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Archive for June, 2011

Outsourcing among ways Machesney Park can cut

June 21st, 2011

Village President Tom Strickland took a nod from Charles Dickens Monday during his State of the Village address.

“This is not the best of times, but it is not the worst of times,” Strickland said, describing the village’s economic standing.

He boasted cost-saving measures enacted by the village, including his own choice not to accept such perks as village health insurance or a work-issued cellphone or car.

The creation of a part-time public safety coordinator and elimination of the full-time position will save the village $121,000 annually, he said.

“Making cuts to our cost of government while keeping services at a high level is a No. 1 priority for Village Hall,” Strickland said.

Changes Machesney Park will see soon include outsourcing fewer services.

The village recently decided to end its street repair contract with Municipal Maintenance after the company requested an increase in its contract.

Strickland said the move will save the village money, though an exact figure is not yet known because the salaries of the technicians to be hired have not yet been released.

“There comes a time in the life of a village that it is more advantageous to outsource most of its services,” Strickland said. “And as the village grows and develops, it makes more sense for the same village to perform more of these services in-house.”

Strickland highlighted upcoming construction on Illinois 173 as one economic challenge Machesney Park will face.

“This will bring much traffic congestion and frustration to drivers and businesses,” he said. “But the village is working on marketing and promoting the area, encouraging shoppers to stay with us through that tough time.”

Healthy retail business is vital to Machesney Park because the village doesn’t levy a property tax and receives nearly half of its revenue from sales taxes.

Source:http://www.rrstar.com/top_stories/x1425879918/Leader-Outsourcing-among-ways-Machesney-Park-can-cut-costs

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BPO firms eyeing to penetrate new markets in Asia-Pacific

June 21st, 2011

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Business process outsourcing (BPO) firms are eyeing to penetrate new markets particularly the Asia Pacific region and achieve an annual growth of 30 percent.

Gigi Virata, senior executive director of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), identified some of the markets as China, India and Sri Lanka.

Virata is confident the Philippines can enter these markets as it remains competitive in both the voice and non-voice services.

Apart from the proposed country tourism brand, establishing one for the services sector could help promote the Philippine BPO services.

BPAP chief executive officer Oscar Sañez earlier said they would continue promoting the BPO sector in the markets where more investments are expected to come from such as the United States, Europe and Australia.

The BPO industry last year yielded an estimated $9 billion worth of services and created around 500,000 jobs. The US remains the prime source for outsourcing activities.

In 2011, the BPAP projected revenues would increase to $11 billion that could generate about 110,000 jobs.

Despite feat, Virata pointed out that talent availability continues to be a problem that the industry needs to address. Hiring rate reaches only a maximum of ten percent.

BPO firms are working with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to implement training and recruiting development programs designed to increase the hiring rate.

TESDA has been involved in training-for-work scholarship program for call center agents, transcription agents, java software and animation and film.

Virata said improving the recruitment quality through scholarship programs for the near-hires and the implementation of the K+12 program which adds two years to basic education in the country can help address this problem.

Businessmen in several large business groups and members of the Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines believe that English proficiency among the entering workforce could be improved through computerized training at schools and by increasing the use of English on local television.

They are also pushing for the country to adopt the National Competency Test, accelerate development of local managers, and introduce Service Science Management Engineering as a degree program.

With the aim to build market share for the Philippines as the second-largest delivery location after India outside of North America, promoting the BPO industry to new locators with a well-funded campaign outside the country is also important.

Source:http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/323531/bpo-firms-eyeing-penetrate-new-markets-asiapacific

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Kcom secures the first slice of Domino’s IT outsourcing strategy

June 21st, 2011

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Kcom, recently signed a 3 year Managed Services contract with Domino’s Pizza and is the first provider to be selected as part of a major IT outsourcing programme.

The programme aims to move Domino’s on to a scalable IT infrastructure supported by a select number of key partners. The deal will see Kcom provide a managed Wide Area Network (WAN) for Domino’s Pizza Group providing connectivity between each of their 672 stores across the UK and Ireland.

The new network will move Domino’s from an unmanaged 20CN based network to a fully managed 21CN infrastructure, which will future proof the Domino’s store network and allow them to introduce more complex applications.

Colin Rees, Domino’s IT Director, says: “We needed an infrastructure that was going to do two things; support the growth of our business now and allow for us to plan for growth in the future. Domino’s is currently doing around 36% of its business online – by 2015, we want it to be two thirds.”

Domino’s is looking to outsource some key components of its IT operations, so that their internal IT department can be freed up to focus on more strategic activities like finding innovative ways to further enhance online growth. Following a formal tender process, Kcom was eventually chosen as their first Managed Services Provider.

Colin adds: “Kcom’s wide UK network reach was definitely their strongest selling point. We are now able to tap into their rich pool of technology and solutions to create a resilient back office. We are also able to cover all of our stores with a single technology solution from one supplier.”

Paul Simpson, Group Executive Director at Kcom, says: “Domino’s and Kcom are very similar in terms of size, culture and growth ambition. By taking the time to understand their business strategy we were able to create a solution based on their current needs and their business goals. That insight, coupled with our experience in the retail market and extensive network reach means we’re able to provide our newest customer with the best of both worlds.”

Source:http://www.callcentreclinic.com/news/outsourcers/kcom-secures-the-first-slice-of-dominos-it-outsourcing-strategy-45453.htm

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Hundreds of Xerox engineers being transferred to HCL Technologies of India

June 21st, 2011

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Xerox Corp. has signed an agreement with an India-based information technology and software giant that will see hundreds of local Xeroxers become employees of HCL Technologies Ltd.

Under the deal formally announced to Xerox employees today, the company will transfer roughly 600 of its 3,400 engineers around the globe to HCL.

The employees will continue doing much the same work they did for Xerox, working on Xerox projects, said Shami Khorana, president of HCL America. And in most cases, they will stay at their same desks at Xerox locations, he said.

“Normally the way it works is we’re very, very sensitive to benefits and compensation and everything is very similar,” Khorana said. “Sometimes one particular benefit which we may have better and Xerox not and another the other way around.”

Xerox declined to discuss financial terms of the agreement. But rather than cost savings, Willem Appelo, president of the Xerox Global Business and Services Group, said the primary motivation was expanding the scope and scale of innovation work.

“If you look at how our market is changing and how the place in which we operate is changing, the competiveness, the speed with which technology changes, it’s clear you need to be able to tap into resources all over the globe,” Appelo said. “If we want to continue to meet our own expectations and come up with a competitive product portfolio, you need to have access to a lot more skills than we have. HCL has 15,000 engineers on a global basis. It gives us access to a global talent base.”
Any workers who decline the transfer to HCL will be eligible for severance packages, Xerox spokesman Carl Langsenkamp said.
Xerox has been in discussions with HCL about the possibility of workers at five locations — Webster; Wilsonville, Ore.; El Segundo, Calif.; and in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands — being transferred to HCL. Those workers are in such areas as product and software engineering and engineering infrastructure.

According to HCL, it currently employs about 6,000 in the United States, most of whom were hired locally, said company spokeswoman Avena Suri. While the company’s outsourcing strategy differs from client to client, “in most of the cases we hire client transfers as full-time HCL employees,” she said.
But in similar situations, these outsourcing agreements often mean some workers being charged with training their outsourcing company replacements, while others stay as permanent workers for the outsourcing company but at lower wages and lesser benefits than they previously enjoyed, said Ron Hira, Rochester Institute of Technology associate professor of public policy and an expert on outsourcing issues.
In the agreement Xerox worked out with HCL, pay and benefits for Xeroxers who transfer will be comparable to what they receive now, Langsenkamp said. And they will have the same job guarantees, he said.

HCL Chief Executive Vineet Nayar stirred criticism in 2009 when he called American technology graduates “unemployable,” comparing them unfavorably in terms of their discipline and real-world preparation to counterparts coming from universities in China and India.

Source:http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110620/BUSINESS/110620023

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IBM, IIFL in Rs 298 crore outsourcing deal

June 21st, 2011

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IT giant, International Business Machines (IBM), today said it has entered into a Rs 298-crore outsourcing agreement with India Infoline (IIFL) to transform its IT infrastructure and establish a direct linkage between business performance and IT costs.

Under the 10-year agreement, IBM will take over the complete IT operations of IIFL which will entail managing more than 700 IIFL branches pan-India, the company said in a statement.

The world’’s largest technology services firm will take over the entire application support for the custom built application stack, based on an innovative co-managed support model with IIFL’’s application team.

IBM will set-up a centralised helpdesk, roll-out a pan-India deskside services capability to support users, applications and infrastructure in branches and deploy service management processes to cover assets, IT security, capacity, network, storage, incident and technology, among others.

IBM will help IIFL in mitigating IT operational risks by reducing people dependency on operations, eliminating points of failure and by extending business value of existing applications, it said.

“With our unparalleled domain expertise and technology competence, we are uniquely positioned to build a reliable and robust IT model to realise IIFL’’s infrastructure transformation objectives,” IBM’’s India/South Asia, Director (Sales, strategic outsourcing) Global Technology Services, Karthik Shivram, said.

The agreement will help IIFL deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction, ensure continuous audit readiness, strengthen its IT security framework and compliance while at the same time provide better visibility and control of IT operations.

“IBM came up with an innovative commercial model that will provide a direct connection between business performance and IT costs, while enabling us to scale operations at short notices,” IIFL Group’’s Chief Technology Officer, Sankarson Banerjee, said

Source:http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/current-affairs/ibm-iiflrs-298-crore-outsourcing-deal_555087.html

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Syntel Named a Leader in Healthcare IT Services

June 20th, 2011

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A global information technology services and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) firm, today announced that it has been ranked #62 on the 2011 “Healthcare Informatics 100,” a list of the 100 largest global healthcare IT providers.

“We are honored to be named one of the top 100 global healthcare IT companies,” said Syntel CEO and President, Prashant Ranade. “Our healthcare practice has been growing steadily over the past three years, driven by our expanding portfolio of value-added services.”

Healthcare presents an exciting growth opportunity for Syntel, and we have invested heavily in new service offerings to help our clients meet regulatory compliance challenges, streamline their operations, and leverage cloud and mobile computing.”

Syntel offers a suite of targeted healthcare and life sciences services for providers, payers, pharmaceutical firms and medical device manufacturers, including ICD-10 compliance, predictive analytics, medical banking, care management, mobility, clinical data management, collaboration, and industry-specific testing services.

In its 18th edition, the “Healthcare Informatics 100″ list ranks the top 100 healthcare technology providers by revenue. The article appears in the June 2011 issue of Healthcare Informatics magazine.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/syntel-named-a-leader-in-healthcare-it-services-2011-06-20?reflink=MW_news_stmp

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