. workers who’ve lost their jobs during the recession. For many of those workers, times will surely get tougher if Congress does not reauthorize the part of the TAA program that applies to services workers.

Source:http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228800056&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

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TCIM Case Study Illustrates OpenSpan Call Center Performance Technology Uses

December 9th, 2010

TCIM Services sells international contact center services, provides Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for customer care and account management. They recentlyreleased a case study summarizing how TCIM uses OpenSpan (News – Alert) technology for one of its longterm clients, a Fortune 50 company, to “improve delivery of Service Level Agreements for Average Handle Time, Service Quality, and Service-to-Sales,” TCIM company officials say.

As a BPO, TCIM is in a competitive marketplace with monthly, daily and hourly performance pressure. TCIM’s Telecom, Utilities and Financial Services clients hold their outsource partners to high performance standards, and rank them on regular quality and performance scorecards in such areas as call volume, call handle time, sales, and quality of customer experience.

TCIM’s call centers handle tasks similar to those delivered at in-house contact centers, so they have all the standard call center operating challenges. “In addition, as an outsourcer, they also face the added challenge of embracing and adopting predetermined client applications which are not able to be modified,” the case study found.

Throughout the implementation, TCIM officials say, they “verified significantly higher performance ratings in service and sales. Benefits on their investment quickly became clear” in several categories:

Improved Average Handling Time (AHT) improved. English-language agents gained an improvement in average handle time of 35 seconds per call. Spanish-language agents were able to cut 66 seconds per call.

Improved quality/customer experience. English-language agents raised quality scores by 20 percent. Spanish-language agents raised quality scores by 50 percent.

Improved sales. Agents gained an average 8 percent initial sales lift with some complex products increasing over 90 percent.

Faster agent onboarding. New agents completed their transition to productive producers faster and “they are delivering higher performance than previously documented,” TCIM officials said.

Rapid implementation. Within 60 days of receiving OpenSpan classroom training, TCIM independently designed and deployed automations involving 17+ applications along with a complete application interface and framework without OpenSpan professional services.

TCIM officials say they sought a financially viable, long-term partner with a deep understanding of call center operations, concluding that OpenSpan and TCIM “were able to develop an understanding of TCIM’s core objectives, evaluate the process bottlenecks, and find a solution.”

Source:http://call-center-performance.tmcnet.com/topics/call-center-performance/articles/125145-tcim-case-study-illustrates-openspan-call-center-performance.htm

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Veramark to Offer Telecom Expense Management Solutions to Panda Restaurant Group

December 9th, 2010

Veramark Technologies, Inc. , a leading provider of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions, has been selected by Panda Restaurant Group to provide TEM services for its national chain of gourmet Chinese restaurants. The range of services to be provided by Veramark includes telecom invoice audit and processing, service ordering and provisioning, account payment, and spend analytics services on a business process outsourcing (BPO) basis.

Panda restaurant group has more than 1300 restaurant locations around the country and it receives nearly 600 telecom invoices from over 40 carriers every month. As the chain is growing by leaps and bounds, it is bound to incur a larger amount on telecom expenses. To cut down the cost, Panda’s IT management team recognized the need to implement a holistic telecom expense management process that would enable them to better manage their growing telecom network.

With features like initial audit as well as ongoing telecom expense management, the Veramark solution was found most feasible. The services will also include an initial audit of inventory of Panda’s telecom contracts, services, and circuits to identify opportunities for invoice consolidation and network optimization. Veramark will then implement ongoing processing of invoices, utilizing their TEM-enabling technology to automate the invoice review, validation, and payment processes.

“VeraSMART gives us the configurability and visibility we were looking for,” said Panda’s Xing Ming, who was instrumental in researching and selecting the Veramark solution. “We especially like the fact that it integrates with our Lawson AP system, completely eliminating the need for manual GL coding of telecom charges,” Ming explained in a statement. “Veramark’s expertise and long term vision make them a good partner for Panda.”

“Panda management took the time to assess how best to manage their telecom environment,” noted Daren Moore, Veramark’s senior vice president of TEM Services, in a statement. “Veramark will provide the people, processes, and technology to efficiently manage their telecom services and process invoices, allowing Panda to focus on delivering excellence to their customers.”

Veramark’s TEM services will be enabled by its Web-based VeraSMART software deployed as a cloud service. The employees of Panda will be able to access the system through VeraSMART’s browser-based interface, and have full visibility into all the usage and expense data captured by the VeraSMART system. Telecom spend reports will be distributed via the Web to key personnel across the Panda enterprise.

Source:http://telecom-expense-management.tmcnet.com/topics/telecom-expense-management/articles/125154-veramark-offer-telecom-expense-management-solutions-panda-restaurant.htm

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Finding the Rare Diamonds in the Rough

December 9th, 2010

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what businesses might be doing great in China. It would be nice if there were a selection of domestic growth opportunities, but there’s no denying the economic machine that is China. In that country, the entrepreneurial drive and the economies of scale make the whole thing work.

One company that’s been a great success in China is VanceInfo Technologies Inc. (VIT). This information technology (IT) firm is a software outsourcing company. We always hear about outsourcing and this company is one of the best at it, developing software for customers in China, Japan, North America, and Europe. Corporations employ VanceInfo to develop enterprise software applications, because they provide a quality service at a lower price. With lower costs for labor and expertise, it’s no surprise that a company like this is growing like mad. It’s the whole economies of scale thing at work and it makes it tough for domestic software firms to compete.

In the third quarter this year, VanceInfo generated record revenues of 55.9 million dollars, up a solid 39% from revenues of 40.2 million dollars generated in the comparable quarter. The company cited an across-the-board improvement in sales at all its service lines and in all geographic markets. Revenues from Greater China (which include mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) represented about 44% of the total. The rest came from customers in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Earnings during the third quarter came in at $7.7 million for a gain of 34% over last year. The company finished the quarter with 87.0 million dollars in cash and management increased its 2010 full-year sales guidance to between 208.5 million dollars and 209.5 million dollars, representing a 41% increase over 2009.

Also not surprising with this kind of growth is VanceInfo’s stock price performance. In 2008, this stock didn’t do anything, partially due to a correction in domestic Chinese equities, as well as the financial crisis in the U.S. But, from a low of under $5.00 a share in early 2009, this stock has been on fire and is now trading close to a record-high share price of $41.00. That’s almost a 10-bagger in just under two years.

Not only this, but the company’s been able to sell shares in itself and the stock still stays strong. VanceInfo just sold 2.53 million American Depositary Shares to finance its expansion.

Even if you aren’t a shareholder in VanceInfo, it’s worth your time to review the stock and the wealth it has created. When you get close to a tenfold return on your investment, it’s a fortune-making opportunity. It also reiterates in my mind the attractiveness of surveying the marketplace for stocks trading around their 52-week lows. Among all the failures, there are always diamonds in the rough.

Source:http://wallstreetpit.com/52761-finding-the-rare-diamonds-in-the-rough

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Let’s Circumvent The Horror Stories Of Offshore Outsourcing

December 9th, 2010

If you are hiring outsourcing services for your business and things are going wrong, you may smack with several horror stories of it when you would investigate. You can see countless examples where the hope of objective of saving money and time get turned into much expensive and tiring legal battles. It is not that the end of every offshore outsourcing deals has a horror story to tell, in fact the service is so rewarding that every business, whether small or big, are readily seen taking help from a reliable outsourcing provider.

Businesses, especially smaller ones, are dubious about considering offshoring as a significant business practice. This is so because the highlighting of existing problems and prevailing horror stories have made their decision a question in this scenario. Well, every aspect of business has its own ups and downs, so as offshore outsourcing.

Let us take a look at the points about how an existing horror stories related to offshoring can be skipped and how the trust be established among businesses that the service is truly profitable.

Taking Legal Help

You know very well that law protects you in any dispute, if it occurs, despite of the country you belong to. Before finalizing a deal, get a contract signed from your outsourcing provider wherein you have mentioned all the terms and conditions favouring you as well as your service provider. Collect an idea of how to work in international banking and how the funds tied up during money transactions. Trade rules and intellect property should be given paramount importance. These are the common considerations, usually useful for all whether you are into manufacturing, engineering, production, tooling, consulting, servicing, etc. This will help you further improvise the product and answer customer support issues.

Take a Report on What to Outsource and What Not

Some of the IT functions are not easily outsourced and could affect the entire organization, right from the simple not-so-relevant task to the complicated important one. Make sure and confirm twice that outside vendor you are going to hire takes responsibility of your entire need and offers what you want.

Check if Saving Turns into a Loss

Some say that an outsourcing provider may not be as efficient as a full time employee for a company who works directly under the higher management. While others worry over security and confidentiality of the data. However, a professional outsourcing company understands your need and takes care of all confidentiality and privacy importantly.

Do not Let Employee Downtrodden their Morale

This is likely happen when you lay off your workforce to replace their job with hired outside firm. It may creates risk for others and they wonder if the same could happen with them as well.

You may Feel Locked-in

If your outsourcing partner do not document your work on time and on your network, you may feel like surrounded by a boundary and you are not able to break it or come out of it. Make sure to get an agreement signed where the time limit for documentation is mentioned and the agreement offers you the flexibility to sign a year-to-year contract with your outsourcing firm.

Taking care of above mentioned points will keep you in a secluded place where horror stories of offshore outsourcing will not haunt you any more and you will continue taking assistance of your outsourcing partner for profitable results.

Source:http://www.offshorebanking.cc/lets-circumvent-the-horror-stories-of-offshore-outsourcing

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Things To Verify Before Outsourcing Web Development Services

December 9th, 2010

If you are outsourcing your web development needs to an outsourcing company in a hope to ensure an appropriate completion of the project, you need to verify about the outsource company you are going to partner with. Some of these are as follows;

The task of outsourcing your web development project to an offshore web development company involves various considerations. And if not checked thoroughly can prove hazardous to your business. You may get the work done at cheaper price. The foremost area where you have to focus most is the quality which a newly startup and inexperienced company lack.

Make sure to verify the work that has been done by the company for you. Ensure that the work provided by them is not copied fro others using web based copy protection software. You need to ensure that you are getting authenticated work and not the other’s work misused by your outsourcing partner.

To avoid the risk pertaining in the future, it is always better to establish a conversation with the person to collect an idea about the person’s capability to execute your requirement in correct manner, for your satisfaction.

while you outsource your web development needs to a firm situated offshore, you must ensure that the professionals there must be familiar with the proper usage of keywords. Also, tell them if they are not acquainted with the strategy most favoured for the website, that is to put the article on the website for whenever you wish to do the same for its promotion and to keep it updated.

The work delivered to you by your outsourcing partner doesn’t mean that they still have right to use it for their purpose further. This is under your proprietorship. So, ensure that they do not use it in the form of samples or to be incorporated in their portfolio without your knowledge. This is a crucial thing you must discuss at the very onset of your tie up with you outsourcing partner.

You have your own security policy. So do not avoid mentioning each and every aspect concerning security in your contract, whether it is about corroborating data classification for ensuring data security. This will separate routine data from sensitive data for keeping it secured. And this would ensure safety of your data against data theft.

Last but not the least, check whether the company you are going to outsource your web development needs has commendable intellectual property fortification regulation or not to assist in steering clear of future mix-up. Also, verify that the company has adequate provisions for database monitoring gateways as well as application layer fire walls. This would ensure preserving of sensitive data as well as safeguard against exposure misuse.

Source:http://www.zchand.com/171/things-to-verify-before-outsourcing-web-development-services

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Carillion reaps the benefits of outsourcing

December 9th, 2010

If you would like to redistribute this article please respect FT.com’s ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited FT content. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ca69800-0306-11e0-bb1e-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz17YxveAKc

Carillion brushed aside the recent woes of construction and support services peers, maintaining that it was on track to lift profits this year in spite of government spending cuts.

Shares in Carillion rallied 15.8p, or 4.5 per cent, to 370.6p on Wednesday after the FTSE 250 company said further outsourcing by UK public bodies, as well as opportunities in the Middle East and Canada, would help offset a reduction in clients’ capital spending.

If you would like to redistribute this article please respect FT.com’s ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited FT content. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ca69800-0306-11e0-bb1e-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz17YxzrmvN

Carillion plans to reduce its exposure to UK construction by a third over the next three years to focus more on support services, which range from providing accommodation for British soldiers to maintaining IT infrastructure for BT Group.

“We don’t want to be in construction just for construction’s sake,” said John McDonough, chief executive, who predicted that UK public bodies whose budgets have been cut would farm out more jobs to the private sector.

Many companies that claim to make central government and local authorities more efficient have struggled in the face of the cuts.

They include high profile failures – notably Connaught, the social housing maintenance group – and others that have also encountered difficulties, such as Mouchel, which is in refinancing talks.

But Carillion said on Wednesday that it had the “largest-ever pipeline of contract opportunities” in its support services business, primarily from local government work.

Pre-tax profits will rise from £136m to £168m in the year to the end of December, according to Deutsche Bank, on slightly lower revenue of £4.5bn (£4.42bn, $7bn).

Source:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ca69800-0306-11e0-bb1e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz17YxnLenE

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