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Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

Genpact cuts deal with Japan’s Hikari Tsushin

April 1st, 2010

India’s top third party business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, Genpact, has announced a multi-year contract with the Tokyo-based Hikari Tsushin Inc, expanding its footprint in Japan.

The outsourcing firm did not disclose the value of the contract, but CEO Pramod Bhasin said that like most contracts for back-office functions, it would start small and then scale up.

The contract covers three types of services — finance and accounting, IT infrastructure support, and customer service. It also includes China, where Hikari is expanding.

Hikari, a fully owned subsidiary of Hello Communications, is in the business of distributing products and services such as mobile phones, subscription to long-distance and international call services. The firm hopes to lower its operating costs and decrease time to market through the deal, according to Shigetaro Toyoda, CEO of Hello Communications.

“Japan is the second-largest IT market. It is opening up, but still not very significant. The Hikari deal gives us a greater foothold in Japan and the very important China market,” said Mr Bhasin. The back-office services provider expects to potentially open more centres in China in coming months. It currently has centres in four cities, Dalian, Changchun, Shanghai, and Beijing.

Genpact employs about 3,500 people in China most of whom are servicing the Japanese market. “About 75 percent of the services we offer from China are Japan-facing,” admitted Mr Bhasin. Genpact was one of the earliest India-based outsourcing firms to set up a delivery centre in China and has been present there for around 10 years.

Source:http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/htlwf_genpact-cuts-deal-with-japan-s-hikari-tsushin-886868.html

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Fujitsu appoints new head to fill leadership void

January 22nd, 2010

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Fujitsu Ltd (6702.T), Japan’s biggest IT services firm, has appointed the head of its system products business as its next president, after months of deadlock that halted restructuring.

Masami Yamamoto, currently a senior vice president, will take the helm of the firm starting in April, Fujitsu said on Friday.

Analysts have said Fujitsu needs to cut costs further if it is keep pace with heavyweights IBM (IBM.N), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) and Dell (DELL.O). Fujitsu, despite efforts to expand abroad in IT outsourcing services, remains tied to a sluggish market in Japan.

“I want to make Fujitsu a truly global IT firm,” he told reporters at a news conference, at which he steered clear of details, saying that he had more studying to do first.

Chairman Michiyoshi Mazuka has been running Fujitsu ever since former President Kuniaki Nozoe abruptly stepped down in September, citing illness.

Mazuka’s provisional status weakened his ability to cut money-losing operations or pursue mergers to boost sales in IT services, company officials and investment bankers said.

The delay may be costly in the rapidly transforming IT services sector, where hardware, software, and services firms are coming together to become more competitive, such as Oracle Corp’s (ORCL.O) planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) and HP’s deal for network equipment maker 3Com Inc (COMS.O).

Yamamoto, 56, began his career at Fujitsu designing a Japanese word processing system and working to expand the company’s PC operations overseas. In his current position he is in charge of Fujitsu’s server business.

“Fujitsu has been relatively speedy in restructuring, but some still remains,” he said. He declined to comment on which operations required restructuring, but said he wanted to keep the company’s shrinking chip operations for now.

Fujitsu has been scaling back its chip business, outsourcing development to TSMC (2330.TW). Yamamoto said said it was more important to bring the unit back to profitability before looking for potential partners or buyers.

Shares of Fujitsu ended down 2.2 percent at 578 yen, underperforming a 1.5 percent fall in Tokyo’s index of electrical machinery stocks .IELEC.T.

Source:http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE60L06V20100122?type=marketsNews

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Sony to Outsource Part of its Business Processes to IBM Japan

January 21st, 2010

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Sony announced that it will outsource a part of the human resources and accounting operation services of Sony and certain of its subsidiaries in Japan to IBM Japan.

The companies said that Sony is undertaking steps on a global scale to execute structural transformation to achieve profitability improvement and optimize business processes.

In connection with the above-mentioned outsourcing decision, Sony, IBM Japan and Manpower Japan Co. have agreed to establish a joint venture. The joint venture will be formed by splitting a part of the human resources service operations from Sony Human Capital, which currently undertakes human resources service, business travel and insurance operations mainly for Sony Group in Japan.

IBM Japan will provide its human resources
and accounting operation services to Sony Group in Japan using the new joint venture as its base in Japan and IBM Global Delivery Center in Dalian, China as its base outside Japan.

Source:http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/ibm_sony-to-outsource-part-of-its-business-processes-to-ibm-japan-716887.html

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Japan beckons local code writers

January 9th, 2010

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The Japanese market, hitherto rather closed, could soon open up for Indian IT services firms.

“We are creating an operating system between our two nations. It is in its final stages. This is necessary to address various concerns that industry, especially IT industry has, regarding our both countries. We are keen to do this at the earliest,” Haraguchi Kazuhiro, the Japanese minister for internal affairs and communications, said at a ceremony at Aamby Valley near Mumbai.

“Last month, our Prime Minister met Indian Prime Minister Mr Manmohan Singh in New Delhi and signed several joint collaborations. Now that I am here with this delegation to follow those up shows how seriously and quick are things going to happen,” Kazuhiro said.

The minister is leading a 25-member Japanese delegation to the country.

The delegation includes the CEOs of firms such as NTT Docomo, KDDI Corp, Kyocera Corp and Softbank Mobile Corp.

Japan’s $3 billion worth of annual IT services outsourcing forms just 3% of its total IT services market.

Local IT players have long been complaining about Japan being an orthodox market and closed to outsourcing.

“Japanese firms work in their own way. They do not prefer outsourcing. They still maintain a lot of legacy systems on which skill set availability becomes an issue. Japanese prefer less documentation, which makes service level agreements difficult. Besides, they prefer local service providers,” Girish Wardadkar, president and executive director of KPIT Cummins, a firm which provides IT services to Japanese firms such as NEC, Fujitsu etc.
But nobody doubts the huge potential of this market.

“Japan is the second-largest IT services market. We estimate that by 2020 India will export about $175-225 billion worth of IT services. However, if Japan market opens up, that size is going to be much bigger,” said Nasscom vice chairman Harsh Manglik, who is also the chairman for Accenture India.

As a part of confidence building measures, Japan will participate in the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC).

“We shall use DMIC to put some concrete actions in place. We shall also be actively involved in Aamby Valley,” Kazuhiro said.
At the same time, Japan is looking to increase its investments in India.

In 2008, the country had invested about $8 billion in India and “that is going to increase significantly now,” Yamazaki Yasuyo, advisor for Japan’s ministry of internal affairs and communications, said. “The last government invested mostly in US and Europe. We shall now focus on investing more from our 140 trillion yen asset of pension fund into India.”

Source:http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_japan-beckons-local-code-writers_1332578

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IBM Japan Signs 9 Year Strategic Outsourcing Contract With Chugoku Bank

November 12th, 2009

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IBM today announced a nine-year strategic outsourcing agreement with Chugoku Bank, a major Japanese regional bank.

As part of the agreement, IBM will manage operations and maintenance of Chugoku Bank’s information technology (IT) systems, including host computer and servers. A primary goal of the IT services provided by IBM is to enable the bank to enhance client experiences with secure and stable services for customers. At the same time, IBM will optimize business efficiencies for Chugoku Bank by stabilizing and streamlining the IT systems and reducing IT costs for the bank.

IBM was selected by Chugoku Bank as its outsourcing partner based on rich experiences and achievements in operation and maintenance of information systems. IBM will introduce best practices and enhance governance of Chugoku Bank based on its broad experiences in operating and managing business processes and information systems.

The contract was signed in October 2009.
Source:http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/200911100130PR_NEWS_USPR_____NY08076.htm

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Cities wish to take cooperation to ‘new level’

November 3rd, 2009

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Provincial and municipal officials from China and Japan agreed to promote regional cooperation with each other at the Fifth Beijing-Tokyo Forum yesterday.

“By exchanging ideas and experiences cities in both countries can improve their management systems a great deal,” Hiroya Masuda, former Japanese minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, said at a sub-forum in the port city of Liaoning province.

“Most cities face similar problems and the problems can only be solved by learning from each other’s experiences and mistakes,” Masuda said.

He added that the forum should promote more detailed projects in various aspects of bilateral cooperation, such as environment protection and public facilities.

Tao Siliang, vice-president of China Association of Mayors, said city-level ties, with proper communication between mayors, should remain unaffected even when ties between the two countries are going through a turbulent patch.

Tao said the mayors in China have a strong sense of responsibility now. “They have started paying attention to the impact on environment while striving for higher GDP growth.”

Dai Yulin, vice-mayor of Dalian, said his city had cooperated well with Japanese cities and enterprises, adding that there were nearly “4,000 Japan-backed companies and eight offices of Japanese autonomous prefectures” in Dalian as of May this year.

The city’s software and service outsourcing sector, which exported goods worth over $1 billion in 2008, is mainly Japan-oriented, thanks to the software park Dalian set up in Japan last year, he said.

Dai said Dalian will continue to cooperate with the autonomous prefectures and set up a platform for Japanese companies to enter the Chinese market.

Kyoto Prefectural Governor Keiji Yamada said that his city had a long history of friendship with China, especially with regard to tourism.

“Kyoto is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese tourists,” he said. “Of the nearly 1 million Chinese tourists to Japan in 2008, 370,000 visited Kyoto.”

Yamada said bilateral communication should not be limited to economics.

“For example,” he said, “Kyoto is home to many famous universities. We hope to promote educational cooperation with Chinese cities as well.

“The cooperation should be further extended to a comprehensive level from the existing fields of economy, tourism, and education,” Yamada said.

Source:http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6801874.html

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A lesson from Japan on protecting jobs

October 16th, 2009

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‘Japan used to work on a very cooperative system, to give workers certainty and stability.

It operated a seniority-based, lifetime employment system. Many workers stayed in one company throughout their work life, and their pay was based on how long they had spent in the company.

In return, the company looked after the workers, and down periods, they held on to them.

In the services sector, Japan kept protected jobs for Japanese workers who were not so productive…but it was not sustainable.

The Japanese are outsourcing, hiring more temporary workers who accept lower pay and few social benefits.

As a result, unemployment has risen, incomes of less skilled workers have fallen, and income inequality has increased.

It is one of the reasons that Japanese voters became fed up with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and have just elected a new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government.

Now, the new government has to grapple with the same difficult issues, but will not find any easy solutions either.

If the world’s second-largest economy cannot protect its workers with a closed system, Singapore with a small, open economy has no hope to do so successfully. The only way for us is to push for constant transformation, to create new economic space for us to grow and prosper.’

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who visited Japan last week, on the challenges that governments face and the importance of economic restructuring.