Tech Mahindra’s business process outsourcing arm is looking to hire around 2,000 employees over the next 3-4 months as the company has recently signed a few deals.
“The BPO arm contributes to around 5-7 per cent of Tech Mahindra’s total revenues. We target to reach 10 per cent of the total revenues in the next 18 months,” said S V Sriram, head of BPO operations, Tech Mahindra BPO. The firm will hire mostly in its new Kolkata facility.

Tech Mahi-ndra has over 4,000 employees at the moment spread over four other centres in Noida, Pune, Chandigarh and Chennai. The company, which primarily services the telecom sector, is not looking to diversify its business because of a prob-able future merger with Mahindra Satyam’s BPO, which may happen after 6-8 quarters, said Sriram.
When asked if the Satyam BPO’s employees in telecom vertical would be taken into Tech Mahindra’s BPO, Sriram said the company does not have any such plan in the immediate future. “Except for a few top-level changes at the entity level, there hasn’t been any other change.”

TechM’s BPO gets around 80 per cent of its revenues from customers who have adopted transa-ctions-based pricing model. Besides BT, the company has three other customers in Europe, two customers in North America and four domestic customers.
“BPO sector is recovering faster than the IT sector,” said Sriram. “The deal pipeline looks healthy. We closed two large deals this quarter, one from a first-time outsourcer.” Source

Outsourcing of healthcare services is expected to gain momentum as the prolonged slowdown forces U.S.-based government agencies and healthcare firms to cut spiraling costs and deal with a shortage in qualified personnel.

Companies such as Affiliated Computer Services (ACS.N), Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH.O), Convergys (CVG.N) and Genpact (G.N), whose customers include hospitals, insurers and the Federal government, are expected to gain from the trend.

Business process outsourcing firms that offer healthcare services handle claims administration, supply chain logistics, finance and accounting, billing, human resources management and customer relations.

“Health clients have an accelerated case in which to utilize outsourcing in many facets of their business,” said Christine Kowalczyk, vice president, healthcare, at Convergys. Full News

Go4Customer BPO tiesup with Ultimate Search Consultants to recruit quality human resource from the
north eastern region of India. Go4Customer feels that by recruiting small town candidates, it will decrease
their Attrition rate and bring stability.

Ultimate Search Consultants - a Guwahati based pioneering consultancy which is engaged in providing
Consulting services to the BPO industry has announced that we are in the process of launching a job portal
by the domain name www.ultimatesearchconsultants.com. This job portal would exclusively be meant for
serving the recruitment needs of the growing industries.

According to Mr. Soumitra Sengupta, Proprietor, Ultimate Search Consultants, “Attrition is the main issue
in recent market compared to the job opportunities and feasible candidates. Candidates in recent are loosing
its candidature due to this attrition issue which directly is proportional to the unemployment. We are
focused on bringing down the Attrition rate which will simultaneously benefit the employer to be one of the
prominent employer in the market as per Human Resource is concerned.”

We are happy to announce our strategic signup with one of the most leading BPO player “Go4Customer”
(Cyber Futuristics India Pvt Ltd). We have mutually designed a strategic process which would suffice the
mentioned issues in the above paragraph.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) kicks off here today Convergence 2009, signifying the government’s commitment to spur development in the so-called “next wave cities” for outsourcing. Convergence 2009 combines the Cyber Corridor Roadshow and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines’ (BPA/P) Talent Caravan.

CICT Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III said the event will kick off at the CICT today and make stops at Sta. Rosa, Laguna; Trece Martires, Cavite; Iloilo; Davao; Bacolod; Malolos, Bulacan; Clark, Pampanga; Cagayan de Oro; Lipa; and Cebu. It carries the theme, “Empowering the Filipino through ICT” and aims to promote opportunities in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.

“The Philippine IT-BPO industry is indeed something that all Filipinos should be proud of. We have already gained global recognition,” Mr. Roxas-Chua said, referring to the declaration of the Philippines as Offshoring Destination of the Year, Manila as the third-preferred outsourcing city in Asia Pacific and Cebu as the number one emerging outsourcing city in the world. Full News

Firstsource Solutions, an India business process outsourcing (BPO) services provider, and Idea Cellular — India’s third-largest private telecom services provider — today signed a five-year, Rs 145 crore outsourcing agreement.

Firstsource will provide a suite of customer management interaction services including customer service, billing, new product information and plan details related interaction services to Idea from its centre in Coimbatore. It will be provide these services for Idea’s Kerala and Tamil Nadu customers in English, Malayalam and Tamil.

“Firstsource brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in running large customer support operations for global telecom service providers and has the ability to help us manage our rapid growth in the service areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We believe our customers will benefit from their service capabilities” said Navanit Narayan, Chief Service Delivery Officer, Idea Cellular. Read the rest of this entry »

Infosys BPO Ltd, the domestic business process outsourcing operation of Infosys Technologies Ltd, is going to small towns looking for potential employees. This, the company says, will allow it hire at lower salaries and the resulting cost efficiency will help Infosys BPO grow faster despite its late entry into the domestic market.

These new hires are being offered salaries 10-15% lower than their city counterparts. This, coupled with lower rentals and a less intensive training schedule, will enable Infosys BPO to pass on a 30% cost efficiency to its clients.

Amitabh Chaudhry, chief executive officer, Infosys BPO, said: “The Indian BPO market will only grow rapidly over the next five-seven years. We at Infosys BPO expect to double our revenues, which is at 5% at the moment going ahead.” This new strategy could be a win-win for both Infosys BPO and its employees. For the employees, it will mean not having to work graveyard shifts. For the company, it will mean flexibility in hiring employees at a lower cost, who over 24 months would be ready to service even international clients, if needed. Source

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest software services firm by revenues, is competing for 5-6 business process outsourcing (BPO) deals worth up to $150-200 million, a senior executive said. The outsourcing deals are largely in verticals such as banking and financial services, retail and energy & utilities.

“In the banking and financial services space, there is a boom in the US in the mortgage and collections space,” TCS vice-president and BPO services head Abid Ali Neemuchwala said. The Indian IT firm is also seeing demand from life sciences and healthcare, telecom and media sectors.

TCS provides BPO services such as finance and accounting, human resources outsourcing, supply chain management and customer support through centres in India, China, South America and Europe.

TCS is also seeing new growth areas such as regulatory compliance and risk management emerge, in the aftermath of the financial crisis in the US and Europe.

North America and the UK remain the largest markets for TCS’ BPO business but the firm is also seeing traction in continental Europe, Latin America and India. Mr Neemuchwala said the focus of the BPO business in the domestic market is on deals in the travel and hospitality and insurance sectors. TCS is also competing for integrated IT- BPO deals in the government sector in India. Source

As the economic slowdown hit most sectors, cost rationalisation has become imperative for companies to survive. In this exclusive report Sunanda Jayaseelan get us the story of the Infosys BPO in Bangalore and how they are reviewing their HR strategy to save costs. It maybe a late entrant into the domestic market, but Infosys BPO is hoping to catch up fast. and to do that, it is adopting an aggressive policy to save costs.

Senior VP & Head - Global Delivery, Infosys BPO, Swami Swaminathan said, “If you look at Indian companies, the level of intensity of skills that you require is less and therefore we are able to hire from Tier 3 and 4 cities and get those folks here and the cost is less. It is hiring employees from tier 3 and 4 towns instead of top cities, and is offering salaries 10-15 per cent lower than its counterparts. It hopes that cut in training costs and lower rentals in smaller towns will add up to 30 per cent cost efficiencies. This is going to be its strategy to expand its presence as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Aegis, Essar group’s BPO arm , is setting up technology subsidiary with an investment of $100 million (around Rs 489 crore). The money will be invested in the subsidiary over the next 12 months. The company will provide end-to-end customised solutions in the areas of voice and data, networking, unified communications, managed services, info security and remote infrastructure management. The offerings are aimed at verticals such as telecom, government, power and power utilities; companies that already have an  enable IT infrastructure

Aparup Sengupta, managing director and global CEO, Aegis Limited said: “Aegis Tech will also work closely with the existing customers to offer end-to-end solutions. This synergy will deliver more value to our existing and prospective customers. We have put together a highly experienced team led by S K Jha as President.”

S K Jha, President, Aegis Tech said: “The existing technology people under Aegis group companies will move to Aegis Tech. To begin with, Aegis will have over 500 people spread across India, ASEAN, North America, Africa and Australia. The employee base is expected to reach over 1,000 in the next 12-18 months through new hires and acquisitions.” Source

At a time when the Bangalore versus Buffalo City debate spooks BPO employees in India, Essar Group’s backoffice unit Aegis Ltd will augment its workforce by 12,000, summing up the total headcount to 43,000 by end of this fiscal.
 
The company plans to hire 1,000 people every month in India and across United States, Philippines, Costa Rica and Africa where it currently has operations.       

“We will be recruiting a thousand people every month, so this year we will add 12,000 to our workforce globally. We have already hired 3,000 people since the beginning of this fiscal,” Aegis Limited Managing Director and Global CEO Aparup Sengupta told PTI here.       

US President Barack Obama had last month announced end to years of tax incentives to those US companies, which create jobs overseas in places like Bangalore. Full News