While parents struggle to pay annual school fees between Rs 12,000 and 18,000, a south Mumbai family outsourced a single Std X project for Rs 26,000.

The cost of outsourcing projects has skyrocketed over the years. Regular project work is now compelling parents to send their children for tutorials, giving rise to a new cottage industry.

Meenakshi Chirawawala, a professional who compiles school projects, charged a student Rs 26,000 for an assignment recently. “The student was one of the top scorers in his class and wanted to secure top marks in the assignment. His mother, a resident of Altamount Road, just asked me to spruce up the task. I not only researched into the topics given to students, but also included a lot of craftwork.” she said.

The task of embellishing the project work involves making it more colourful; the use of various types of inks and papers increases its cost, say experts. Moreover, parents demand that the professionals make the “best project”. Atit Shah, an engineering student who coaches students in preparing projects, said, “I charge Rs 5,000 a month for nearly 10 sessions. Students have to complete projects in every subject, therefore, parents are seeking professional help to train them. We guide students in compiling matter and different forms of presentation.”

Shah’s services as a “project assistant” are listed in business directories. With all the education boards earmarking 20 marks in each subject for internal projects, the demand for good project work guides has gone up. “Currently, students have to secure a minimum score of 90% to get admission into any of the toprung city colleges. Students in Std X also unable to meet the submission deadlines with greater emphasis on studies. Parents want wards to bag top scores and leave no stone unturned,” Chirawawala added. For a parent of a Std X boy, the money spent on projects has become an integral part of their monthly budget. A parent of a child who studies in an ICSE school said, “Students have to complete assignments throughout the academic year. We end up spending between Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000 per month. Students do not have the time to work on these projects ahead of the board exam. We treat the money spent on outsourcing project work as tuition expenses.”

The project work involves research and then summarising the findings. Once the guide has finished the assignment, students have to merely write it in their handwriting. A school told students to visit nationalised, private and foreign banks and then asked them to compare the fixed deposit interest rates. The guides ensured that different projects are compiled on the topic for submission.

Source:http://educationtimes.com/educationTimes/CMSD/Newsroom/1/2012010320120103134347609c39e6a93/Busy-students-outsource-homework.html

Computer Sciences Corp. (NYSE: CSC) has signed an agreement with BAE Systems worth up to $160 million per year for five years to provide information technology outsourcing services.

The agreement replaces an existing arrangement set to expire April 2012 and calls for CSC to provide end user computing and mainframe services, networking and storage support and application maintenance.

“As the defense industry continues to evolve, CSC’s expertise and support in delivering highly competitive, value for money services across our business in support of our strategic and operational objectives will be invaluable,” Dean McCumiskey, BAE Systems global chief information officer, said of the recent agreement.

CSC’s IT services will span 11 BAE Systems businesses, located in the U.K., Sweden and Saudi Arabia. The companies’ relationship began in 1994 with the signing if a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in the U.K.

Source:http://www.govconwire.com/2011/11/csc-bae-build-relationship-with-potential-800m-it-outsourcing-deal/

ABTO Software (www.abtosoftware.com), a global provider of offshore IT outsourcing and high-end software development services, officially announces its new slogan “Accelerate Business Today – Outsource to ABTO!”

The familiar slogan: “We’ll scope it and build it; we’ll update and then take care of it. Solutions with integrity.” has been ABTO’s slogan since 2007, but with the course of time the company has grown, evolved and felt the need to become more visible on the global IT outsourcing services market.

This new slogan summarizes the company’s core values, reflects its corporate strategy and reveals its mission to the world. It clearly manifests that ABTO Software is aimed at helping its customers accelerate their business by providing high quality outsourcing services in a variety of areas like Custom Software Development, Mobile Solutions Secure Software, Web Design and Development, etc. and across such diverse vertical markets as Banking & Finance, Healthcare, Government, Retail & Distribution, etc (new.abtosoftware.com/category/portfolio/) .

ABTO’s goal has always been to remain a trusted provider of advanced software solutions for customers around the globe. Since its setting up ABTO Software has grown significantly. Now it employs over 60 professional software developers to catch up with the growing customers’ demands. Our software and web development experts all have Master or Bachelor’s degrees in Software Engineering and Computer Sciences, which allows them to leverage various state-of-the-art technologies to create high class IT solutions that ultimately help ABTO’s customers grow, accelerate and succeed in the highly-competitive global economy.

ABTO’s team of bright dedicated software developers using innovative technologies has recently been working on a major makeover of the company’s website to better reveal the new company’s slogan concept. The new slogan vividly displayed on the updated ABTO’s website is addressed to the company’s current and prospective customers and aimed at promoting the company as a reliable software outsourcing partner.

Oleksandr Muzychuk, the CEO at ABTO Software, notes: “ABTO Software’s uniqueness lays in its flexibility and total commitment to specific customer’s needs. So, our new slogan is designed to emphasize that our prospective clients can rely on ABTO Software as a partner aimed at our customers’ business workflows optimization, and as a result increase of their competitive advantage. We are striving for long-term mutually beneficial cooperation with our valued customers, which is sure to bring unrivaled value to their business.”
Keywords: ABTO Software, IT outsourcing services, software development services, custom software development, software developers, software outsourcing.

Source:http://www.openpr.com/news/201009/ABTO-Software-Announces-its-New-Slogan-Accelerate-Business-Today-Outsource-to-ABTO.html

Time is valuable. For some, it is more valuable than anything else. If you run a business like I do, you will encounter tasks that need to be done but waste lots of precious time. A basic example would be comment moderating, checking for broken links or answering emails. While it is not always possible to outsource those tasks, especially not so if you do not want to provide a third party access to the data, there are other tasks that can be easily outsourced to free up time.

When I say outsource I mean to hire a third party to perform that task for you. And this can be anything that you are comfortable to share. From homework assignments to creating a new website, writing an article or converting documents. Outsourcing on the Internet works best for tasks that are technology related, even though they are not limited to that.

Lets take a look at one of the marketplaces where you can outsource your tasks. Fiverr on first glance does not look like a place where any sane person would outsource tasks on. You pay $5 regardless of the task which, depending on the task, feels awfully low. I’d suggest to use the search first to find suitable providers. Lets say you are looking to get your math assignment done. Enter math, or something more specific like algebra or geometry in the search form and look at the results.

Source:http://www.ghacks.net/2011/10/31/how-to-outsource-assignments-tasks-to-free-up-time/

Computer Sciences Corp. has signed a five-and-a-half year IT outsourcing contract renewal and expansion with the Educational Testing Service, which aims to advance the quality and equity of education for people worldwide.

If all options are exercised, the agreement has an estimated value of more than $200 million. CSC has provided IT solutions for ETS since 2001. CSC will provide network support, end-user support, security operations and other services.

CSC said it will also “continue to bring new and innovative approaches to the way ETS leverages IT” with its CloudCompute infrastructure as a service architecture for data centers that supports applications and hosts business workloads.

“We are excited at the opportunity to continue our work with ETS, an organization that has a strong grasp of the way IT can be used to more effectively and efficiently position their business for the future,” said Joe Schechter, president of of CSC’s American managed services sector. “We are committed to building on the great partnership we have formed with ETS and to further supporting their IT needs.”

Source:http://blog.executivebiz.com/2011/10/csc-to-outsource-it-for-education-organization-on-500m-renewal/

Investec Wealth & Investment (IW&I) has said the impending RDR compliance deadline of January 1 2013 is prompting almost three-quarters (71 per cent) of IFAs who currently manage their clients’ portfolios in-house to consider outsourcing.

This compares to a survey from Rathbone Investment Management in September last year, which revealed 42 per cent of IFAs were “actively considering” outsourcing.

Defaqto claimed in a survey in May there was a “significant move” from multi-manager methodology to discretionary management as a solution to the RDR regulatory burden for IFAs.

Fraser Donaldson, insight analyst for funds at Defaqto, said: “Despite more than £58bn of assets under management in multi-manager funds, from our study sample the biggest decline in outsourcing methods was in this area, where a drop of 9 per cent was seen.”

IW&I’s survey has claimed that just one in five (21 per cent) IFAs now have no intention of outsourcing their client portfolios to a discretionary fund manager (DFM).

On average, IFAs are considering outsourcing 18 per cent of their client portfolios directly through a DFM and a further 21 per cent via an online platform.

IW&I said advisers plan to outsource client portfolios to two DFMs and two online investment platforms and review these selections annually.

Tom Street, director of IW&I said: “Clearly RDR is a major catalyst that will drive many IFAs to begin outsourcing client portfolios for the first time.

“However, it’s clear advisers will mostly opt to partner with a limited number of DFMs and online platforms, and that they will look to review these relationships on a regular basis to ensure their clients are receiving the calibre of service that was agreed at the outset.”

Source:http://www.ftadviser.com/InvestmentAdviser/Investments/News/article/20110815/2ab07fde-c4d9-11e0-8325-00144f2af8e8/More-IFAs-plan-to-outsource-for-RDR.jsp

The electrical maintenance workers held a Friday lunchtime protest at the Lytton refinery, Electrical Trades Union (ETU) organiser Garry Rogers says.

In May, Caltex announced it was outsourcing its refinery maintenance work to a company called PSN Wood Group.

All ETU members on site would be made redundant.

Mr Rogers said they were being asked to choose between redundancy, being part of a small group retained in another part of the company or to be interviewed with the PSN Wood Group.

“Caltex has been so determined and arrogant that it even locked all ETU officials out of the site this week, even those with right of entry passes,” he said.

“So much for consultation and the right of workers to representation at this difficult and unsettling time.”

A Caltex spokesman said the company did not lock out any union representatives.

“Union officials must give 24 hours notice before entering site,” he said.

“We did not receive any such notice.”

Caltex says there was an extensive consultation process, which included flying union delegates to Sydney for talks.

“Caltex has engaged with employees and their representatives throughout this process,” the spokesman said.

“We provided everyone involved an opportunity to present alternative proposals that would achieve the same improvements in efficiency and reliability, however no viable options were put forward.”

Source:http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/caltex-workers-protest-outsource-plans/story-e6frf7ko-1226104255113

The Internet puts volumes of information within easy reach, and new research conducted at Harvard and Columbia universities suggests that we’re outsourcing our memory to Google as a result — remembering facts less and the places information is stored more.

In the study published today, researchers used a series of simple experiments to demonstrate that having access to a vast digital memory is altering how people retain information in their minds. When research subjects believed that statements they typed on a computer were saved, they were more likely to forget the phrases than those who believed the material was deleted. When the participants typed a series of quirky and engaging facts — that an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain, for example — they tended to forget the facts and instead remembered the mundane names of the folders they’d saved the facts in.

“Our memories are changing,” said Daniel Wegner, a psychology professor at Harvard and the senior author of the study. “So we remember fewer facts and we remember more sources — which website you saw it on or whose e-mail to look in to find that. … It’s like having information at our fingertips makes us always go to our fingertips.”

The findings, published online by the journal Science, will feel familiar to anyone who has lost Internet access for a matter of hours and felt suddenly helpless, or gone through connectivity withdrawal on vacation. But the findings also have broader implications for how we learn — both in the classroom and in old age.

“In my area, in Alzheimer’s disease, I can see how this application could be very helpful,” said Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. Because Alzheimer’s patients lose short-term memory, he said, it might be useful for them to have a strategy in their long-term memory that helps them retrieve information they can’t remember.

“We’re doing it” already, Small said. “Using the World Wide Web as an external hard drive to augment our biological memory stores.”

The experiments were led by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of pyschology at Columbia who was inspired while watching an old black and white movie one night. Sparrow knew she’d seen one of the actresses in something else. But what? She reached for her laptop, eventually recalling — with the help of the Internet — that she’d seen the actress, Angela Lansbury, when watching “Murder, She Wrote,” with her grandparents.

Then, she began to wonder: How did people figure stuff like this out before they had Wi-Fi, iPhones, and search engines? She decided to rigorously test whether people were truly outsourcing their memory to technology.

First, Sparrow posed a series of easy questions (“Are dinosaurs extinct?”) and complicated questions (“Did Benjamin Franklin give piano lessons?”) to see if research subjects, prompted by a question they did not know the answer to, thought about the Internet. Using a psychological test, she found they appeared to have computer words on their mind, such as Google, Yahoo, screen, browser, and modem when faced with the difficult questions.

In another experiment, Sparrow asked participants to read and type 40 surprising facts, such as “Bluebirds cannot see the color blue” and “Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.” Half were told the information would be saved and they could access it later, and the rest believed it would be deleted. Those who believed the information had been erased remembered it best.

In another experiment, participants typed the statements and saved them to folders with non-descript names, such as “FACTS,” “DATA,” and“INFO.” They were asked to recall the trivia. Then, they were asked which folder had a certain statement in it. To the researchers’ surprise, people tended to recall the folder names instead of the more interesting content.

Researchers not involved in the study said that the results demonstrate the efficiency of the human mind.

“This idea that a person has to know everything or try to know everything is just maladaptive — it’s just so much easier to remember where information is than what the information itself is,” said Richard Moreland, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Outsourcing memory to gadgets may seem like a distinctly modern phenomenon, but it’s actually an extension of behavior that far predates the iPhone.

About 25 years ago, Wegner and his collaborator and future wife, Toni, had an insight into how memory works — sparked by a question about where they had stored a sponge used for washing the car.

They couldn’t locate the sponge, and realized it was because of the intuitive way they shared and divvied up memory. He was her memory when it came to things that had to do with the garage and the car; she was his memory when it came to all things having to do with washing and cleaning. The sponge fell squarely in the middle. Since then, the idea — called transactive memory — has become influential, especially in understanding how group members and employees work together.

Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, said that while there are definite advantages to having unparalleled access to information, the new technologies don’t mean that people can just forget everything.

“It is quite different now, the speed with which we can call up information; the ease,” Willingham said. “I think it would be a pretty big mistake if we thought an implication we should be drawing from this is kids don’t need to know much.”

Source:http://www.boston.com/Boston/whitecoatnotes/2011/07/people-outsource-memory-the-internet/Qhh8×2LODird5MHqOefZlN/index.html

Grupo ASSA, a Consulting and Outsourcing Company which helps its clients in their Business Process Transformation through IT processes, announced that the Company was ranked by The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) to the ‘Leader’ category and listed as one of the World’s top outsourcing service providers on The 2011 Global Outsourcing 100 list for the third year in a row. Moreover, it was distinguished as a “Rising Star” enterprise.

To prepare the The 2011 Global Outsourcing 100 enterprise list, the IAOP does an exhaustive selection process together with an independent panel of experts which evaluate the companies capabilities of outsourcing global services provision, according to four criteria: size and growth, management capabilities, human resources competences and most importantly, customer recommendations and references.

Also, the IAOP highlights 25 companies in the world, that are reckon as “Rising Star” companies of the year, due to their dynamism, rapid growth and future projection; Grupo ASSA has been included this year, for the third consecutive year.

The 2011 Global Outsourcing 100 enterprise list was announced on The 2011 Outsourcing World Summit, in Indian Wells, California and the Ranking Global Outsourcing 100 will be published in FORTUNE magazine in May 2011.

Roberto Wagmaister, Chairman and CEO of Grupo ASSA stated that “we are honoured to continue in this year’s list, and it is a proof of our difference: the Business Process Transformation Model. Through this unique approach of Grupo ASSA, the proximity to clients and our nearly 20 years of experience, we lead the IT industry in Latin America”.

Currently, Grupo ASSA provides maintenance and application support to 40,000 end users of SAP and Oracle J.D. Edwards platforms, which belong to Global Fortune 500 companies, multinationals and large local companies in 30 countries in the world in outsourcing mode from its Delivery Centres in Latin America. This new international recognition awarded by the IAOP, adds to the Global Services TOP 100 and Great Place to Work, received by Grupo ASSA in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Michael Corbett, IAOP Chairman, and chair of the judges’ panel, pointed that “the information provided by participants in the Global Outsourcing 100 shows the size and strength of this industry. Outsourcing is enjoying strong growth and companies are outsourcing more of their operations than ever before”.

Carlos Castilla, Vice chairman of Grupo ASSA, stressed that “belonging to the privileged group of the 25 companies considered as “Rising Stars” by the IAOP, shows our commitment as a result of being dynamic and growing constantly – fully developed capabilities in the industries in which we specialize: retail, consumer goods, healthcare and mining”.

Deborah Hamill, Senior Managing Director Global Membership de IAOP declared that “The Global Outsourcing 100 and The World’s Best Outsourcing Advisors rankings help companies make better-informed purchasing decisions with confidence because these companies have gone through a rigorous process that has put their credentials through objective scrutiny”.

Source:http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/89034/

Telstra chief technology officer, Hugh Bradlow, has called on businesses to outsource their core ICT functions to specialised companies, including Cloud operators, in order to get with the 21st century.

“The way that we have done ICT in the 20th century is not the way we need to do it for the 21st century,” Bradlow told attendees at a lunch for the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia.

Businesses risked falling prey to forthcoming “disruptive” technologies without doing so, such as increases in telecommuting, changes in videoconferencing technology and context-sensitive computing.

Instead, he urged businesses to outsource those ICT functions considered core, either specialist organisations or Cloud operators where possible.

“We have to run security for organisations,” Bradlow said. “We have an operational security group who specialise in this type of thing of 300 to 400 people and it’s very hard for organisations to replicate that.

“But we can serve people that out of our Clouds with the same capability at a margin, which makes it much more cost-effective for the organisation you’re securing.”

Bradlow’s push comes as Telstra itself looks to outsource back-office and support staff through ‘Project New’, a $290 million business revitalisation project announced by chief executive, David Thodey, at the telco’s yearly financial results briefing last year.

The company’s continued efforts to cut fat and remove superfluous internal division has reduced a staff count once more than 50,000 internal employees to around 34,000.

Though outsourcing and Cloud migration strategies have resulted in companies like Jetstar whittling their resources to as little as five in-house staff, others – like maintenance services company the Programmed Group – maintain in-sourcing is required to lower costs and retain intellectual property.

Jetstar CIO, Stephen Tames, told Computerworld Australia that the budget airline’s IT outsourcing strategy, which has been in place since the company was first erected as a Qantas subsidiary, had on-flow effects to the wider group’s investigation of business service outsourcing.

Tames was also focused on developing the strategy as an “IT-as-a-service” approach, delivering the same capabilities to franchisees of the airline’s brand across Asia Pacific for a fee.

Telstra’s view on outsourcing also appears to have influenced its application platform strategies, with Bradlow likening the telco to shopping centre conglomerate Westfield.

“Westfield makes it money out of the enabling environment: The buildings, the airconditioning, the parking, the road; I’m able to draw some analogies between what we do with network capability, quality of service and those types of things and that enabling environment,” he said.

The mentality differed to that of European carriers, which had attempted to control the application store environment established by mobile phone manufacturers by establishing its own wholesale application catalogue, one which is yet to be considered successful against the likes of Apple or Google.

Bradlow thwarts emergency services’ call for spectrum

Bradlow also joined the throng of telco industry players opposing the possible use of 700MHz spectrum for emergency services use.

The Police Federation of Australia in December called for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to set aside two 10MHz bands in the 126MHz of the spectrum, set to be auctioned as part of the digital dividend in 2013, for use by law enforcement and emergency services.

However, its call was thoroughly lambasted by the communications industry, with Communications Alliance chief executive, John Stanton, labelling the proposal a “policy fumble of gothic proportions” at the recent Commsday Summit in Sydney.

The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association also called for “urgent” talks on the issue.

Bradlow this week said the proposal by the police association made no sense.

“That, to my mind, would be an absolute disaster because spectrum is the scarce resource and to give to an organisation that has part-time use and can never afford a network with the capability, the size and capacity we can by sharing it across the entire population seems to be a big waste of resources,” he said.

“We are working on solutions that would allow the emergency service organisations to share our network and to get the information they need in emergency situations. That is the most viable way forward both for their customers – us – and for them, by pooling that investment we’ll get the best outcome.

Source:http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=6199742F-1A64-6A71-CE42B06D445EA20D

Teething problems have hit the newly outsourced Indian passport and visa service centres, expected to cater to around 300,000 applicants in a year, Gulf News has learnt.

Many residents who had to wait for hours complained about the poor quality of service, such as delays and ignorance of the staff. When contacted, the two Indian diplomatic missions said that the delays were mainly due to technical glitches and that the issue was being sorted out.

On March 16, the Indian diplomatic missions announced that the management of the Indian Passport and Visa Service Centres, which has been under Empost since 2009, would go to a new agency BLS International.

BLS started operations on April 6. They handle the collection and dispatch services of Indian passport and visa applications and are in charge of answering all queries related to their service through their number 04-3594000.

Standard

“The services rendered by BLS International for the renewal of passports and other services is not up to the standards,” Hariette D’Cunha, a resident who went to the BLS centre in Abu Dhabi two days ago for passport renewal, said.

Empost had been providing good services without any hassles, she said. “They seem to be inexperienced and unable to manage the services.”

D’Cunha said that she reached the centre at 6pm on Tuesday only to be turned away since there were already too many people waiting. The next day her family returned and had to wait from 2pm until 9.30pm, she said.

M.K. Lokesh, the Indian Ambassador, told Gulf News that the Embassy was working with BLS International to sort out the problems.

“About 90 per cent of the problems related to the services have already been sorted out,” he said. The ambassador said the visa issuance has been going smoothly. “There are some teething problems related to the passport services but we are making all efforts to sort them out soon,” Lokesh said.

“There were about a hundred people standing outside the centre since morning when I visited the centre. … the staff at the centre was clueless,” said Mahmoud, a resident who had gone to the Bur Dubai centre.

Data upload: Official explains glitch

An Indian embassy official said that the glitch was related to difficulties in uploading some data fields into the system. “It will also take some time for the staff to become well-versed in dealing with the rush,” the official said. Despite repeated attempts, BLS officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Compared to Empost, which was the previous service provider, BLS is offering the services at a 25 per cent reduced rate. In addition to the passport fee, the service charge for passports have been reduced to Dh9 from Dh12 and for the visa to Dh37.50 from Dh50.

Source:http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/community-reports/problems-at-outsourced-indian-passports-visa-centres-1.792769

Unwillingness on the part of Indian firms to share business information is slowing down outsourcing of the entire supply chain management.

But there is perceptible movement in that direction. Indian firms in automotive, IT, organised retail and telecom sectors have started outsourcing more of their logistics functions.

“Internationally, external logistics service providers take part in the meetings at highest level before a product launch to provide inputs on supply chain management (SCM). None of the Indian firms have outsourced their entire supply chain functions…The person sitting at warehouse can give inputs like which products are returning from stores, what are the complaints,” said Mr Nihar Parida, Vice-President-Marketing and Logistics, Uniworld Logistics. Customers of Uniworld include Lenovo, Acer, and DLF Brands.
TRIGGER

Till few years ago, Indian firms outsourced transportation, and the basic warehousing work – provision of land for a warehouse and labour. That has changed in the last few years, particularly after the economic slowdown.

“We saw a much higher interest from customers to outsource jobs to logistics service providers after the financial crisis,” Mr Vineet Agarwal, Executive Director, Transport Corporation of India (TCI), a Rs 1,450-crore firm, said.

“There has been a significant change in the customers’ approach after the difficult times of 2009, when they realised they could reduce costs by outsourcing supply chain activities,” Mr Parida echoed.
VALUE ADDED SERVICES

The logistics service providers have now been entrusted with some incremental work. “In the last two-three years, some value-added services such as packing, bulk-breaking and kitting are getting outsourced to the logistics service provider,” Mr Agarwal said.

“Customers from retail, apparel, IT, telecom products sectors are outsourcing quality checks, packing, labelling, store-ready delivery, parts of inventory management and billing function,” Mr Vineet Kanaujia, General Manager-Marketing, Safexpress, said.

The ERP at Safexpress’ warehouse is linked with that of the customers’ with data on the minimum order quantity and minimum stock level to be maintained.

Indicating customers demand for additional services, Mr Kanaujia said, “The average annual growth of value-added services is 30 per cent while the logistics sector growth is 8-10 per cent”.
EXAMPLES

Say, TCI had to collect some items from an FMCG company’s factory and deliver them to retail outlets. One problem could be that the factory packs the product in certain lot sizes and the retailers demand the product in different lot sizes.

“We now get the packets from the FMCG company’s factory, open it, re-size the lots as per the retailers demand, re-pack, put the stickers, prepare the barcode and invoice,” Mr Agarwal explained.

Earlier, these jobs were not done by the logistics service provider.

Explaining the concept of kitting, Mr Agarwal said, “Suppose there are parts from 20 auto component suppliers, to be delivered to an automobile plant. We now unpack the parts, clean them, put them into a reusable pack and then supply it to the manufacturer’s factory”.
MNCs MORE COMFORTABLE

The multinational corporations (MNCs) are more comfortable outsourcing higher amount of their logistics functions compared to the domestic players.

“This is because MNCs have past experience of dealing with third party logistics firms and are comfortable with idea. They have the systems, processes and measurement systems available to measure quantifiable benefits from such a move. Also, the Indian logistics service providers are at a nascent stage,” Mr Agarwal said.
CUSTOMERS

Mr Atul Chand, Chief Executive Officer, Wills Lifestyle, a part of ITC Retail, said, “Not all (logistics) work is outsourced. Vendor management for instance is handled by us.

Essentially, job of the third party logistics provider is to maintain the inventory and ensure timely movement of goods. Also we look at consumption at store levels, before we hire vendors.”

Echoed Mr Dipak Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer, DLF Brands, “We have not reached that stage where we can trust the partner completely and share the entire business intelligence. The process and planning is still controlled by us. Most companies don’t outsource vendor management. At present, most players in India are not outsourcing the entire supply chain work. Most of the labour intensive works like warehousing, labelling; and basic processes like receiving, despatching the goods, are outsourced.”

DLF Brands outsources about 70 per cent of supply chain work and manages 30 per cent itself.

Pantaloon Retail, which terms supply chain management as a differentiator, has a subsidiary company to handle its supply chain.

Future Supply Chain Solutions Ltd is a specialised company providing logistics, reverse logistics, transportation, distribution and warehousing space and related services to Pantaloon Retail and its subsidiaries.

Source:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/logistics/article1696890.ece?homepage=true

01 Synergy – your Mobile phone application development partner

Internal restructuring of IT staff enables businesses to focus on more tactical work. This is a key component in the logic behind outsourcing in Ireland, reveals the 2011 annual survey by HiberniaEvros on outsourcing by managed services specialists.

In addition, outsourcing can help the company focus on core business, access broader IT skills, help with cost savings and deliver IT more efficiently.

“Releasing IT staff for more strategic work has jumped from No 3 to the top priority for outsourcing. The results of our latest survey suggest that companies want to use their internal IT resource more productively and outsource the job of making sure the system works,” said John Kennedy, sales and marketing director, HiberniaEvros.

The HiberniaEvros study revealed that almost 72pc of the companies surveyed are outsourcing at least some part of their IT. Seventeen per cent are considering outsourcing further IT functions, while 30pc are thinking about it. One hundred twenty companies participated in the survey.

The most common functions outsourced include hardware/infrastructure and network management, both at 76pc, network management, IT service desk, IT monitoring and web hosting, all at 40pc. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents said they are outsourcing security/antivirus, while 22pc outsource data backup.

The main reasons why companies do not outsource are due to having sufficient in-house staff.

Some respondents also explained they do not outsource because it is cheaper to manage in house, and because they are afraid of losing control. Out of all the concerns the respondents shared, security/confidentiality was the greatest barrier to outsourcing. This is followed by fear of reliance on an outside supplier. It also showed that finding the right partner was another common concern.

“All of these issues can be addressed by making sure to partner with an experienced provider and ensure that strict service level agreements (SLAs) are in place,” said Kennedy.

The HiberniaEvros study also sheds findings in relation to cloud computing. Thirty-six per cent of Irish businesses are thinking about outsourcing to the cloud, while 3pc already employ some cloud services.

HiberniaEvros recently announced a €1.6m investment in a new infrastructure as a service (IaaS) division, which will allow organisations to outsource in full their infrastructure to a data centre managed 24×7 by HiberniaEvros experts.

Source:http://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers-centre/item/21192-72pc-of-companies-outsource/

A survey of European CIOs reveals that 67 percent of IT leaders say they rely on outsourcers to turn ideas into new and improved processes, but just a third actually measure the impact of innovation delivered by their service providers.

Two-thirds of the CIOs said they would benefit from a framework for innovation and half would be willing to pay more for an outsourcer that could help them formalise and maintain a successful innovation process, according to the research conducted by the UK’s Warwick Business School (WBS) and sponsored by offshore outsourcing provider Cognizant.

As outsourcing activity picks ups (two-thirds of survey respondents said they are spending more on outsourcing than three years ago), moving beyond business-as-usual deals could benefit both customers and providers, says Ilan Oshri, WBS associate fellow and associate professor at Rotterdam School of Management and co-author of the study.

Remaining too bogged down in the day-to-day management of outsourcing relationships prevents many IT organisations from deriving innovation from the practice. “Many client firms are still occupied with outsourcing operations, trying hard to make outsourcing deals work, constantly monitoring SLAs and doing everything possible to avoid failure,” Oshri says.

Most IT service providers are equally mired, focussing on their bread-and-butter IT services rather than any kind of innovation consulting. “Many outsourcing vendors are capable of delivering incremental or radical innovation to their clients,” Oshri says. “However, they lack the capability of guiding and consulting their clients regarding the management of innovation. This pitfall in some outsourcing vendors could be the result of their concentration on mainstream outsourcing services-often their cash cow-rather than on an emerging area such as innovation.”

While many CIOs hold on to the traditional notion that IT should outsource commodity work in order to focus on higher-value tasks like innovation internally, Oshri says mature IT leaders approach outsourcing differently. “More sophisticated outsourcing clients seek innovation from their vendors,” he says, “while newcomers to outsourcing hope that by outsourcing a function they will be able to free up in-house talent to focus on higher value activities.”

An outsourcing relationship can reap more than cost savings, says Julia Kotlarsky, associate professor of information systems and management at WBS. Best-in-class expertise and experience drawn from multiple clients could theoretically be brought to fueling customer-specific innovation.

Oshri points to Shell as a company that has partnered with outsourcers to build a solid internal innovation function. They “bring together vendors to discuss future challenges, harvest solutions, identify the best solution, raise funding and execute them as joint ventures.”

The Warwick research found that just 22 percent of outsourcing engagements are joint-venture deals with profit-sharing clauses, while the remaining 78 percent were fixed-priced contracts.

The researchers interviewed 125 CIOs and 125 CFOs for the study and found that IT leaders were more likely to view their outsourcers as a potential source of new ideas than their counterparts in finance. Less than half of CFOs expected service providers to help turn ideas into new and improved processes and just 39 percent of them would be willing to pay higher rates for an outsourcer that could deliver proven innovation on a regular basis.

Source:http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3267803/it-leaders-rely-on-outsourcers-for-innovation-study-claims/

BRITAIN’S National Health Service has been told millions of pounds could be saved by outsourcing more NHS administration to India.

The call was made by the head of a government-backed company leading healthcare efficiency reform in Britain.

However public unease means these savings are unlikely to be realised.

Patients may not like calling an operator in Delhi to book an appointment with their GP, or having their medical notes stored on overseas databases. But as pressure on NHS budgets intensifies, John Neilson suggests the alternative is cuts to services.

Call centres and offices in Delhi and Pune already handle invoices and other administration for a significant number of NHS trusts for a fraction of what British-based labour would cost.

Mr Neilson, managing director of NHS Shared Business Services (SBS), said Indian workers were so good that it was only the potential for controversy that stopped medical records or bookings being similarly outsourced: “There isn’t a capability issue, there’s more a local UK sensitivity issue.”

After a decade in which the NHS budget increased by 70 per cent, managers were able to let efficiency slip down the list of priorities as they focused on improving patient outcomes. Now as spending cuts are enforced across Whitehall, waste of public money is back in the spotlight.

A report last October by Sir Philip Green, the retail billionaire, found “shocking” levels of government waste, which could save the taxpayer billions of pounds a year if eliminated. Sir Philip has since been deluged with complaints about NHS inefficiency.

Mr Neilson’s company, which is half-owned by the Department of Health, believes that its new database of NHS spending will make managers more accountable for what they spend.

NHS trusts are allowed to draw up their own contracts. Central contracts are available instead, but are not compulsory and are used for only 30 per cent of buying. Mr Neilson said that this meant that the health service was not making good use of economies of scale or expert knowledge.

Even more could be saved if managers clubbed together to standardise equipment and exploit the potential bulk buying power of the NHS, he said. At the moment, managers buy a bewildering variety of different equipment to do the same jobs.

“Out of 130 trusts we work with, only 30 of them buy the most commonly bought item. And that item is a Dell PC,” Mr Neilson said. “Even if they all just bought the same PC, just think of the savings that would produce.”

John Appleby, chief economist of the King’s Fund think tank, said that the NHS had made improvements in procurement, notably in controlling the drugs bill, but that similar savings needed to be made on other supplies. “I’m sure there’s some way to go for the NHS to exert its power. There are lots of areas where it could do more to extract a better deal,” he said.

Yet attempts to trim the cost of administering the health service by using private-sector methods have met with furious resistance. Only a few weeks ago, a Government-commissioned report recommended that 600 million pounds ($914m) a year could be saved by handling GP appointments through a national call centre. Outrage from doctors and campaigners quickly forced officials to back away from the plan. SBS has itself been criticised in the past for letting addresses and NHS numbers be accessed from India.

While Mr Neilson said his company was not pushing trusts to send more activity overseas, public touchiness about foreign call centres meant that most trusts were not exploiting this as much as they could. He believes that “significant” savings could be made.

“For certain aspects of our service, if the client said ‘I would really like to do more offshore’, there would be some things we could do additionally,” he said. “That isn’t what the market demands, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t do it. It’s something they could think about.”

SBS now has almost 700 employees in India, mostly engaged in data entry and financial administration – there were barely any five years ago. “That’s been a reflection of people’s increasing comfort in what we’re doing. And clearly what we’ve tried to do is focus on those activities which are not contentious,” Mr Neilson said.

“There is no clinical data, medical record data or anything with that level of sensitivity or anything that involves direct customer contact. None of that sort of activity happens in India. We’re sensitive to the market need that people feel more comfortable with that sort of data being managed in the UK.”

He said, however, that people must recognise the tension between complaints about inefficiency on the one hand and outsourcing on the other. “With the type of person who might make that comment about offshoring, they’re also potentially the first person to say ‘actually, this area isn’t as efficient as it should be in the public sector, you should do it more like this way in the private sector.’”

However, Katherine Murphy, Patients Association chief executive, said that outsourcing was often a false economy. She believes that when functions such as hospital bookings have been moved to India the service has become less responsive to patients. “If the health service is going to be joined up and patient-centred we need to be careful about this. Efficiencies have to be made, but not if the result is that patients are often getting a worse service,” she said.

With Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, determined to devolve most of the NHS budget to family doctors, SBS is in talks with GPs about managing their new commissioning powers. “The basic principles of purchasing apply.

Source:-http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/britain-urged-to-outsource-health-it-to-india/story-e6frgakx-1225980937411

Democratic attacks on employment outsourcing in this year’s campaigns are alienating a once-stalwart source of the party’s funding, Indian-Americans, who believe India is sharing blame unfairly for the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Indian-Americans have begun contributing money to defeat Democrats who single out India in ads blaming Republicans for outsourcing by multinationals. They are also sending millions to Indian-American candidates who they feel more fairly represent their interests. There are currently no Indian-Americans in Congress.

For the first time, USINPAC, the chief Indian-American lobbying group, has begun spending on GOP candidates, in large part because of the outsourcing issue. Outsourcing has registered high on the list of voter concerns about unemployment.

“There’s a very high level of energy and activism right now,” said Sanjay Puri, the USINPAC chairman. “We expect a little better from our leaders on our issues…and we are constantly looking at their challengers.”

One of the new beneficiaries is John Kasich, the GOP challenger to Ohio Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland. Mr. Strickland banned outsourcing of state business last month, and angered the owners of firms that do business in India, including some Indians and Indian-Americans, particularly in the technology industry. John Boozman, the Arkansas GOP Senate candidate, is also getting USINPAC money. He is challenging Sen. Blanche Lincoln, whose supporters caricatured Indians in an ad attacking her primary opponent, Bill Halter.

In Illinois, some 200 immigrant Indian business owners and professionals have raised more than $100,000 and spent hundreds of hours organizing fund-raisers, in part for GOP candidates. Some of those donors are angry about ads like those Democratic Rep. Phil Hare is running in his 17th District race against Republican Bobby Schilling. An ad states, “Bobby Schilling: Good for India and China,” and then adds, “While Illinois is hurting, Bobby Schilling is focused on jobs—in places like India and China.”

Indian-Americans who work in multinationals with South Asian operations say attacks on outsourcing ignore that U.S. companies outsource certain services because it is profitable for them to do so. More generally, they find the ads offensive and racist, Mr. Puri says.

Most of these donors supported Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign, said the Illinois group’s organizer, Shalabh Kumar, founder of AVG Automation, a Chicago-area maker of computerized automation systems. “The rhetoric [Democrats] use on outsourcing doesn’t make a lot of sense, particularly with respect to India,” he said. “What the U.S. needs to do is focus on its manufacturing base. Outsourcing allows the U.S. to be more competitive, and create more jobs.”

The attack by Democrats on outsourcing is “one of the most important reasons some Indians are supporting Republicans,” said Namrita Nelson, an Indian-born accountant from the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Ill., who formed the Indian-American Republican Coalition this summer. Ms. Nelson, who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, has raised $50,000 and built a team of 50 volunteers to knock on doors on behalf of GOP congressional candidates.

Democrats persist in running anti-outsourcing ads because they resonate with the electorate. In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last month, 83% of blue-collar workers and 89% of white-collar workers agreed that outsourcing of production and manufacturing work to foreign countries was a reason the U.S. economy was struggling, and more people weren’t being hired.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democrats’ House campaign committee, says the anti-outsourcing ads serve to highlight Republicans’ support for tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.

Republicans say that certain tax breaks for multinationals allow them to better compete with more heavily subsidized foreign firms. They have emphasized their support for free-trade agreements, which they say would create more U.S. jobs.

Indian-Americans also are energized by the unprecedented number of Indian-American candidates this year, USINPAC’s Mr. Puri said. Five Indian-American Democrats are running for House seats: Manan Trivedi in Pennsylvania; Ami Bera in California; Raj Goyle in Kansas; Ravi Sangisetty in Louisiana; and Surya Yalamanchili in Ohio. Additionally, two Indian-American Republicans are running for governor: Nikki Haley in South Carolina and Gov. Bobby Jindal in Louisiana.

Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304354104575568013588226960.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

24.09.2010 – 10:20
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Why Outsource Web Design Services to Indian Companies
IT, New Media & Software
Press release from: Global Associates
(openPR) – Introduction: As the SOHO (small office home office), SME (small and medium enterprise) and the big enterprises diversified its interest field in this ever changing technology scenario, they all prefer outsourcing to get advantage in this competitive market. There are many reasons behind for outsourcing of web site designing programs to the third world countries like India, China, Russia, Philippines and many others. Among these countries, offshore outsourcing web designing to India is the most popular and convenient option. To get best quality service in a cost effective manner is the point of attraction for the offshore businessman. But there are some other reasons for you to choose an Indian company to design your web site.

Labor Pool: India has many prestigious technical universities from where a large number of students graduate every year. With this large resource of brains, India is capable of delivering excellent works on web designing. New and fresh ideas in web design service always conceive from the novel mind of wannabe designer for the offshore business man. This large number of efficient labor pool always attracts the distance companies.

Cost Effective Service: In India the labor cost is much lower than any other countries. It can be applied to the web designing arena also. The higher numbers of accomplished computer literate from large number of technical universities of all over India, the cut throat competition in this web designing market induce the cost of web designing.

The Base and Quality of Work: In India, the offshore businessmen get prompt and best quality of web designing services in the given time frame. The infrastructure of IT field is made to cope up the outsourcing demands. The telecom and other required utility system give extra facility to the It hub of India.

The Outline of Government Policy: The government of India provides a helpful policy for the IT outsourcing companies. There is a national minister especially for IT for giving the field more importance. The government of India prefers foreign investment and makes it a non-export taxable service.

Major Helpful Factors: Apart from these reasons, there are lots of factors which compel the offshore businessmen to come to the IT hotbed of the world. The application of development, the financial processing and maintenance procedures automatically make India a preferred and dynamic field for web site designing. The expert and experience designer of India deliver the best web designing service in a very cost effective and time bound way.

On a Closing Note: From the above discussion, we can easily understand why India becomes the most sought after nation for outsourcing in web designing. There are a lot of companies in India that provide excellent web site designing service. Global Associates is one of the leading organizations in this field. The team of super skillful designers of this company helps to design your web site as per your preference. Though they provide the service in a cost effective way, the quality of work is marvelous. The web design team of Global Associates has a vast knowledge on HTML, XHTML, CSS, Dream weaver, Flash, PhotoShop, Illustrator and Corel Draw. The web design service include, web site design and hosting, development, redesign, flash animation, brochure, logo, CMS web site designing with Joomla, customized E-commerce site designing and many more.

Global Associates is one of the leading web designer firms. We offer the following benefits to our clients:

* Use of a wide range of technologies and platforms.
* Only latest technologies applicable for a business are used.
* Give superior outputs in terms of quality
* Quality is assured by detailed checking time and again.

GLOBAL ASSOCIATES
P-100, Block-A, Lake Town,
Kolkata
West Bengal
INDIA 700 089

PHONE & FAX : 033 2521 8508
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