Kprofessionals Blog

It is 10 a.m. and you’re deep into the first report of the day. The boss might ask for it any time, the fine tuning isn’t fine yet. That’s when the mobile in the next cubicle buzzes. Technically, it “rings” but in realit y it emits the deep-throated “maaaaw” of a buffalo trying to pull its leg out of a bog. This mother-of-all-jingles is primed to do encores. There’s no way you can continue working till Priya ambles across to answer the call. You vow to start a “law against people wandering off from cell phones” campaign.

“Mobile” orchestra is only one of the conspiracies in the workplace to sabotage your job. Madhavi, on the left machine, is nice to work with, when she stops talking. She commutes to deliver a daily report on her problems with MIL, maid and her master mind kid. She has enough complaints about her crisis-ridden life to choke any bandwidth.

Then there are colleagues who can’t work without music — play or sing, who fire an AK-56 of messages all day, ask for information at all times. It’s getting harder to concentrate on work. How do you explain your missed deadlines to the boss?

The problems

Bad vaastu, says senior accountant Meena. “If your cubicle is close to the customer service department, recruiters, sales, project managers on client calls, or right next to a conference room, you will be distracted by all the phone calls. Tough luck if your cubicle is next to those who vent their frustrations visibly — banging desks, calling names. If your cubicle is close to the kitchen, the sound of the coffee maker, the microwave and people chatting can be distracting as well. Sometimes photos (even family photos in revealing clothes) can be distracting to co-workers. Once, we had a group of scientology evangelists marching around the office parking lot for a few days. That was one distracting week for the entire company!”

Staying back or reaching early is no guarantee you can avoid workplace distractions (WDs): project requests, meeting reminders, last-minute/changing demands, tales of love life, emotional breakdowns …

The worst offenders, everyone agrees, are the loud co-workers. Their cross-cubicle discussions rise above equipment noise, weather, blackouts and water-cooler gossip. Constant chatting is their birthright. Why aren’t managers dealing with these problem kids? And there are the self-generated disorders — Information Anxiety Syndrome forces you to surf the Net, Attention Deficiency hooks you to the iPod, Orkut Angst and Facebook Fascination Digg you deep.

Varied solutions

“Solutions vary,” said Meena. “Relocate cubicle, request working from home a few days, get noise cancelling headphones and nudge co-workers to change those photos!” Or try these suggestions:

If you have work, activate your ‘Out of Office’ alert. “Thanks for the e-mail, I am off site today, please contact XYZ will help. Instead of the “away”, set your IM to “on a project-back soon-contact XYZ for urgent issues.” This way you’ll know if something comes up. Prefer voice mails to answering phone calls. Why do you think every call is meant for you?

About those chattering cube-mates who won’t shut up — clamp on the headphones in plain sight (have noise-free ones?). Chit-chat kills productivity, whether over cubicle walls or in the washroom. If things get unbearable, get out of the office. The chatter-gang is heading out for lunch? Sit glued to finish the work. One interesting recommendation is to block cubicle doorways with a ‘Stop!’ sign. Another is allotting e-mail time. A KPO issues a how-to manual to all employees on office procedures — “Don’t ask, look it up!” is the message. An NGO has put up an FAQ page on its website that answers all possible “doubts”.

Employers also organise “orientation” courses for “focus improvement” that could include yoga/breathing exercises, with methods like breaking down assignments into small segments. Some play the passion-linked-productivity game, allowing work-hour music and browsing. Tolerance for bad behaviour is the new management mantra, no doubt built on the logic (?) that adult habits are set.

Has an employee been fired for being a WD? No one will tell. But HREs generally agree that distracters can be rehabilitated, brought over with sound advice.

So jump in and deal with that chatter box.Why should you be asked to pay for overstaffing, for multi-tasking employees having too much time on their hands?

Satyam and Patni, Cognizant, and several other companies offering drug discovery and research services are stepping up presence in pharma vigilance, drug safety and ‘adverse event’ reporting.

An interaction with some of the tech firms working for global healthcare , pharma majors shows that this is emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments, wherein apart from technology experts, doctors, pharmacists and paramedics are being inducted.

The Senior Vice-President and Head of Patni BPO, Mr Sanjiv Kapur, told Business Line that adverse event case processing is a growing service stream. Increasing costs of healthcare and managing ageing population in the US and the UK are fuelling long-term care management, which is now part of knowledge process outsourcing.

“This is a fairly young but rapidly growing segment of KPO where apart from technologists, we are inducting doctors, pharmacists and even nurses who bring understanding of medicare processes and help in extending services,” Mr Kapur said.

What’s adverse event reporting?

Adverse event reporting relates to tracking changes in health or side effects that occurs in a person who participates in a clinical trial while he is receiving treatment or within specified period. This is a computerised information database designed to support Food and Drug Administration in safety surveillance.

During the drug testing phase, the work covers the entire life cycle process, including reporting on minor side effects such as nausea, which could even be fatal, he said.

The Practice Leader, Life Sciences, Cognizant, Mr J. Sairamkumar, said adverse reporting has matured and relies on advanced technology tools to integrate safety data gathered from around the world. By running complex analytical data, companies identify trends in safety data that may need further analysis.

Industry Concerns

According to Mr Sairamkumar, the industry concerns in pharmacovigilance include spiralling costs of adverse events process execution and support, lack of globally accepted formats and scarcity of qualified professionals to support this area.

IT spending in life sciences industry, which was $17.1 billion in 2004, is likely to reach $49.30 billion. Drug safety is listed as a front concern for 2008 for life sciences organisations. Cognizant has seen significant spike in opportunities in this area in the last three years, Mr Sairamkumar explained.

The Business Head, Life Sciences, Satyam BPO, Mr Pradeep Advani, said while the broader technology support for the life sciences is ever increasing business opportunity, a few areas within life sciences such as drug safety, litigation case process and patent related issues are where companies like Satyam have stepped up presence.

“We work with two of the three largest firms. For instance, the litigation case support process involves processing documents ranging from 500 to over 5,000 for extracting relevant information. This forms crucial input for pharma companies in their global business,” Mr Advani said.

Taratec buy

Mr Kapur said Patni acquired New Jersey-based Taratec, a life sciences consulting firm, and has created a larger dedicated team in Noida to support clients in the US with a large ageing populace to support in adverse event reporting.

While Patni recently announced the launch of Patni Adept, a new service to streamline drug safety reporting, Satyam BPO is in the process of expanding its presence in life sciences. While large MNCs like Accenture play a big role in life sciences, Cognizant believes there is big upside in this area with India advantage.

Adverse event reporting and generation of data is one of the most closely watched, addressed areas in pharmaceutical regulations, Mr Sairamkumar said.

Ranbaxy is planning to diversify and focus on IT/ITeS operations. The company is planning to rename its IT operations, Fortis Financial Services (FFS), as Religare Technova. It is reportedly planning to invest approximately INR 5 billion over the next two years for expanding IT operations organically in the domestic and international markets. In addition, the company plans to acquire firms in the IT/ITeS sector, primarily the KPO domain. FFS owns a 300-seater knowledge center in Delhi; it plans to increase the number of seats to 1,000 within six months. It aims to increase its foothold in the KPO domain in Tier II Indian cities to the international market. Recently, FFS made key acquisitions by acquiring significant stakes in Capital Market Solutions (CMS) and Asian CERC Information Technology (ACERC). While CMS is an Australian software solutions and services provider to financial markets across the UK and Asia Pacific, ACERC is an Indian IT solution provider to the financial securities domain.

IT professionals in particular may feel apprehensive as to how it could all pan out for them. There is much talk of slashed budgets and downturn trends.

The credit crunch initially hit the US financial services sector, but the volatility triggered by Northern Rock’s woes and rumours of other UK financial organisations in trouble mean that the crunch will soon filter down to UK plc as a whole.

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has twice demanded that UK banks do more to strengthen their balance sheets, so that they can maintain their capital ratios and support lending. But the banks are struggling to obtain cash to support their liquidity ratios. Soon, many business sectors will find it harder to get their hands on funds for investment, capital expenditure and growth.

From now on, the balance sheet and cash reserves for all businesses will be king. Banks are already restricting their lending criteria and only those companies with healthy balance sheets and capital reserves are likely to be viewed as safe bets by the banks.

Silver linings

But along with the clear threats to the IT sector, there are opportunities. In a recent report the UK’s National Outsourcing Association predicted that businesses would look to outsource high value-add functions such as business processes, application development and IT operations.

Offshoring is the obvious answer for many banks and businesses because it reduces the costs of transactional processing and IT development.

Although many may consolidate their businesses and be wary of spending on IT and outsourcing, there is an argument that spending now could reap benefits when the market turns. Investing in IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) could act as a transformational catalyst to address operational issues, cut costs and concentrate resources on core business areas.

Outsourcing also helps businesses improve their financials by selling existing assets and operations to suppliers and removing operational costs from the balance sheet.

Beat the offshore trap

All of this is fine, and clearly when cost savings need to be made, offshoring to cheaper locations makes sense, but what of those IT businesses and professionals in the UK who see their jobs and contracts move abroad?

The UK IT sector can improve its position by moving up the value chain, identifying areas which are not as sensitive to costs or downturns - for example, by supporting and developing systems needed by outsourcing suppliers, particularly those in BPO and the emerging knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) sector. Early adopters of KPO and suppliers of bespoke applications might find themselves well placed to weather the current economic storm.

The IT sector could also benefit from other trends that will appear as cost cutting becomes the watchword of organisations, such as:

• Governance outsourcing: companies that have outsourced their IT and BPO buy a contract management and governance service that reduces the costs of managing outsourced contracts by reducing the in-house department and servicing MIS, contract payments, SLA monitoring, change control services, and so on.
• A move towards project-specific, one-off outsourcing contracts will see the rise of agile suppliers able to offer short-term, business-specific solutions.
• Fees for outsourced services are likely to become much more volume price sensitive as businesses demand volume-based pricing from suppliers to control costs.
• Multisourcing will decline because of the expense involved in monitoring a multitude of suppliers.
• UK IT suppliers may offshore their own software development so that they can concentrate on innovation and delivering solutions as well as creating powerful sales capabilities.

The challenge for the IT sector will be to respond quickly to the changing demands and an increasingly global marketplace. For agile businesses, the rewards could be great.

Getting an MBA or graduating from an IIT institute will no longer guarantee you the best job. To be a cut above, learning a foreign language or two will stand you in good stead

Guten Tag, Buenos días, Bonjour, Ohayo Gozaimasu, Chen hao. All these mean ‘Good Morning’ in five different languages. If you are fluent in least one of these languages or would like to learn one of them, then you have great career opportunities coming your way. Analysts say that there will be a potential demand for over 160,000 foreign language professionals in the Indian off-shoring (IT, BPO and KPO) industry by 2010.

English is an alien language to many European, Latin American and Asian countries. And with an increasing number multi-national companies setting up business in India, people with a sound knowledge in foreign languages will become very much in demand.
“Students fluent in a foreign language can work with international BPOs, tourist guides with travel agencies, and also as translators and interpreters,” says Dinesh Govindani of Academia De Espanol.

From the IT and BPO industry to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry and of course, travel and tourism, being conversant in foreign language is the order of the day. “It gives you an edge. Language plays a supportive role in all professions,” says Sandeep Nulkar, managing director of BITS Pvt Ltd.

Every language offers distinct career choices. For instance, German automobile companies in India, will always prefer a mechanical engineering student who’s fluent in German over the rest of the toppers. Here’s what each language offers you:

German
Science and engineering courses in Germany are popular with Indian students. “It is better to learn the language here than while pursuing the course in Germany. There are also many university exchange programmes in which the students can participate,” says Walter Buendgens, director of the Max Mueller Bhavan. There are job opportunities in companies such as Volkswagen, Daimler-Chrysler, Siemens and the Indo- German Chamber of Commerce.

Prachi Mahamuni, who is working with Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEBS) as an associate officer, says, “There is a lot of scope to learn and grow in this field. Appraisals and salary hikes are quite common provided you work with a good organisation.”

Japanese
Dr Vidyanand Kinkar, who has been teaching Japanese for 25 years, says, “There is a lack of software engineers in Japan and therefore there is a great scope for Indian software engineers who are fluent in Japanese.” Japan has been exporting medical instruments to India, so there is a lot of scope and money in translating manuals and user guides. People who can speak Japanese and have a background in medical science are preferred. “Ayurveda is also fast becoming popular in Japan. That’s another area worth exploring,” says Kinkar.

Most of the Japanese translation work deals with financial matters, knowledge process outsourcing (KPOs) and asset management. “If translators of a particular language are a minority in a firm, they can expect a higher package than others,” says Rakesh Kumar, working with RBEBS.

Spanish
Students planning to pursue a career in Spanish have a plethora of opportunities ranging from teaching the language to working as coordinators for seminars. There is a huge scope for translators in pharmaceutical industries where the bulk of the work includes translating company brochures and legal documents. Govindani says, “There are many international schools in India that teach foreign languages, so the demand for teachers is always on the rise.” There are many good MBA schools in Spain and to get into those, one needs to have a good command over the language.

French
“Here, translation pays more than interpretation,” says Nulkar. In business transactions, all marketing literature and product software manuals have to be in French. Shreya Roy, who works at Oracle India Pvt Ltd as a language specialist, has done her schooling in French when she was residing in Pondicherry. “In our firm, we deal with many language dependencies such as making invoices in French and conversing with French customers,” says Roy. “A combination of an MBA and a knowledge of two languages always puts you higher than others,” she says.

Chinese
Many multinational companies are establishing business relations with China. Call centres, too, have tied up with China and need people who are fluent in the language.
“There are many companies in the country that import Chinese machinery. They hire translators that can translate the user manuals into English,” says Poonam Joshi, director of Bhashalaya.

 ”There are eight Chinese dialects, but Mandarin is the official language and is used not only in China, but also in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. Around one billion people across the world speak in Chinese (Mandarin),” adds Joshi.

If the job demands only conversation in Chinese then one can learn spoken Chinese which focuses on the pronunciations. If learning the script is needed, then you have to learn ‘Basic Chinese’ first.

Hebrew
Joel Saigawkar, a senior analyst, is an Indian Jew and has learned Hebrew in Israel. “I stayed in Israel for around four years and that’s when I learned the language,” he says. “I have done my diploma in networking, but I got chosen by Oracle India Pvt Ltd because of my language skills.”. There is an Oracle entity in Israel, and Joel’s job profile includes working on invoices, payment procedures and entering records in Hebrew. “However, not many institutes in India offer Hebrew as a foreign language,” he rues

For quite some time, lead generation for a product line at a leading financial services company was struggling to achieve projected growth. The powers-that be in the company brought in Regalix, an online marketing services company, with the hope that it might be able to turn things around. Regalix’s integrated online marketing approach combined with depth in Web analytics – helped grow the lead generation for the product in a significantly short span

Says Vikas Sharan, CEO, Regalix, “With increasing complexity of the market, working with a wide set of programs and vendors becomes cumbersome and unproductive.” It was on this premise that Regalix built its core value proposition; that of innovatively using the optimal combination of Web technology, in-depth analytics, and online marketing technologies to achieve its client’s strategic and revenue goals while maximizing RoI on the client’s marketing budget.

Clearly Regalix knows how to satisfy the big guns, as is evident from this customer quote: “Citibank views Regalix as a trusted strategic marketing partner. They have consistently delivered innovative solutions of exceptional quality over the last couple of years of our engagement. Regalix has proven experience in supporting an enterprise of our size and diversity, while respecting the stringent quality standards that we’ve set.”

Crowded Landscape
The marketing services landscape, as one would agree, is very crowded. There are traditional as well as new media players (read Internet, Web 2.0, Marketing 2.0) that build their value proposition around one particular aspect of marketing. For example, there are companies that operate in the market research area -helping clients with pre-product launches and feedback. Other marketing services companies are built around a tools perspective. Some operate in the marketing strategy arena. With the popularity of Google and Yahoo! one has seen many companies proliferate on the principle that search ‘is’ marketing. Then there are companies built around e-mail or social media marketing.

The problem here, as Sharan points out, is that none of these firms look at objectively solving the client’s marketing problems but often force-fit their services for short-term revenue, even if there is no hope of RoI on the overall marketing spend. “CMOs would have to go to different players for different marketing needs,” he says.

The Right Approach in the Internet Age
Marketing agencies should firstly understand their client’s strategic goals and existing marketing and lead generation programs. Agencies need to understand the tangible and intangible results of each marketing program and arrive at a normalized measure to compare results from each program – the RoI on program-wise spend. For example, if a company runs a TV commercial, the cost of producing and airing the commercial, and the benefit it returns by way of branding and new sales.

With online marketing, a marketer can switch on and switch off programs based on analytics and RoI. In short, the measurability and flexibility of the Internet is a marketer’s dream come true, provided he’s got the analytical rigor to make sense of all the data and dynamically respond to market feedback.

Internet is also about interactivity -with social networks, blogs, forums, Web applications, personalization, and marketing-based games. Enterprises can get customers to interact with its products and services at every stage in their purchase cycle. They can incorporate customer feedback, virally spread success stories (be warned, there’s the flip side of corporate bashing, which, if caught early and acted upon can really win customers over) and listen in on how they and their competitors are doing.

For companies like Regalix, where the team has IIT roots blended with Stanford and Wharton credentials and Fortune 500 and successful Silicon Valley startup experience, the logical thing was to set up headquarters in Palo Alto and service their global and India clients from Bangalore, Delhi, and Chandigarh. With its early start in this field, Regalix is a pioneer and today, the largest online marketing services KPO.

Comparing the progress of the marketing landscape with the IT services arena, Sharan says that like CIOs in the earlier decade, CMOs today are looking for vendors who support them end-to-end. Also, the fact that the marketing spend of companies is three times their IT spend makes an integrated player that much more desirable, and affords a tremendous revenue and growth opportunity.

Holistic and Channel Agnostic Approach
Take the case of a leading medical surgery company in the U.S.A., another Regalix client. The medical firm is engaged in providing specialized health treatments to the elderly (50-70 years). While the target group has access to the Internet, they are more likely to watch TV. Accordingly, Regalix designed a marketing framework with considerable spend on traditional media for this particular client.
Sharan Says, “We do whatever makes sense in a particular market for our customers.” His team, based out of the U.S.A. and India, believes that every marketing channel needs to be considered and integrated, i.e. figuring out how foot-falls in stores, advertisement on TV, Internet, print, and radio come together for a client’s marketing needs is what sets Regalix apart from other vendors.

When asked why a corporation would choose Regalix over another vendor, Sharan’s reply is two pronged. Firstly, marketing principles are horizontal and apply across verticals. Secondly, Regalix has adopted a vertical strategy, having already built a fair amount of expertise in retail, technology, and financial services. “We will expand our suite of offerings and verticals as we grow our client base,” he quips.

Innovation
Take the case of a leader in governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software. A couple of years ago, the company approached Regalix seeking its support in building a key differentiator as it was competing against other entrenched, large enterprise software providers. “We collaborated with them to build a vertical search engine focused on compliance,” recalls Sharan. ComplianceOnline.com today is one of the largest vertical search engines focused on GRC.

In addition, Regalix’s team of Web programmers significantly differentiates Regalix. Most competitors still apply only a traditional approach to online marketing, such as using banner ads, and miss out completely on the customizability that comes with integrating technology with online marketing.

Global Context
In a way, Regalix is unique in the market. Sharan says that even though there are players who offer end-to-end marketing services, their understanding is limited to the local and regional market. Regalix, on the other hand, understands the global marketing context.

On behalf of its clients, it aspires to optimize and not maximize media spends. In doing this it realizes that different populations respond to different media at varying degrees. That this understanding is not baseless is proved by the company’s customer profile; there is a customer from almost every major market in the world. Among its clients are large corporates such as Citigroup, Reliance, and Airtel, along with a slew of younger venture-backed companies in the U.S.A. and India.

Piece of the Pie
Unlike IT, certain aspects of marketing have always been outsourced; be it on the strategic marketing consultancy side or market research or the development of TV commercials, print ads, or other creatives using various agencies. The management at Regalix senses an openness among CEOs and decision makers on leveraging agencies for strategic marketing advice, program development, implementation, and analytics.

Agencies like Regalix also bring in a wealth of experience and cross-learnings from running large multi-channel campaigns within and across various vertical and geographical domains and are far more cost effective than in-house teams. From a corporation’s standpoint, the sensible approach is to have a lean marketing team focused on the big picture, and to leverage an integrated agency with a global delivery model, like Regalix, on program design and implementation

Who’s Who of the Call Center Industry Will Address Key Industry Issues 

MAKATI—JULY 11, 2008—Some of the biggest names in the call center industry are expected to discuss critical issues about the economy and the industry during the upcoming CCAP Annual Call Center Conference & Expo 2008 in a CEO panel discussion entitled, “Call Center CEOs: Rising to the Challenges of the New Global Economy.”

These country managers and chief executives represent some of the member companies of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), and include Benedict Hernandez of eTelecare, Dan Reyes of Sitel, Marife Zamora of Convergys, Vic Endaya of Advanced Contact Solutions, Bong Borja of PeopleSupport, Maulik Parekh of TeleTech, John Langford of ICT Group, Beaver Lopez of PacificHub, and Raffy David of Pilipinas Teleserv, among others.

They will share their experience operating in the Philippines, including challenges, opportunities, and growth plans. They will also assess global competition from emerging call center destinations as well as the impact of the latest economic issues such as the forex fluctuations, increasing inflation, the US recession, etc.

To further address these issues during the two-day event, the CCAP Annual Call Center Conference & Expo 2008 will also feature keynote addresses from four high-profile personalities: Senate President Manny Villar, Senate Majority Floor Leader Francis Pangilinan, former NEDA (National Economic Development Authority) secretary Felipe Medalla, and CICT (Commission on Information and Communication Technology) secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III.

“This is going to be the hottest lineup of speakers and panelists we have ever gathered for our annual conference,” says Raffy David, head of the CCAP Membership and Events Committee.

Two other panel discussions during the plenary session also deal with socio-economic issues. The “Call Center Clients: The Philippine Scorecard” panel features clients of third-party contact centers who will share their experience outsourcing to the Philippines in comparison with other countries. The “Support Sectors: The New 24/7 Economy and its Ripple Effects” panel will have various representatives from the food, telco, real estate, and IT sectors talk about the call center market as well as the industry’s impact in their revenues and operations. A special interest group is also scheduled with members of the academe, which will discuss demand and supply trends and issues as well as potential industry-academe alliances and initiatives.

“This year is by far the most ambitious and comprehensive for the two-day flagship convention, exhibit, and job fair of CCAP,” notes David. The event will be held this July 23-24, 2008 at a new venue – the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City. Now on its fourth successful run, it is the annual gathering of executives, managers, supervisors, and agents of outsource and in-house contact centers.

The CCAP Annual Call Center Conference & Expo 2008 is already on its fourth run and has drawn thousands of participants every year. Conference fees are P8,000 (instead of P10,000) for a Two-Day Pass and P5,000 (instead of P6,000) for a One-Day Pass if registered before July 22. Group discounts are also available. Other special rates apply to CCAP members. Fees include seminar materials, snacks, lunch, and certificate of participation.

Interested parties may contact the CCAP Secretariat at tel. no: 889-7763 or telefax nos. 886-4407 and 844-8341 or email events@mediafocus.com.ph.

24/7 Customer, the Bangalore-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, started operations at a time when the very concept of offshoring jobs was not much known.

The BPO industry in India has grown up in size and scale since then, providing employment to thousands of youth. However, 24/7 Customer, which could have grown much bigger in headcount, has preferred to maintain its leanness but never compromised the quality of services.

S Nagarajan talks about his company and its future plans in an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra. Excerpts:

In spite of being one of the pioneers in the BPO industry, you have not grown much in terms of headcount?

Our emphasis is not just on increasing headcounts or opening multiple centres. We grew our revenues by 30-35 per cent last year, whereas the headcount has not gone up in that pace.

It shows that we have started growing in a non-linear fashion. The focus is to improve the per-employee productivity.

Does it mean that you are going to emphasise more on non-voice services and high-end KPO areas?

For me, KPO, BPO, voice and non-voice are the same because these are the terms invented by competition who can not differentiate themselves.

When a client comes, he does not say give me 50 BPO or 50 KPO agents. He says give us processes which increases our business. We are experts on customer lifecycle management, and that is our niche area. We are already into banking, financial services, insurance, technology, telecom, retail and services.

We want to dig deeper in these industry verticals instead of expanding our portfolio further. The market is not saturated for all these industries.

In addition to your presence in India, you have centres in Philippines, Gautemala, Ireland and China. Is your plan to open centres abroad is driven by the client demand?

We open centres outside India basically to meet the clients’ requirements. Sometimes, many small and medium enterprise (SME) clients prefer to outsource business process works to places (like Guatemala) which are closer to the US geographically so that they can come to the centre in 2-3 hours. Larger clients don’t mind sending works to any location. Most of the clients in the UK prefer India.

Do you think India is no more enjoying the cost arbitrage it used to enjoy? If not, who would you like to blame for this?

In India, there are so much of added costs in the form of providing food and transportation to employees. India is the only country on earth where the BPO firms provide transportation and food to the employees.

Basically, as an industry we desire to do all these, because our cities do not have transportation facility in the night and no good road. We have to provide everything, and it is little more expensive to do business in India.

What about your plan to go public?

We will certainly go public, but the market is not good right now. We have revenues and internal accruals in terms of profits. We are not in a hurry to go public for the sake of going public. When it happens, it won’t be an exit event but a milestone in the company’s history.

Has the increase in fuel prices started affecting BPO firms like you?

The growing transportation cost is going to be a major problem in days to come. However, it is not affecting us now since we have long-term contracts with service providers. When the contracts come for a renewal, I am sure that our service providers will come and ask us for a hike.

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After strengthening their financial services business, Religare Enterprises, the erstwhile Ranbaxy promoters’, Malvinder and Shivender Singh are now set to focus on their IT venture, Fortis Financial Services (FFS), a BSE-listed entity, which will soon be rechristened as Religare Technova.

According to sources, the brothers’ are all set to pump in more than Rs 500 crore over the next 18-24 months to organically grow their IT brand domestically as well as internationally. Moreover, as sources within FFS inform ET, the promoters will allocate additional funds for couple of acquisitions in the IT and IT-enabled services spaces that the company is scouting for currently.

According to a source in FFS, “We are already in the process of identifying a few companies in the IT and IT-enabled services space (essentially KPOs) for acquisitions. These acquisitions will be separate from the funds allocated for strengthening our brand.”

Sunil Godhwani, CEO & MD, Religare Enterprises, who is FFS’s official spokesperson was not available for comment. Repeated calls to his phone went unanswered. It must be noted that Mr Godhwani is also on board of directors of Ranbaxy Laboratories amongst other group companies.

Currently, FFS has a 300-seat knowledge centre in Delhi, which it plans to expand to a 1,000 seats in six months. “The second round of expansion will focus on extending the KPO footprint to tier-II cities before the we eventually make a global foray. By 2010, we aim to expand the KPO facility to a 8,000 seater one,” revealed the source.

Copal Partners, a leading financial research and analytics company, declared that it has been named number one Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) company globally for investment research and analytics, according to the latest edition of the Black Book of Outsourcing 2008.

The study covers over 100 KPOs and is conducted annually by the Brown and Wilson Group, renowned for their consulting services in the field of outsourcing.

The study assessed areas such as leadership excellence, senior management direction, business transformation practices and client relations management. Overall there were 18 key performance indicators.

Expressing his excitement on the announcement Rishi Khosla, CEO and co-founder Copal Partners commented, “We are proud to be named the number one KPO for investment research and analytics globally. We are very pleased that our clients have extended us this honor.”

Over the last year and half Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have become minority investors in the company.

Indian IT-services companies are losing their grip on the global outsourcing ecosystem, a new report has claimed.

Only 10 outsourcers from India made it into this year’s list of the 50 best managed global outsourcing vendors, for the 2008 Black Book of Outsourcing. In 2004, Indian outsourcers accounted for half of the list. Nearly 25,000 outsourcing users participated in the Brown & Wilson Group survey, which ended in May.

The best Indian performers on the list were Wipro, Satyam and Genpact, which were ranked sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. In 2006, five of the top 10 vendors on the list were Indian outsourcing service providers.

This year’s top honours went to HP, which jumped up from eighth spot in 2007. HP also topped the list of top 10 vendors for financial and accounting outsourcing.

Rounding up the rest of the global top five were other US-headquartered companies: Perot Systems, CSC, Unisys and EDS. The report indicated that the survey closed the day before HP announced its acquisition of EDS.

Indian dominance prevailed in the realm of business-process outsourcing (BPO), with Genpact, Satyam BPO, Wipro and HCL BPO making up the top four vendors. Satyam also was placed fourth on the list of top 10 knowledge-process outsourcing (KPO) vendors.

In a statement on Tuesday, Satyam BPO’s chief executive Venkatesh Roddam noted the results as an affirmation of the company’s strategic perspective. “The categories in which we have been ranked this year — BPO and KPO — are the key growth areas that we have been focusing on and basing our ‘Specialty BPO’ positioning on,” he said.

The report singled out Infosys’s fall from the 50 best vendors list as “surprising”. At number 59, this year is the first in five years that Infosys has failed to enter the top 50. It was ranked number 10 last year.

Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson, authors of the report, noted that the company’s displacement was accompanied by “rising accounts of client discontentment”.

They said: “Over a dozen major customers cited the fact that Infosys has not melded their consulting and service delivery well. US clients cite a lack of American front-office support with an imbalance of too much delivered from offshore.”

Despite their slide on the list, Indian players remain a major force in the outsourcing industry, and outsourcers in China are still nowhere close to replacing them. According to the report, Chinese outsourcing companies have failed to make inroads into the top 50 for a second consecutive year.

Brown and Wilson pointed out that, despite a highly skilled workforce and solid infrastructure, “China is still risky”, particularly in the areas of partnerships, business stability and distribution channels.

They said: “Revenues are increasing for China’s technology providers but hardly touch a fraction of the huge global offshoring market share.”

“Based on recent client-satisfaction outcomes, the majority of those outsourcing decision-makers will not rank China as their first choice for upcoming initiatives anytime soon. [They] currently agree that too many barriers exist for China to take India’s place as offshoring destination of choice,” Brown and Wilson said.

The Indian Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry is expected to be worth $10 billion by 2012, according to a report released Tuesday by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).

The industry is set to grow at the rate of 25-27 per cent, provided a strong chain of qualified professionals is built, opening up the field for biotechnology and nanotechnology experts, according to the report on “Future Course of KPO Industry”.

Currently, the size of the KPO sector is estimated at $4 billion and it has grown at around 15 per cent in the last few years, dominated by professionals belonging to fields such as management, medical and engineering.

Assocham president Sajjan Jindal said: “There is need to create a new pool of KPO workers from emerging domestic knowledge-based industries such as biotechnology and nanotechnology as a large number of talented young people have joined academic courses for career excellence in these two areas”.

“In India, the KPO industry is banking on availability of this talent pool to fill up its seats, but now they are facing a supply crunch”, Jindal added.

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