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Guy Kirkwood's BPO Backchat

9 sep 2004

D day is drawing near... The Antiphon site will become part of a new entity. The site will be up by the end of the week. This really is an end of an era as this web site has been up continually since Jun 1995 (before IBM!). After next week, there will be a static page and links to the new company. Thank you to all who have visited, commented and enjoyed. Now, onwards and upwards...

29 aug 2004

The ancient Chinese curse states "may you live in interesting times." Well, over the past couple of weeks, plans have been laid to create a global executive search business to support growth in the BPO and shared services sectors. Antiphon is delighted that it is to be part of this organisation... more news over the next week or so.

One thing is clear though - BPO Backchat will live-on (and on the front page of the new company website).

24 aug 2004

Today sees the publication of the latest Bulletin from the SBPOA

19 aug 2004

Taken directly from the silicon.com weekly roundup. Why? because they are so right:

This week has seen a victory of sorts for one of silicon.com's own grammatical bug bears. At last people are starting to write 'internet', 'net' and 'web' all lower case. Wired is the second publication of note, after silicon.com, to take this important, if not earth shattering, decision. "Why?" asked the Wired editorial piece, in full rhetorical mood. "The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was." Bingo! Welcome to our world - for that we'll even let you off writing capitalize (sic) with a 'z'.

The pioneering grammatacists and part-time neologists on silicon.com have been doing it thusly for almost five years now. Nice to see some people are starting to wake up and realise, as any geography student learning their cities will tell you, 'there are far too many capitals out there'.

18 aug 2004

I suggest you read a good article - Sitting Ducks-Two Failure-Prone Outsourcing Models from the Outsourcing Center. The survey found a significant correlation between root causes of failure and two increasingly popular approaches to outsourcing.

16 aug 2004

Nelson Hall and TPI have announced an exclusive tie-up where Nelson Hall will provide market information on the BPO market to TPI's advisors and consultants.

Erm, isn't that what TPI is supposed to be providing its customers in any case, and if it needs this now, what has it done for the past three years in the emerging BPO market? I think the answer is in the question.

15 aug 2004

Hewitt has just announced in increase in revenues to USD551m, an increase of 5 percent and a concomitant increase in profits by 13 percent for its third quarter. This is due to a larger than expected increase in outsourcing revenue over consulting revenue. Here's hoping that the Exult acquisition and integration goes smoothly.

7 aug 2004

I've been a might busy the past few days preparing a proposal for a client to hire over 200 people in a three month period. Hmmm, you can imagine why the blog has fallen by the wayside.

In other news, the NOA has made some predictions about the splitting of the Indian offshoring market which are quite prescient:

  • Consolidation: Indian companies are currently going through a "wheat and chaff" process - larger, specialist companies are snapping up the smaller outfits in a bid to emerge head and shoulders above the burgeoning competition in the global market. Recent deals that support this strategy are IBM's estimated GBP80m purchase of Indian call centre firm, Daksh, one of the first BPO companies to emerge from India's offshoring landscape. Tata Consultancy Services' acquisition of Phoenix Global Solutions is also further evidence of this trend.
  • Specialisation: whereas in the past, Indian BPO suppliers tried to diversify in order to cater for every offshoring requirement (e.g. call centres, back office processes etc.) there is evidence that businesses in this region are recognising that specialisation and expertise will help to keep them ahead of the field - for example Indian companies are starting to run business processes rather than just call centre work.
  • Training specialists: with the trend for specialisation, Indian companies are more intent on training to push their people to the top of their chosen fields. This along with the recent fright stories in the media about UK companies withdrawing business from India due to a lack of well-trained staff, means that there are specialist training companies springing up in India to train staff in particular areas- for example, the high number of call centres in India means there is a proliferation of voice training specialists who sell their services to the Indian call centre giants.
  • Indian companies outsourcing to the domestic market: with the Indian economy growing strongly, Indian BPOs are realising the domestic outsourcing business is also a potential attractive area to enter. Indian companies understand that there are economies of scale to be made in outsourcing parts of their business function to other Indian companies. For example, if they can outsource payroll to a local payroll specialist rather than do it themselves.
  • Indian Companies see other offshore locations as an opportunity as part of a full service that it provides clients: countries like China are now targets for Indian companies. There is evidence that in the future, with the tremendous demand for skills and with economic home growth, Indian companies may see India and China as their predominate markets. In fact. Daksh has set up a call centre in the Philippines this year.

2 aug 2004

FUD is coming! FUD is coming... fear, uncertainty and doubt has been an important part of Microsoft's arsenal when dealing with competitors. Now McAfee (the anti-virus software vendor) is blaming BPO and offshoring for the promulgation of virii.

"In India, BPO companies are at a higher risk of security breaches and they also run the major risk of data loss and compromising of confidential client information," McAfee India director Kartik Shahani said in Mumbai today. "These companies work all 24 hours and seven days of the weeks, with little or no holidays depending on the firm, which makes them vulnerable to attacks," he said.

So, let's get this straight; because Indian BPO firms operate in the same time zone as their Western clients, they are now more of a risk than the Western companies themselves... I don't think so.