Elite Projects Inc. - Global Collaboration Project Management

Ratna Kumar Chintamaneni

Elite Projects Inc. - Global Collaboration Project Management

* Elite Projects Inc. , USA *
* Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd., India *

* HRdex People Solutions * HeliosOS IT ITES Solutions * Ficus Technology Services *

HRdex People Solutions - A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

HRdex People Solutions

A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

"Jobs, Recruitment, Human Resource & Productivity Studies'

Ficus Technology Services - A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Ficus Technology Services
A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
"Truly Connected"

Options, Servicing, Consulting, Hosting and Managing Technology.

HeliosOS IT Solutions -A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

HeliosOS IT ITES Solutions
A Division of Elite ProCon Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

IT development, ITES Nerve Center and operation centers for business operations across industry verticals.

July 04, 2007 || Global Delivery Index:

Chinese to Overtake Indians in Offshoring by 2011

An IDC offshoring trend report, based on a new comprehensive set of criteria such as cost of labor, cost of rent and language skills, found that Indian cities are highly ranked while Chinese cities are on the rise and nipping at India’s heels.

IDC said examples of the cities covered in its new Global Delivery Index (GDI), which compares 35 cities in the Asia/Pacific as potential offshore delivery centers, include Adelaide, Bangalore, Dalian, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur, among many others.

Conrad Chang, IDC research manager, explains there are different risk factors to consider when evaluating outsourcing, offshoring, onshoring and nearshoring. “Some factors are obviously more critical than others and the GDI takes that into consideration,” Chang said. “Often times what differentiates leading cities from the rest is their focus on deal-clinching factors and the GDI weighs that more heavily than other factors.”

According to IDC, Chinese cities will overtake Indian cities by 2011 due to massive investments made in infrastructure, English language, Internet connections and technical skills, which are favorable towards offshoring. IDC said other issues exist, such as confusion about offshoring, onshoring, nearshoring and how to leverage different delivery methods for optimal results.

In addition, is India the only viable option and what are the other alternative global delivery centers and how to objectively compare and quantify risks between different locations, for example, is Bangalore better than Dalian?

United Airlines' Systems Meltdown: Lessons Learned

June 29, 2007

United Airlines' Systems Meltdown: Lessons Learned

By Larry Barrett

The airline's computers shut down for two hours while other carriers were up and running. The result: a multimillion-dollar loss and a hit to United's reputation. It could happen to your company, analysts say, unless you take the proper precautions.

The nightmare scenario that United Airlines and its passengers endured last week when its computer system shut down for two excruciating hours will happen again and again in other industries, analysts say, unless CIOs make significant changes in the way they manage their staffs and their systems.

The Chicago-based airline's June 20 debacle illustrates just how vulnerable a company can be to an innocent mistake—in this case, a United spokeswoman says an employee accidentally disabled the computers while running a routine test on Unimatic, United's flight operations system—and how far-reaching the consequences can be.

More than 260 United flights were delayed for an average of 90 minutes, and nearly 70 other flights were cancelled altogether. The timing couldn't have been worse. The system crashed between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Chicago time, right in the heart of the morning rush, leaving arriving United flights to scramble for the few available gates that weren't blocked by delayed United planes that were unable to take off.

"As soon as it happened, the I.T. employee who made the mistake knew what it meant to the system," says Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman. "It was just simple human error during a routine test of our flight operation system. It's unfortunate, but we're developing new processes that will prevent future issues like these from impacting our customers."

Making matters worse, according to Urbanski, was the fact that this testing snafu also knocked out Unimatic's backup system. She declined to comment on what new processes would be implemented, or if new software and hardware would be installed.

The Unimatic system, which was originally launched almost 20 years ago, provides pilots with flight plans, gives updates on maintenance information and crew schedules, and records the amount of weight and proper balancing of that weight for all outbound flights. Urbanski says the system has been updated repeatedly in recent years.

All of these applications, including the flight plans, crew scheduling and weight measurements, can still can be done by hand in a pinch—but at a cost.

Michael Boyd, an airline consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., told the Chicago Tribune that United's computer glitch will cost it more than $10 million in lost revenue due to refunds and re-bookings, to say nothing of the hit its reputation took in the process. Worse, while United passengers and planes were stranded at the gates, its competitors were up and running as usual. This wasn't a weather-related incident; it was self-inflicted.

"Of course, organizations could do more to prevent such debacles," says Tom Welsh, senior consultant at Cutter Consortium, an Arlington, Mass.-based I.T. consulting firm. "The live and backup machines should be more rigorously separated, and there should be someone present to make sure these [innocent mistakes] don't happen. Companies strive to maximize profits, but often fallible decision-makers judge the risks wrong."

Analysts say the financial services, retail and transportation industries are particularly vulnerable to the type of systemic paralysis experienced by United last week because they most conform to rigid and unrelenting schedules.

While each company or organization has unique I.T. issues and limitations, analysts say CEOs and CIOs should consider the following advice to avoid the type of disruption United and its customers experienced:

• Get upper management in the organization—including the CEO—to understand how the company's I.T. systems work, what could possibly go wrong, and how that would affect the business. That way, everyone can make informed decisions about I.T. investments and governance.
• Avoid running tests on a live system.
• Make sure it's not possible to confuse the live and backup systems to prevent regular maintenance or testing from affecting the wrong system.
• Improve working conditions for all business-critical technical employees, ensuring reasonable work hours, plenty of rest and the sharing of responsibilities so that no one person is overworked or overly relied upon.
• Conduct a regular and comprehensive analysis of the costs, benefits and risks of all I.T. procedures. This analysis should be performed by qualified technical staff along with business managers.

Despite inconveniencing thousands of passengers, taking a likely eight-figure hit to its bottom line and disrupting service for more than 24 hours, United was fortunate that the computer outage only lasted two hours. Had the problem lingered for another two or three hours, analysts say, the cascading effect would have sent United's operations into a tailspin for as much as a week.

"United now knows that it made an incorrect cost-benefit judgment," says the Cutter Consortium's Welsh. "Now that they're aware, they will probably do the right thing and urgently appoint qualified people to analyze the scenario to make sure it doesn't happen again. These precautions are analogous to seat belts or crash helmets—they save lives but often are left off anyway."

IT: looking forward to a New Year with renewed vigour

The ITeS/BPO sector continue to maintain high growth rate

The year 2006 saw a significant increase in venture capital activities, especially in the IT and BPO segments.

INDIA IS hugely visible on the world map, thanks to the IT professionals. Thanks also to the rapid strides made by the IT and ITeS (IT-enabled Services) sectors in the last decade, the Indian economy has come under intense world attention. This growth has had a spiralling effect on the economy. Given the current trends, the industry is bullish on the future. Yet, the industry senses a change in the landscape and realises the need to adapt to the situation.

The IT and ITeS/BPO (business process outsourcing) sectors have recorded a buoyant growth of over 30 per cent and the trend is expected to continue in the future. The growth was not just confined to large organisations, says a National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) report. The year that has just ended has indeed seen widespread growth, encompassing both the big and the small players. The IT sector is witnessing some clear trends among the big players. The year 2006 saw a sharp separation between Tier I and Tier II players. While the big six players — TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Satyam and HCL Technologies — grew above the industry average, almost all the Tier II players, such as Patni, iGate, Mastek, Polaris and others, grew below the industry average.

The ITeS/BPO sector continued to maintain a significant growth. There was a shift towards non-voice processes. And, there was a visible movement towards knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and value-added services.

The year 2006 also saw signs of consolidation in the marketplace. On the IT services side, EDS had acquired MPhasis and Cap Gemini bought over Kanbay. On the BPO front, RR Donnelly annexed Office Tiger.

Venture capital

The year also saw a significant increase in venture capital activities, especially in the IT and BPO segments. According to a study by business intelligence firm Evalueserve, 44 venture capital firms had already raised funds to invest in Indian start-ups, while another 21 were in the process of doing so during 2006-07.

The year that has just gone by saw some frenzied hiring by Tier I players. The top six IT services companies alone reported a net addition of one lakh professionals. With the bulk of the engineering professionals being mopped up by the Tier I players, there was little left for Tier II players who have started visiting Tier III and Tier IV engineering institutions. It was a double whammy for Tier II players as their attrition climbed above 20 per cent in 2006 and their ability to hire from campuses was also challenged. Even for Tier I players, the attrition climbed up in each of the last six quarters.

Shiva Ramani, Chief Executive Officer of SlashSupport, feels that Tier II cities can be tapped with improvement in the infrastructure and telecom connectivity, which should be the next wave.

With the dawn of 2007, the IT and ITeS/BPO industry should be prepared for the challenges and successes. On the brighter side, the industry will see more and more third party Indian IT-BPO companies and MNCs graduate towards sophisticated and complex services such as knowledge process outsourcing, remote infrastructure management, offshore product development and design and engineering services. On the competition front, the country will have to keep a close watch on China, the Philippines, Mexico, Canada and Malaysia.

"The growth for the IT industry in 2007 would largely be driven by three broad phenomena — expanded range of new services, including the BPO and IT infrastructure services; industries beyond financial services such as pharmaceutical, telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, media and entertainment strategically adopting offshoring; and European companies embracing offshoring in a major way," according to R. Chandrasekaran, President and Managing Director, Cognizant.

"Global development centres will also see a marked increase. Indian and MNC companies will leverage development centres outside India in a big way in areas such as China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Latin America to service global customers locally and The industry's move towards lower volume and higher value offerings as opposed to entry-level back-office services, will gain momentum during 2007, making for a more evolved and mature IT-BPO environment.

The China factor

The major challenge for India during 2007 is expected to come from China, especially in the IT segment.

Today, nations are competing in the global market and quality cannot be compromised. China has invested heavily in education and want to compete in the global arena. The other major factor is that the Indian government's spending on IT is far lower than the Chinese government.

SHANTHI KANNAN

In Chennai

Rising wages forcing companies to look beyond India

Rising wages forcing companies to look beyond India

China likely to be biggest challenger, says National Outsourcing Association

By Andy McCue

Published: Friday 1 December 2006

Skills shortages and rising wages in India will increasingly force UK businesses to look at alternative offshore outsourcing locations, according to the National Outsourcing Association (NOA).

Almost two-thirds (60 per cent) of respondents to an NOA survey said skills shortages in India will push up offshoring costs and negatively impact the decision of UK companies looking to outsource there. That echoes a recent warning by India's IT trade body Nasscom that the country faces a shortage of highly-skilled IT workers by 2010.

Recent data security incidents at Indian call centres will also stop financial institutions offshoring there in the short and medium term, according to a third of the survey respondents.

In terms of alternative offshore outsourcing locations three-quarters said China is the destination most likely to challenge India's dominance over the next five years on both cost and capacity.

Get the lowdown on offshore outsourcing

Check out our special reports on India and China.

Martyn Hart, chairman of the NOA, said: "There are a whole host of new supplier locations that many end users are starting to consider. Outsourcing has become a truly global market and this can only be a good thing for end users trying to find the best service in terms of both cost and service levels."

Concern about UK jobs being lost to India hit the headlines again last week when a Deloitte & Touche survey found almost a third of the UK public believes companies should be forced to bring jobs back into the country, while 82 per cent said enough UK jobs have now been moved offshore.

Online insurance company eSure revealed plans last week to bring its Indian call centre work back to Manchester, although it says it was always a temporary measure to deal with recruitment shortages in the UK and that India has proved to be an "immensely positive experience with very quick and good quality offshore staff".

But that contrasts with high street bank HSBC, which is ramping up its offshore presence in India with a new centre in Kolkata for 2,000 staff and a software development facility in Hyderabad.

The NOA survey quizzed a quarter of the 250 delegates at its outsourcing summit last month.

E-Commerce Site For Frequent Online Buyers

Internet Gold announced that Smile.Media Ltd., its fully-owned subsidiary, and Yedioth Internet, operator of the popular Israeli YNET portal have agreed to jointly establish a YNET-branded e-Commerce site.

The new site, which will be launched by the end of 2006, will offer a broad range of popular products. Profits from the site will be divided equally between Smile.Media and Yedioth Internet. "Our rapidly-growing online commerce activities are making an increasingly significant contribution to the group, reflecting the coming of age of this important new shopping channel," said Eli Holtzman, Internet Gold's CEO. "As such, we are now taking our e-Commerce activities to the next level. We are delighted to partner with YNET, a popular news portal with a large, highly-educated user base that offers strong potential to become frequent online buyers.”

Internet Gold is Israel's leading IP Group with a major presence across all Internet-related sectors. Its smile.communications segment offers a variety of Internet access and related value-added services, international telephony and enterprise/IT integration services. Its smile.media segment manages a growing portfolio of Internet portals and e-Commerce sites.

Business Process Management Tops Megatrends List

After talking about it for years, it looks like 2007 is finally going to be the year that IT gets down to business, according to a survey of CIO Insight readers. Helping their companies become more efficient by leveraging technology to create new ways of doing business is now
the No. 1 priority of the CIOs surveyed in this annual compilation of CIO Insight research.

The 30 Most Important IT Trends for 2007

Thousands of IT executives contributed to a year's worth of data that reveals the direction of the industry.

When it comes to IT, change may very well be the only thing CIOs can depend on in 2007. That's what the editors at CIO Insight found when we took each of the 13 surveys we conducted in 2006 and put them under the microscope to project next year's 30 major trends. We break out 2007's trends into four different categories: Strategy, Management, Security, and Technology. But they are all closely related. And each trend contains a wealth of information and statistics gleaned directly from the source: CIOs, CTOs, and other high-level technology executives. So look closely.

Will service-oriented architecture take a big step forward next year? Will outsourcing take a step backward? Will businesses finally learn how to measure the value of IT? These are just some of the predictions we make based on a full year's worth of data. Read on to see what kind of year you can expect in 2007.

Strategy: Seeking the Execution Edge

In many ways, these are the good old days again. Most IT executives are focused on growth and customer acquisition, instead of cost reduction. Freshly minted Internet billionaires once again roam the earth, and strategists such as Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, are revealing new ways to profit from the Web. Yet the main goal for enterprise IT isn't strategic innovation—but business process improvement. Why? In part it's because process improvement serves many masters. How else could you increase revenue, reduce costs and improve productivity, all at the same time? And investments in IT architecture and infrastructure make these results possible, sometimes immediately. But there are signs that IT's role in strategy is still too limited. It doesn't help that companies continue to struggle to make information useful and deliver quality service. For now, the pursuit of better execution appears more important than finding new ways to profit from IT.

Strategy (click here for Study details)

1. Process improvement will be job No. 1
2. IT works on closing the sale
3. Companies make their Web sites more engaging
4. Customer service gets a tune-up
5. Companies put their mounds of data to work
6. Information governance gains momentum
7. CIOs strive to be strategic


Management: The Metamorphosis Is Underway

Fifty-seven percent of IT executives say their IT departments are going through more change than they've ever seen. Why? Several major changes are taking place simultaneously. The IT function is becoming less separated from the rest of the company. Line managers and staff are changing from being IT's customers to becoming its co-creators. Technologists are being asked to serve as business process experts, project organizers and vendor managers, roles that require leadership and interpersonal skills. Outsourcing is carving away large slices of the traditional IT function, forcing IT executives to focus on minimizing the disruptions while getting better results from vendors. These changes will be painful for many IT professionals, but there will be ample opportunities for those who adapt.

Management (Click here for Study Details)

8. The division between IT and business will diminish
9. CIO compensation keeps climbing
10. IT organizations will keep growing
11. CIOs struggle to find business-savvy technologists
12. Outsourcing changes IT management
13. Outsourcing growth slows
14. Offshoring shifts from India
15. Companies invest in IT leadership
16. Demonstrating ROI will remain a struggle

Security & Risk: The Defense Never Rests

There is no choice: Eternal vigilance against clever hackers, greedy cybercriminals and clueless employees is part of the cost of doing business. But companies can still choose how they defend themselves. Some companies are moving away from Microsoft products. Others have started to treat security as a risk management issue rather than an IT problem: Instead of being a function that installs firewalls and enforces rules, IT security has become part of an overarching strategy of minimizing strategic and legal risks. So far, this broader approach to security is working. Meanwhile, compliance is coming to the end of its run as an urgent priority, since most companies have achieved compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But there is an important carry-over effect: Companies are still upgrading their financial systems and processes. Most IT executives believe there are still plenty of opportunities for automating the finance function.

Security and Risk (Click here for study details)

17. No abatement of IT security threats
18. Security concerns turn users away from Windows
19. Security morphs into risk management
20. Compliance achieves what government intended
21. Compliance spurs financial process improvement

Technology: Building the Bridge to Tomorrow's Technologies

In the 2006 Top Trends issue, the Technology section was entitled "The Search for the Killer Infrastructure." It looks as if that infrastructure's been found: Mainstream companies are well on their way to adopting Web services and service-based architectures, and moving to virtual servers and storage. These moves are already having an impact on old-school enterprise application suites: Some companies are reconsidering their commitment to older CRM and ERP solutions, and moving back to a best of breed approach to buying applications. But it's not yet clear whether service-based architectures will finally spur companies to get serious about improving data quality, or set the stage for finding more innovative uses of information technology. And even though IT innovation is no longer the sole province of technologists, IT executives remain cautious about user-driven innovation.

Technology (Click here for study details)

22. The move to a new architecture marches on
23. Enterprise applications start losing their luster
24. Data quality demands attention
25. IT reluctantly embraces Web 2.0
26. IT innovation loses traction
27. Business process management services and software will frustrate users
28. For business intelligence, the best is yet to come
29. IT organizations start going green
30. Dissatisfaction with vendors is on the rise

Global Project Managers Ensuring Project Success from Around the Globe

Cyber Group, Inc. Internet: marketing@cygrp.com

Company Information: Cyber Group, Inc. 12900 Preston Road Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75230 USA Ph. 469-916-7730

Media Contacts: Vice President 469-916-7730 ext. 309

MEDIA AVAILABLE: Cyber Group Featured In Dallas Morning News Global Project Managers Ensuring Project Success from Around the Globe For Immediate Release DALLAS/EWORLDWIRE/Nov. 21, 2006 --- Experts in global project management, Cyber Group, Inc. of Dallas, was the focal point in a recent Dallas Morning News business article that outlined the key elements for successfully managing outsourced global projects from the U.S. "It's a critical job since the project entirely rests on the shoulders of the project manager," said published authority Erran Carmel, Professor of the Information Technology Department, American University, Washington DC. "Global project managers are more than managers of projects; they serve as a necessary bridge between cultures," added Carmel. "Complex projects of an international nature always require a certain amount of 'human glue' to put them together and to keep them together." The Dallas Morning News story featured Shishir Madhugiri, a senior project manager for Cyber Group Inc., who has a job most people never dreamed of a decade ago. "Today's technology is what makes my job and our form of off-shoring in general possible," said Madhugiri. "For example, Cyber Group's software developers can post their daily work on a company Web site, which allows our software developers in Dallas and Delhi, our project managers and our customers to easily access and review the work in near real-time." As a cultural and technical link between Cyber Group's U.S. customers and their software engineers and developers in India, Madhugiri carefully balances his responsibilities as a project manager and cultural liaison to ensure that each software project succeeds as envisioned. "Even though we all speak English, sometimes it is simply a question of translating a simple concept from one cultural perspective to another," says Madhugiri. "It is our professional opinion, based on many years of experience, that as long as you maintain strict engineering standards, it does not matter in which country the work is done. In the end, the product is only as good as the standards that were used to create it." Cyber Group's project managers communicate by e-mail and phone several times throughout each day with the company's managers and software engineers in Delhi, usually to discuss strategies or clarify questions. In cases where software bugs must be fixed immediately, the Delhi team may work around the clock. Cyber also invests in its international resources by bringing Indian engineers and managers to Dallas several times each year to undergo training and to meet face-to-face with clients. John Pillow, Cyber Group's vice president of software engineering services, stresses that companies must make two decisions - one, deciding to outsource and two, deciding to offshore their outsourcing. Where they usually run into problems is when they simply hand a project over to an offshore company without maintaining project oversight from the U.S. "Mr. Madhugiri and our other U.S. project managers are like quarterbacks," said Pillow. "They have to visualize the play, make sure it is understood by all their team members, and then execute it in the field." Cyber Group, Inc. partners with customers to maintain, reengineer and enhance customers' software products, and to engineer embedded electronic control systems and products. Proven process significantly reduces customers’ time and cost to market. It offers customers a comprehensive, tightly coupled set of life-cycle software and system engineering services, i.e. services to engineer control electronics and to maintain, reengineer, support and enhance software products and systems through all phases of product life-cycles. Coupling of the resources in India with those in Dallas enables Cyber Group to deliver a virtual 24-hour day. Additional information can be found at www.cybergroupusa.com or by calling 469-916-7730 x 309. HTML: http://www.eworldwire.com/pressreleases/15980 PDF: http://www.eworldwire.com/pdf/15980.pdf ONLINE NEWSROOM: http://www.eworldwire.com/newsroom/309605.htm NEWSROOM RSS FEED: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/xml/newsrooms/309605.xml LOGO: http://www.eworldwire.com/newsroom/309605.htm CONTACT: John Pillow Cyber Group 12900 Preston Road Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75230 PHONE. 469-916-7730 x 309 SOURCE: Cyber Group, Inc. AVAILABLE MEDIA: View fullsize : Cyber Group Featured In Dallas Morning News (size: 1.5 kb) Experts in global project management, Cyber Group, Inc. of Dallas, was the focal point in a recent Dallas Morning News business article that outlined the key elements for successfully managing outsourced global projects from the U.S. http://www.eworldwire.com/mediauploads/cybergroupChart_r6.jpg

Fishing in the Global Talent Pool

The world may be flat, but there's a learning curve to global IT hiring.

Mary Brandel

November 20, 2006 (Computerworld) -- As a CIO at Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Jay Crotts knows something about recruiting IT talent on a global scale. The $26.3 billion company employs 8,000 IT professionals in 145 countries, including remote areas such as Iceland, Togo and Mauritius, a small country off the East African coast.

Shell’s goal is to hire the best IT person for every role, no matter where in the world that person resides, according to Crotts. And he’s a good example: Almost two years ago, he moved with his family from Texas to Shell’s London offices when he accepted the job of CIO of the global business-to-business and lubricants segments.

A growing number of U.S. companies — whether they’re global or domestic, small or large — are mimicking Shell’s approach. They may have job openings or skill needs in a particular country, but they don’t limit their IT talent searches to that location. And that makes sense.

Think about it: Some areas of the world are experiencing technology talent shortages — especially in key skill areas. Meanwhile, technology talent pools are cropping up worldwide, particularly in developing economies. No wonder many IT executives are casting wider hiring nets that reach into foreign waters.

New Rules

Hiring foreign labor is no longer just about H-1B visas and offshoring. Thanks to employee referrals, in-country recruiting firms, global job boards such as Monster.com and Jobster, sophisticated corporate Web recruiting sites and online programmer “marketplaces” like RentACoder.com or oDesk, there are more ways than ever before to communicate and collaborate with skilled individuals who happen to live overseas.

Some companies are directly contracting or hiring IT professionals with the understanding that they will continue living in their home countries.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Singapore, China, the U.S., India or Australia — it’s increasingly a global labor market,” says Kevin Wheeler, president of Global Learning Resources Inc., a Fremont, Calif.-based recruiting consulting firm. “If I can bring the labor to me, that’s good; if I have to take the work to you, that’s OK, too.”

Wheeler sees all sorts of hybrid hiring models cropping up and notes a general move away from blanket hiring of full-time employees.

“Smart companies are really looking at a whole mix of options — contractors, consultants, part-time workers, offshoring — and it’s being driven partly by strategy, partly by the ability to find talent and generally to keep costs lower,” he says.

A common setup might include a U.S.-based management and research-and-development staff working with a few programmers in Ireland, a couple more in China and maybe a dozen in India, he says.

And while cost is still the No. 1 driver of global hiring efforts, “the search for talent will surpass low cost in the next few years,” says Allan Schweyer, president and executive director of The Human Capital Institute, a talent management organization in Washington.

As that happens, Schweyer says, companies will less often ask employees to move and instead use globally dispersed, remote workforces led by a U.S. project manager.

But for companies just getting started on their global talent fishing expeditions, Crotts has some tempering advice: Referring to Thomas Friedman’s oft-cited book The World Is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), he says, “The world is flat, but terms and conditions are not.”

For instance, compensation packages, the number of hours that employees expect to work, even the length of the hiring process all differ widely throughout the world.

Consider that new Shell employees in the Netherlands start with five weeks of vacation, whereas U.S. staffers might get less time off but command higher pay.

And although prospective employees in the U.S. might not find it the least bit strange to be hired on the spot following a single interview, that would be jarring to someone in Latin America, where the normal hiring process can take three months.

“It’s hard for a global company to get local HR right,” Crotts says.

Reflecting Cultural Nuances

That’s why Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, with two-thirds of its workforce seated outside the U.S., has overhauled its approach to global recruitment. Led by Kent Kirch, global director of recruiting at Deloitte, the company has created a global selection methodology, a global talent management system, an international internship program and worldwide agreements with several providers of recruitment-related services.

Kirch also has revamped the recruiting section of Deloitte’s Web site to emphasize the company’s consistent global hiring practices while reflecting cultural nuances and the country-specific job opportunities, benefits and special programs available to employees of its local offices.

The company used to have more than 35 employment sites — one for each country — and no central job listing.

Now it has one global site for job candidates throughout the world, containing information on more than 500 offices in 90 countries. Almost all of the information is locally managed, Kirch says.

“We don’t want to have a situation where a person in China comes to the site and sees a photograph of someone who doesn’t look like they’re from China,” he says. “The content is very localized so people can relate to it and are attracted to it.”

Even so, Kirch says, positions are advertised on job boards in several countries with the idea of attracting talent both near and far. “We’re hard-pressed to find talent quickly enough to meet our business needs,” he says. “Our approach for recruitment, even for our local companies, is global.”

In addition to its 5,000-person IT operations in Hyderabad, India, Deloitte employs a few programmers who work remotely in other countries. “That’s definitely a trend, and I think it will continue to become more common,” Kirch says.

Deloitte relies heavily on online job boards and employee referrals in addition to its own Web site. It is currently establishing a cross-border employee referral program in which it rewards people who successfully refer overseas colleagues or friends.

“The workforce is more globally mobile today,” Kirch says, “so odds are greater that you or I might know a potential candidate in another country.”

Regional Variations

To recruit successfully, employers have to be wary about regional differences, such as the need to tailor benefits to the local culture.

For instance, Google Inc.’s Web site offers a “cycling plan” to its employees in Ireland, in which it contributes €200 toward the cost of a bicycle. And in India, Deloitte’s Web site offers free company-organized transportation that shuttles employees in Mumbai and Hyderabad from pickup points across those cities to its offices.

“It’s very difficult to recruit cross-border if you don’t have the right approach and awareness,” Crotts says. “I always have the local HR representative right beside me to make sure I’m hitting the marketplace with the right initiatives and terms and conditions.”

Companies also have to be familiar with country-specific legal requirements and traditions, Wheeler adds. For example, terminating employment in Germany is a very involved process that requires 60 to 90 days’ notice and is subject to approval by the government.

For this reason, he says, smaller companies without global recruiting offices often leave it to local recruiting firms to do the hiring negotiations.

Cultural differences also make it difficult to accurately assess the credentials of foreign candidates, Wheeler says. For instance, it’s common for European resumes to include photographs and personal information such as weight and age. “Legally, [in the U.S.] you can’t even look at this stuff,” he says.

Even interpreting skill sets is difficult, since three years of programming in Israel is quite different from the same number of years of experience in the U.S. “You’re not comparing apples to apples in many cases,” Wheeler says.

To help feel a bit closer to far-away job candidates, some companies are turning to online referral networks such as LinkedIn to find someone who knows a candidate personally, Wheeler says. Or they might use search tools such as ZoomInfo or Jigsaw, which are designed to verify or discover information such as a job candidate’s previous employers, job titles and other affiliations.

Know Your Limits

But no matter how flat the world may look when viewed through the lens of Internet-enabled communications, the virtualized global workplace still has limitations, according to Crotts. For example, he has developed a rule of thumb to avoid sourcing a team of programmers from more than two countries.

“The more countries involved in the development project, the higher risk the project,” he says, citing obstacles such as time-zone differences, methodology inconsistencies, language problems and evolving requirements that are difficult to track and discuss when teams are distributed too widely.

“It’s absolutely incorrect to say I can use global resources without concern for where a person’s home base is,” Crotts says.

Still, Wheeler contends that companies will increasingly hire talent no matter where that talent resides and then struggle to coordinate and manage the virtual workplace.

“Rather than bringing people to the work, work is increasingly going to the people,” he says. “We’ll see more employers saying, ‘Live your life, and we’ll send you a paycheck every week.’”

CREDIT : Brandel is a Computerworld contributing writer in Newton, Mass.

India will require two-fold increase in workforce: CII

India will require two-fold increase in workforce: CII By Indo Asian News Service
Bangalore, Nov 19 (IANS)

Despite being a country of over a billion strong, the Indian manufacturing and services industries is expected to face a manpower shortage, especially in finding the right person for the right job, in the next few years.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimates a booming economy - with about eight percent GDP growth annually - will require about 16-20 million workforce in the organised sector over the next 10 years to sustain the current high growth rate.A study, presented at the 14th CII quality summit here, has revealed that of the existing 8.5-million workforce in the organised sector, about 30 percent will retire in the next five years.'Inequity in the demand-supply of manpower will persist in diverse industry verticals such as IT, retail, banking, manufacturing, logistics, infrastructure and management due to lack of quality workforce, absence of vocational training and job-hopping,' said Anand Sudarshan, Manipal Universal Learning Ltd president.Participating in the plenary session Saturday on 'Building a learning organisation and bridging the talent gap', Sudarshan said in the knowledge economy, the IT/BPO sector alone would require a workforce of about 2.3 million by 2010 as against 1.2 million people presently.'With an annual growth rate of 30 percent, the IT/BPO sector will be hiring about 360,000 people in this fiscal (2006-07) and, in turn, create a million indirect jobs across the board to support its operations and infrastructure,' Sudarshan said.The mismatch between demand and supply of manpower in the industry is due to the shortage of employable graduates. Though talent inflow is large at school level, the output trickles down at higher education levels. As a result, employable graduates have become a scarce commodity and competition for the same talent pool is leading to poaching, attrition and higher wage costs in the industry.'As the Indian GDP is estimated to double to $1.6 trillion by 2016 from $8 billion currently, capacity building to create talented workforce and meet the targets is a challenge faced by all stakeholders, especially the industry, academia, government and civil society,' Sudarshan said.Though a whopping 195 million students enrol at school level nationwide, only 11 million of them go to college for higher education, about 200,000 to university for master's degree and just 16,500 for research, the study found.'Ironically, while the 1,540 engineering colleges across the country offer 525,000 seats, about 460,000 students enrol and 360,000 of them graduate every year. Only 200,000 of them have reasonable quality but require intense training to qualify for an IT job.One of the reasons for poor quality of engineering graduates is an acute shortage of faculty. With 15 percent attrition rate, there are about 40,000 faculty vacancies in professional colleges,' Sudarshan pointed out.'Talent creation and management have become the most critical business process for India Inc. Corporations are spending a 'disproportionate' amount of time and resources in raising human capital. More than anything, it is the intangible asset of talent that adds greater value to a company's balance sheet,' Grow Talent Co founder and CEO Anil Sachdev said.Citing the example of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation in talent management, Sachdev said the cooperative society was able to beat the multinationals at their own game by motivating its stakeholders, including the humble milk producers to perform and deliver at their best.Copyright Indo-Asian News Service

Here comes the speech BPO

Here comes the speech BPO

Bhargavi Kerur

Saturday, November 11, 2006 23:48 IST

Bangalore-based firm prepared US politician’s speech, giving a new turn to outsourcing.

BANGALORE: “Our governor has stated that Oregon will not outsource. Is this good policy or bad?” State senator Frank Morse raved recently to a gathering in Oregon and proceeded to list the innumerable advantages of outsourcing. Not surprising, considering the Republican’s known stand. Only that the speech itself had been outsourced to a company in Bangalore!

And guess how the senator learnt of the company, Brickwork India. From that bible on outsourcing, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, of course.

“When asked to give a speech on globalisation I sent an email (to Brickwork) one evening and received a response the next morning,” Morse candidly confessed. “The speech was a great example of how small the world is,” Morse said. “The audience loved it when I explained that a firm in Bangalore helped me prepare (the speech).”

Brickwork, headed by Karnataka’s former IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni, is no less jubilant. “We did it in two weeks and the speech was delivered word for word,” says Kulkarni. “But it wasn’t easy,” says Makarand Malu, who wrote it. “We studied his earlier speeches and tailor-made this to suit his style.”

Kulkarni and his colleagues see this as a trend-setter. If speeches can be written continents away, can’t books and articles be? Brickwork is already doing research for close to a dozen authors in the US and UK for their technical and business books.

Friedman said in his book, “Every time I think I have found the last, most obscure job that could be outsourced, I discover a new one.” He has plenty for future editions.

Now we have Alphonse Fernandes, a priest in Palakkad, conducting prayer for a dead man in Germany, Chennai’s Rosy Pinto doing secretarial chores for a New Jersey CEO, Bangalore’s Ramakrishna Iyer teaching children in London. Or Mumbai’s Ganesh Hegde booking tickets for a client to watch a movie a few blocks from his home in Washington.

Bangalored

Tuitions: Online tutors in India teach students in UK, US

Prayers: American and European churches outsource services to parishes in Kerala

Secretarial jobs: Indians offer secretarial services to CEOs abroad

Bookings: Movie, opera, restaurant bookings in US and UK are done from India

Lawsuits: Legal cases in the west are prepared in India

Here comes the speech BPO

Here comes the speech BPO

Bhargavi Kerur

Saturday, November 11, 2006 23:48 IST

Bangalore-based firm prepared US politician’s speech, giving a new turn to outsourcing.

BANGALORE: “Our governor has stated that Oregon will not outsource. Is this good policy or bad?” State senator Frank Morse raved recently to a gathering in Oregon and proceeded to list the innumerable advantages of outsourcing. Not surprising, considering the Republican’s known stand. Only that the speech itself had been outsourced to a company in Bangalore!

And guess how the senator learnt of the company, Brickwork India. From that bible on outsourcing, The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, of course.

“When asked to give a speech on globalisation I sent an email (to Brickwork) one evening and received a response the next morning,” Morse candidly confessed. “The speech was a great example of how small the world is,” Morse said. “The audience loved it when I explained that a firm in Bangalore helped me prepare (the speech).”

Brickwork, headed by Karnataka’s former IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni, is no less jubilant. “We did it in two weeks and the speech was delivered word for word,” says Kulkarni. “But it wasn’t easy,” says Makarand Malu, who wrote it. “We studied his earlier speeches and tailor-made this to suit his style.”

Kulkarni and his colleagues see this as a trend-setter. If speeches can be written continents away, can’t books and articles be? Brickwork is already doing research for close to a dozen authors in the US and UK for their technical and business books.

Friedman said in his book, “Every time I think I have found the last, most obscure job that could be outsourced, I discover a new one.” He has plenty for future editions.

Now we have Alphonse Fernandes, a priest in Palakkad, conducting prayer for a dead man in Germany, Chennai’s Rosy Pinto doing secretarial chores for a New Jersey CEO, Bangalore’s Ramakrishna Iyer teaching children in London. Or Mumbai’s Ganesh Hegde booking tickets for a client to watch a movie a few blocks from his home in Washington.

Bangalored

Tuitions: Online tutors in India teach students in UK, US

Prayers: American and European churches outsource services to parishes in Kerala

Secretarial jobs: Indians offer secretarial services to CEOs abroad

Bookings: Movie, opera, restaurant bookings in US and UK are done from India

Lawsuits: Legal cases in the west are prepared in India

Global Rise Of Services Industry Challenges Midsize U.S. Players

Posted 11/9/2006
While the biggest U.S. tech services are well along the globalization trail, some smaller outsourcing firms have had a hard time in the transition.
Unisys (UIS) and Keane (KEA) are among companies that were slow to grasp the importance of global software delivery, says Stephanie Moore, an analyst with Forrester Research. Both have posted spotty sales and earnings in recent years.
"They thought it was a fad," Moore said.
Most U.S. tech services companies are scrambling to keep up with Indian outsourcing companies that offer skilled tech services for computer programming and business processes. Salaries for workers in India and other developing countries are lower than in the West.
"Even EDS spent too long adapting to this change," Moore said.
The three biggest U.S. outsourcing companies — EDS, (EDS) IBM (IBM) and Accenture (ACN) — have invested big bucks to catch up. They've hired tens of thousands of workers in India and elsewhere.
That puts pressure on the second-tier U.S. tech services providers. "It's a talent war, and a war for credibility and prestige," Moore said.
Some of these services firms, such as Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) and Syntel, (SYNT) have fared well by investing heavily to create a presence in India.
Such moves are essential to battle the low-cost, high-quality offshore model deployed by Indian outfits such as Wipro (WIT) and Infosys. (INFY) In general, North American firms were late in responding to the challenge from their Indian rivals, says Azim Premji, the managing director and chairman of Wipro.
By the late 1990s, most North American firms already had large customer bases. So they overlooked the new offshore model while the Indian firms grew up, Premji says.
"They didn't see how the new business model worked, and their leadership was not sensitive to these changes," he said. "They downplayed it and thought it would go away, which is really absurd."
Premji notes a parallel to the dwindling fortunes of U.S. manufacturers and automakers in the past 20 years. Many were slow to react as offshore producers rose up.
Last month, Paris-based Capgemini said it would pay $1.25 billion to buy Kanbay International. (KBAY) Kanbay is an outsourcing firm based in Illinois with a big staff in India. That deal should help Capgemini expand outside of Europe and will give it more U.S. clients and 6,000 programmers in India, Moore says.
"The acquisition strengthens Capgemini's beleaguered presence in North America and brings it a renewed focus in banking and financial services, as well as a strengthened offshore presence," she wrote in a recent research note.
Cognizant has long been known as a U.S.-based outsourcing firm with strong ties to India. Syntel, which provides software and consulting, has invested $25 million over the past two years to build software centers in Pune and Chennai, India.
Syntel has increased its mix of offshore projects from 64% of total projects one year ago to 71% in the recent third quarter. It plans to have 10,000 programmers on an 80-acre campus in Pune by 2009. Groundbreaking starts on another 30-acre campus in Chennai later this year, says Syntel Chief Executive Bharat Desai.
"We've made a huge commitment to our infrastructure in India, to attract both top customers and employees," he said. "The important thing is creating a competitive advantage by fundamentally changing the cost structure and improving the level of service."
Today, many businesses in need of tech services see outsourcing as more than a simple cost saver. They view it as a strategic advantage, helping to improve operations and speed products to market.
In June, Syntel surveyed 154 tech executives at some of the world's largest companies. Just 4% cited cost as their deciding factor when choosing a tech services provider. Instead, they looked for experience and a good reputation. Outsourcers can make their names only by solving client problems, Premji says. "In the service business, you need a big list of customer references," he said. "Eventually, if you add value to the customer, you will succeed."

India now exporting jobs to US

India now exporting jobs to US

Sunday, 05 November , 2006, 13:22

New Delhi: IT professionals in the US may soon stop complaining about their jobs being 'Bangalored' as the latest trend shows that India has also started exporting jobs to the US to meet the demand generated by widespread growth in the technology space. With the global technology trade expanding further, countries like India and China are no longer just the recipients of foreign investments and outsourced jobs, they are now exporting jobs to the US as well by opening R&D and manufacturing facilities there, a new study shows. In a reversal of trends, Indian and Chinese companies are now exporting jobs to America by expanding their presence on the US soil -- hence proving that the global tech trade can create win-win opportunities for all nations involved, global IT research major Forrester said in a report. As the domestic firms from two Asian countries - such as India's Tata Group and Infosys and China's Lenovo and Haier - started expanding abroad, they were creating new investment projects and were hiring sales and service staff worldwide including the US, Forrester Research's Navi Radjou said. According to the data compiled by IBM-Plant Location International, India moved up to the seventh position in the league of FDI origin countries in terms of the number of projects in 2005, from its 10th position in the previous year with as many as 218 projects. While the US was the biggest recipient of Chinese FDI in 2005, the United Kingdom received the highest number of FDI projects from India. The US was the fourth biggest FDI recipient from India in 2005 with a total of 17 projects, as against 45 received by the UK.

Research says : The Web is the Most Common Way to Sell

The "e" in "e-commerce" now stands for "everyday." The Internet, once a novelty, then an important customer service and sales tool, has now emerged as the most popular sales channel. But are companies getting all the benefits they could? That's the question we are asking in our new Customer Strategies survey, on which we will be reporting throughout November. This week's report has two parts: In our first finding, we report that companies are still focused on growth, and are making customer acquisition their first priority. In finding 2, we examine how the Internet compares with other sales channels. It turns out that at least four other channels are more profitable than company Web sites, B2B exchanges, online auction sites and retailers. We also found that few companies are getting the bulk of their new customers from the Web. Can companies do a much better job of selling on the Web? In the following weeks, we'll be broadening our inquiry, looking at IT strategies for marketing, sales and customer service.

Finding 1. The hunt is on for new customers; most companies continue to favor growth over cost-cutting.
In general, companies are placing greater emphasis on acquiring new customers rather than on ways to achieve revenue growth or increase profits. That's especially true for B2C companies. But for companies that serve other businesses, doing more business with current clients is also an important goal. To earn repeat business, these firms need to know their customers well and provide first-rate customer service. This helps explains why B2B companies—and especially companies that are both B2B and B2C—place a higher priority on engaging and analyzing customers.






Finding 2. Nine out of 10 companies sell on the Web, but only half say the Internet is among their most profitable channels.
E-commerce is everyday business now, but it's not about to make your sales force and telemarketers obsolete. Field sales, retail stores, telephone sales and distributors are all more profitable channels, despite the additional labor costs. The Web is most adept at reaching niche markets—the so-called "long tail"—and most profitable when a company's Web site attracts new customers. Still, old and new customers prefer other ways of doing business, and the best way to use technology may be to help salespeople instead of replacing them. However, it's worth noting that the Internet is most successful at companies that serve both consumers and businesses. For example, the complexity of financial-services companies seems to make the Internet an effective alternative to traditional channels. Also noteworthy: Few companies have found a way to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies to turn a profit.






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BPO a No Go? No Action Taken in 25 percent of U.S. Sourcing Evaluations

Business process outsourcing contracts not awarded in 30 percent of evaluations; vendors must improve location mix, delivery capability, NelsonHall says

Boston — October 31, 2006 — Levels of business process outsourcing contract awards in North America over the past two years have not matched industry expectations as nearly one-third of BPO sourcing evaluations have failed to result in any action, according to a new study from analyst firm NelsonHall.

In a report on its research into factors inhibiting the adoption of BPO in North America, NelsonHall said that vendors need to improve offshore location mix and delivery capability.

The total contract value (TCV) of BPO awards has declined by approximately 50 percent in North America from a peak of $15.4 billion in the 12-month period ending September 2004 to $7.5 billion for the 12-month period ending September 2006, the analyst firm reported.

Capabilities Critical

Some of this decline can be attributed to political factors, but capability factors are also critical. NelsonHall research has identified that no action is taken in one-quarter of sourcing evaluations where BPO and use of captive centers are evaluated, and BPO contracts are not awarded in 30 percent of instances where BPO is evaluated.

Sourcing managers expect that the level of BPO contract awards arising from sourcing evaluations will increase in future. However, in order for this increase in activity to occur, vendors will need to meet sourcing manager expectations by improving their BPO delivery capability. In particular, they will need to meet the following conditions:

* Improved process operations knowledge

* Proven cost reduction capability

* Improved offshore location mix and delivery capability

Process Proficiency Preferred

Eighty percent of U.S. sourcing managers said that a lack of process operations knowledge within a vendor under consideration has led to the rejection of BPO. Contrary to popular expectation, sourcing managers select BPO over use of captive centers to achieve access to superior expertise, particularly process expertise, to drive an increase in service quality.

Where cost reduction is required without an accompanying improvement in existing processes and service quality, U.S. sourcing managers will often favor use of captive centers in order to minimize cost and avoid payment of margin to vendors. Therefore, superior process capability is essential for BPO vendor success and needs to be more widely demonstrated than at present, NelsonHall said.

Caution on Cost Reductions

The research also identified that vendors are frequently failing to justify the levels of cost reduction promised during the bidding focus. Vendors are offering cost savings, but two-thirds of sourcing managers have rejected BPO as a sourcing option because of a lack of belief in the vendor's ability to deliver the cost savings promised, which again can be attributed to a failure to demonstrate deep process operations knowledge.

Vendors also need to improve their offshore location mix and delivery capability and should not impose locations on their clients. India and China seem destined to be the major offshore powerhouses for the foreseeable future, but both these locations currently have limitations, and vendors need to offer a wider range of geographic options in addition to enhancing their capabilities in India and China, according to the analyst firm.

At the moment, it is difficult to find locations with high all-round skills. While India scores highly with U.S. sourcing managers in terms of process transfer and take-on skills, it lags behind Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico in terms of cultural compatibility. However, these Latin American countries, like China, are perceived by U.S. sourcing managers to lag behind India in the development of industry-specific process knowledge.

Open-source ERP vendor hustles in SAP's back yard

October 24, 2006 -- What's it like for a small German provider of open-source enterprise resource planning software to peddle its product in the home market of SAP AG, the world's largest maker of commercial business software? "It's a challenge, but we have a business that's growing," Hilmar Brodner, managing director of Synerpy GmbH, said Monday on the sidelines of the Systems IT trade show in Munich.

Synerpy allows businesses to download its business application software suite, avERP, free of charge and modify the product as they please. The product contains around 40% of the functions available in the offerings of large ERP vendors, including SAP, according to Brodner

The vendor makes money from selling various services, such as consulting, programming and training. At the high end, Synerpy generates around $1,893 in revenue per user, according to Brodner. "Customers are free to decide how much support they want," he said. "There is no obligation; it's up to them."

The Bayreuth, Germany-based vendor has about 60 customers, mostly small and medium-size enterprises. They range in size from around five employees to more than 850.

"Larger companies in Germany are showing greater interest in open-source software, thanks in part to initiatives such as the open-source project launched by the city of Munich," Brodner said. "I think we will see greater momentum in the large enterprise segment over the next two years."

Brodner acknowledged that many big companies will continue to buy commercial products "largely because of the name" and because of the resources that big vendors like SAP, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. commit to developing and supporting software to manage business-critical processes.

"Businesses that buy software from large, well-known venders believe when they pay a lot, they can expect a lot," Brodner said. "But for us to compete, we have to prove to customers that they can expect a lot from us, too. And they can. This is a very competitive market."

And it helps, he admits, when the product is free.

'It was a light bulb for me'

'It was a light bulb for me'

MARY GOODERHAM

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

As the owner of a small executive search firm in Toronto, Angel Mehta has always thought big.

Starting one of the first companies focused on recruiting senior staff for venture capital software start-ups just as he was leaving high school in 1996, Mehta quickly moved into Silicon Valley and Boston to take full advantage of the dot-com boom. Mr. Mehta and a couple of colleagues dreamed up the company name, Sterling-Hoffman Management Consultants , in a brainstorming session where they considered the stodgiest monikers of the elite consulting firms and crafted their own.

When the tech bubble burst and 9/11 sent the venture capital market plummeting, the young entrepreneur had to think bigger than ever. "Our business basically disappeared," Mr. Mehta says. He had begun trimming his Toronto staff of 20 and was facing bankruptcy when he read about the idea of companies outsourcing administrative operations overseas to save costs. "It was a light bulb for me."

With Sterling-Hoffman's survival in the balance, Mr. Mehta set about moving parts of the company's core functions to Hyderabad, India, with its advanced IT infrastructure and educated, English-speaking work force. Four years later, the company has more than 50 employees in Canada and another 200 in Hyderabad, with plans to almost double that number in the next year.

"To have the kind of future we have was a pipe dream in 2001," says Mr. Mehta, 29, the chief executive officer of Sterling-Hoffman. "There's been enormous growth."

Companies large and small are "rethinking their global footprint," says Michael Corbett, a consultant, author, lecturer and founder of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals in LaGrangeville, N.Y.

"Outsourcing has changed the world of business and with it the business of management," Corbett says. "It creates breakthrough-thinking through a clearer focus on an organization's core competencies, combined with harnessing the unique capabilities of equally talented and focused outside partners."

Off-shore outsourcing, largely considered the domain of big business, is now an option for small companies. But first they have to make their processes work abroad, understand the local culture where they set up shop and cope with questionable practices common among many emerging markets.

"It's extraordinarily challenging," says Mr. Mehta, adding that small businesses especially have to think big before they make a move overseas.

When choosing which services to outsource abroad, for example, look to processes "for which you're not getting credit from your customers," Mr. Mehta suggests, such as bookkeeping, market research, lead generation and collections.

Having such functions performed thousands of kilometres and numerous time zones away means breaking down and documenting internal policies and procedures associated with them. "You have to get your house in order," Mr. Mehta adds. "When you're transferring knowledge to an employee on the other side of the world, informal conversations don't do it."

Local culture and customs are especially important to consider, says Mr. Mehta, whose parents immigrated to Canada from India who but knew little of the country before setting up his first office there in 2002.

He made a number of gaffes as a result. For example, after hiring his first handful of young employees on contract he learned that Indians considering marriage must have permanent jobs -- and salary slips as proof to show the families of their prospective brides or husbands.

Mr. Mehta quickly went to the additional expense and paperwork of hiring his staff outright.

Ensuring the confidentiality of clients and the security of intellectual property is a challenge "when ethics are questionable and corruption is rampant," says Mr. Mehta, who stopped his office manager from paying off a local government official who showed up around the holidays each year randomly pointing out inadequacies in paperwork to elicit "gifts."

In such an environment, protecting client lists, financial spreadsheets, training materials and presentations from theft or surveillance is especially vital. Sterling-Hoffman has adopted enterprise rights management (ERM) technology that enables the company to restrict the access to and use of all documents and e-mails throughout the organization.

Edward Gaudet, the vice-president of product management and marketing for Liquid Machines Inc., a Boston firm that makes ERM products, says traditional encryption doesn't offer protection in the long run because once documents are un-encrypted the data becomes available for users to do with as they wish, from printing or copying it to saving it to a USB-drive.

The ERM technology allows Sterling-Hoffman to create policies that control virtually every function that can be done with data -- view, cut and paste, print, save, save as, and even print screen -- while enabling employees to collaborate and exchange information.

Competition for workers in overseas markets is fierce and extends to fields such as legal and equities research, accounting and X-ray analysis. "Offshoring is not just about call centres, software support and manufacturing," Mr. Mehta says. All around Sterling-Hoffman's office in downtown Hyderabad are mega-companies such as IBM Corp., Dell Inc., G.E. Co., Infosys Technologies Ltd. and American Express Co., all hungry for staff. "It's like Silicon Valley in the '90s; everyone has five or six job offers for double the salary."

Mr. Mehta's strategy has been to "win hearts" by connecting emotionally with employees "who have been ignored by the management of their companies for a long time" and cultivating a value system where all are equal. The turnover in Sterling-Hoffman's India office is about 10 per cent each year, compared with 40 to 50 per cent among Hyderabad's call centres.

For Sam Desai, 35, Sterling-Hoffman's director of marketing in Hyderabad, working in a firm where he has room for growth and can call the boss by his first name is a big attraction. "The job I'm doing here is great and the culture is great, I can't find that at any other company," says Mr. Desai, who oversees a team of 11 and manages advertising, direct mail, on-line campaigns and branding initiatives.

Offshoring has meant savings for Sterling-Hoffman, with each employee in Hyderabad costing 50 to 60 per cent of one in Canada. But the extra staff has especially allowed the company to expand into territory where smaller search firms can't go, such as tracking executives and corporate practices across North America.

The jobs remaining in Canada revolve around managing client relationships and adding value to Sterling-Hoffman's products. Contact is maintained between the two offices via e-mail, instant messaging, phone and especially video-conferencing, with a giant 60-inch screen that's "like having a window" into the Hyderabad operation, Mr. Mehta says. The system has also come in handy for joint end-of-quarter celebrations and a massive cake-eating contest between the two offices.

Offshoring advice

Some tips from Edward Gaudet, vice-president of product management and marketing for Liquid Machines Inc. in Boston, for small companies looking to take some of their operations offshore:

Pick trusted partners: Interview, verify backgrounds and follow up on references for possible offshore partners like you're checking out a nanny for your kids; speak with five references at a minimum.

Set realistic objectives: The benefits of offshoring won't come overnight; if you're doing it to save money, recognize there will be set-up costs that should be figured into your return-on-investment calculation.

Take a long-term view: Expect to make mistakes and view partners and the people you bring on board as extensions of your work force. Don't start with offshoring core processes or applications.

Verify the infrastructure: Ensure that staff and outsourcing partners have security to protect data at rest, in transit and in use.

Ensure continuity: Prepare for the worst and have a disaster recovery strategy in place; understand the local legal system as well as cultural environment, and recognize risks outside of your control like weather and environmental issues.

Outsourcing Success Is All About the Relationship

Outsourcing Success Is All About the Relationship
REVIEW DATE: 18-OCT-2006
By Stan Gibson
It's the relationship, stupid.

That was the message at the Outsource World conference in New York City Oct. 17-18, where the subject of how to get around outsourcing relationship pitfalls was front and center during various presentations.

Most customers and providers entering outsourcing relationships know the litany: You've got to manage as you have never managed before, if you want your outsourcing relationship to succeed. Even so, plenty of mistakes are made—so many, in fact, that nearly half of all outsourcing deals end in failure, according to some experts.

"Somewhere near 50 percent of relationships fail. Companies are just beginning to understand the importance of contract governance. It's not brain surgery; its basic, but it requires discipline," said Claude Marais, a partner at outsourcing advisor TPI, in Atlanta, and former head of outsourcing at General Motors and Coca-Cola.

Creating a basic contract framework that can be applied to many outsourcers globally is critical, Marais said. "We're shifting from 'think global, act local,' to global collaboration. In sourcing terms, no one supplier can provide all services everywhere, so you have to multisource. You need to develop a manageable contract profile. Managing hundreds of small contracts globally is too difficult," said the veteran IT executive.

Marais also said it's necessary to make sure that suppliers are prepared to serve you globally. Customers can play a role in bringing this about, he said. "Understand supplier incentives and infrastructure. Incent your supplier to provide globally. You have to help your suppliers act globally—can't expect them to do it themselves," said Marais.

John Elliott, senior managing director at Bear Stearns in New York, said he's seeking a "machine-like apparatus" to make his outsourcing relationships. Building such an apparatus means forming a team with the right mix of skills ranging from legal to procurement to clerical, he said. The bottom line for success, according to Elliott, is taking a no-nonsense approach. "We're doing it [outsourcing] because it makes sound financial sense for the firm. We keep that focus in front of us at all times. We want access to the right talent at the right time at the right price."

Fred Mapp, CEO of Quality Service Solutions, a consultancy in Scottsdale, Ariz., said communication is the most critical factor in making a relationship work. "In managing the relationship, 60 percent of problems are due to communication."

Communication gaps can arise from a lack of understanding of the customer's business on the part of many outsourcers, said Bob Schwartz, former CIO of Panasonic America. "The skills will be pretty solid in most cases. What's missing is a sense of the mission of our company—that's not something that people can learn when they're remotely located."

Peter Nag, managing director of Opera Solutions, a management consulting firm in New York, said: "In India, many young people are working for the outsourcers with only three to five years experience. They understand the technology, but not the business."

But understanding is a two-way street. Lori Goldman, president of DNL Global, a human resources consultancy, has found that outsourcing relationship managers need to be chosen for their knowledge and adaptability. "Lots of customers are dissatisfied with their outsourcing relationships, but they blame themselves for lack of skills. ... Management takes a lot of rigor and patience," she said.

Ben Trowbridge, managing partner for Alsbridge, an outsourcing consultancy in Addison, Texas, said many companies choose technology veterans rather than skilled managers to handle outsourcing relationships—and that's a mistake. "It's a different skill set to manage the provider under a contract. Companies try to find jobs for loyal people, they make them contract managers. They may really hate the outsourcer."

Trowbridge added that too many penalty clauses in contracts can alienate outsourcers. "Would you hire a person on the same basis?" he said, pointing to a litany of conditions in many contracts, all of which threaten penalties for the outsourcer.

He said customers should take heart that their outsourcing provider is turning a profit. "It's a good thing to know where your provider's profit is coming from." But, he noted, U.S. providers have the lowest margins in history. "So behaviors need to change," he said, suggesting that contracts be crafted with shared risk and reward in mind.

Software and services export to touch $ 65 bn by 2008: Maran

Coimbatore, Oct 19. (PTI): India's vibrant IT software and services industry has been projected to reach an export potential of $ 57 to 65 billion by 2008, Union IT and Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said on Wednesday.

The software industry in India, one of the pillars of economic development, is currently worth $ 29.5 billion of which 23.4 billion was exports-- about 20 per cent of the nation's total exports, Maran said, after inaugurating the Coimbatore facility of Robert Bosch India.

India is expected to sustain its leadership position in future also, as export revenue from ITES-BPO sector grew from $ 2.5 billion in 2002-03 to $ 6.3 billion in 2005-06, he said.

The IT and ITES-BPO sector has become the biggest employment generator amongst young college graduates, with the number of jobs almost doubling each year, Maran said.

The number of professionals employed in India by IT and ITES sectors has grown from 2.84 lakh in 1999-2000 to 1.3 million in 2005-06, growing by over 2.84 lakh in the last year alone, he claimed.

While the pace of recruitment picked up for IT services, ITES-BPO companies were recruiting in large numbers through out the year, Maran said adding it was estimated that the ITES-BPO sector hired 400 personnel every working day of the year.

India's sustained leadership over other competing offshore sourcing destinations was driven by strong fundamentals comprising a large pool of qualified, English-speaking manpower, that was increasing each year, Maran said.

On the telecom sector, Maran said that India has taken long strides in the area from a monopolistic approach till mid 90's to the present day aggressive private and public sector competition.

This has resulted in phenomenal improvement in tele-density, growing internet penetration and rapid expansion of mobile telephony across the country, he said.

Stating that more than 170 million network in India was one of the largest in the world and second largest among the emerging economies after China, Maran said that the wireless sector has already overtaken the fixed line service in India.

Expressing happiness that Bosch was investing Rs 1800 crore in India from 2005-2008, Maran said that both the Centre and Tamil Nadu Governments would be happy to facilitate these important expansion plans of Bosch.

On Tamil Nadu, the Minister said the State Government was keen to position Coimbatore as an important IT destination.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi has drawn up a master plan to promote seven two-tier cities in the State and appealed to the people not to migrate, since they would get employment in their own places through this initiative.

IBM pitches System i for small business SAP

October 17, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- IBM raised the stakes in its competition with Dell Inc. for small-business users on Thursday by launching a System i server configured for customers with 100 seats or fewer of SAP AG's business management software.

Small businesses often lack an IT department, and tend to choose Windows-based systems for their low price, said Mark Shearer, IBM's general manager of System i.

To attract those users, the IBM System i 520 Solution Edition lists a similar price to Dell's PowerEdge server, but offers a closer integration of security, virus protection, database and storage. This combination could enable small businesses to manage all their data in a single spot, whether it's used for accounting, supply chain, customer relationship management (CRM), e-mail or disaster recovery, he said.

IBM's move also marks a win for SAP, which competes for those same users against Oracle Corp.'s J.D. Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

In July, IBM started selling a nearly identical product for Oracle applications, called the System i 520 Solution Edition for Oracle's J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne. That platform was a crucial step in Oracle's campaign to keep the 5,000 users it inherited by purchasing PeopleSoft Inc. in January.

Now Oracle must share IBM's fast hardware and aggressive pricing with its bitter rival. The two companies are locked in a public war of words and product launches. In July, SAP said it had explicitly designed its pending Safe Passage 2.0 migration program to win over Oracle users. And Oracle sells a product called "OFF SAP," which includes credit incentives for switching from SAP.

As a hardware vendor, IBM insists its servers are neutral ground, and that it plans to win over small-business customers by offering them a choice between Oracle and SAP.

The System i 520 combines hardware and software with the additional disk storage needed support 100 SAP users, whether they're using mySAP All-in-One, business intelligence, CRM, product lifecycle management or supply chain management. IBM will begin selling the package later in October for $35,000.