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Thursday, June 09, 2005

MNC BPOs dumping India for Africa ?

Not the great rollback, but BPOs losing big business

Prerna K Mishra

New Delhi, June 8, 2005

With companies across the world spending more and more of their IT budgets towards engineering and automation processes, Indian BPOs are feeling the heat.

A few months ago, Daksh eServices lost some of the business from Sprint Corp after Big Blue (incidentally, Daksh’s parent company) automated the processes for the long distance major doing away with the need to outsource them to India.

Raman Roy, CEO, Wipro Spectramind, admits that there has been some reversal in the BPO space. “But that is happening because of two reasons: in the low-end of business (where automation is easier), or because of poor capacity and capabilities of Indian partners in implementing projects, which is a performance issue.”

The larger Indian players have already geared up to face the challenges of automation. Progeon CEO Akashay Bhargava says: “Any BPO worth its salt today offers re-engineering services as a value proposition in its sale offering. If clients are automating, prudent players would seize the opportunity to do it themselves than allow a third party to cannabalise the business. So automation, if anything, is a greater opportunity for us.”

Nasscom president Kiran Karnik also doesn’t look at automation as a threat. “It is well established now that the social experience of customers is less satisfactory when talking to a machine.”

India to face manpower shortage in ITES-BPO space by 2009 »
Wipro appoints new BPO chief »
India to hire workers with European language skills »
Indian call centres to swell with foreigners soon »
India to face shortage of workers with language skills »
Indian BPO staff quitting due to alleged racial abuse »
India set to become knowledge outsourcing hub: CII »
BPO job seekers to face all-India level entrance »
Mphasis opens its fourth BPO facility in India »
After BPO, India faces biotech challenge from China »
Indian call centres face African challenge »

More Big Brother

Govt allocates Rs 3,000 cr for SWAN

BANGALORE: The Centre has cleared Rs 3,000 crore statewide area network (SWAN) project under the national e-Governance plan in government-to-business (G2B) and government to citizens (G2C) domains, Planning Commission Member Secretary, Mr Rajeeva Ratna Shah said today.

SWAN, an e-governance initiative that aims to deliver official services to citizens through the electronic route, is part of the 25 mission-mode projects approved by the Government, he said at NASSCOM's India ITES-BPO strategy summit here.

Under SWAN, the Government envisages to connect government to government establishments through the Internet of speeds not less than 2Mbps and then connect the state administration with users in block levels.

Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have already submitted their proposals to the Government to implement the project. Mr Shah said there was also a proposal to provide unique ID number to every citizen and all businesses in the country. - PTI

Indian BPOs, a Lesbian Paradise

Hidden cameras show enormous on the job sex by BPO gals and guys at night
Preeti Singhani, indiandaily.com
Jun. 8, 2005

Indian BPO corporations have started monitoring their employee activities at night. The call center guys and gals at night are having sex with each other and these are getting into secretly placed video cameras watching them. The sex epidemic in India especially among call center gals and guys is rising at astronomical heights.

According to some think tanks, these guys and gals in early twenties get the sexual freedom at night working together. The sex activities take place during and after work hours in different places.

Many companies take disciplinary actions. Mostly they fire those employees who engage in sex at work. But the number of employees engaged in lesbian and straight sex has skyrocketed recently.