NAVI MUMBAI: A picnic to the picturesque Diveaagar beach at Shrivardhan, Raigad district, turned into a tragedy when six employees of Reliance BPO drowned on Monday afternoon.

Fourteen BPO employees from the Koparkhairane-based Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) had gone to Shrivardhan on Sunday evening. Around 12.30 pm on Monday, four men and two women from the group were unable to come back to the shore due to the high tide.

The Raigad police said the bodies of five victims—Manoj Parmar (35), Mohammed Nasir (35), Neelkanth Iyer (25), Kingston Paul and Mamata Nahak (25)—had been recovered. A search was still on for the sixth victim, Noor Mansuri, on Monday evening.

CHENNAI: Leaders of the BPO publishing industry has urged the government, the CII and the NASSCOM to introduce courses for publishing BPO, with specific curriculum, to meet the huge demand from other nations.

The curriculum could be a special, exclusive course or part of an existing curriculum, Sriram Subramanya, vice-chairman, CII Puducherry, and founder, Integra Software, said, addressing a conference on publishing and BPO services here on Wednesday. The number of employees in the sector was likely to reach 74,000 by 2010.

However, with the lack of specific courses to train candidates in e-publishing, it was unlikely that this huge demand for resources could be met. The industry could generate $1.46 billion by 2010 as revenues through off-shoring at an estimated growth of 35 per cent a year.

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As India takes center stage and demand for employees rise by thousands, the big question weighting heavily on the one’s job hopping for BPOs is: “Am I choosing the right organization”?A good research and experts experiences penned below-before you start queuing up for elusive jobs promising unbelievable perks and promotions-might help.

BACKGROUND : As simple as it may sound.BPO that belong to the big league will always have a good background.Check for details of management hierarchy and experience.See where they start from and where they reached.Browse.Ask relevant questions during your interview.

STABILITY :  A lot of BPOs that start with bag full of promise rise like a rocket and fall like a meteor.Reason?Poor track record with clients, unprofessional work ethics and extended deadlines his revenue.Invariably it leads to the process of down sizing or wrapping up.Ask for how good are employees rated on standards set by the clients.

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The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Karnataka case, paving the way for the trial of a BPO Chief Executive Officer for negligence under the Shops and Establishments Act, has sparked a heated debate on the responsibilities and accountability of CEOs.In this particular case, a woman BPO employee was raped and murdered allegedly by a cab driver as she was returning home after night duty.

Aside from the more serious question of whether CEOs are responsible or culpable in such cases — which the courts will decide — the larger issue that it has raised relates to the transport of employees in the IT-ITES-BPO sector.

When the industry employs around 1.8 million people across the country, many of them quite young, transport arrangements become a serious problem. Given the odd working hours of this sector, the imperative night duty, and the need to work to the hours of foreign clients, industry sources agree that it will be impossible to expect all employees — men and women — to make their own transport arrangements. This assumes greater significance in cities and town that do not have an organised or efficient public transport system, which may not anyway be operational beyond midnight.

The Bangalore police filed a case against the CEO of the BPO for failing in his duty to provide safety and security to a woman employee who was on night duty. Under the Act, he or she has to take responsibility for her safety.

Top management officials in the IT and BPO sector contacted after the apex court ruling, made one thing clear — the time had come for updating some of the outdated laws of the land, especially in relation to industry and labour. None of the existing laws could suit the IT-ITES sector, which has been a new phenomenon, they argued.

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As the most rapidly emerging hot spot for global outsourcing services, Xceed’s Chairman and CEO Dr. Adel Danish presents Egypt as the “Emerging Global Destination” at the 2008 Outsourcing World Summit for Outsourcing Professionals on February 19th, in Orlando Florida.
“Egypt already provides world class IT enabled services and the economic indicators show that the country is well positioned to complement the global outsourcing market by offering a more favorable time-zone and a wider spectrum of multi-lingual talent,” said Dr. Danish.
Xceed is one of the fastest growing global providers of high quality Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. Its clients include several Fortune 500 companies and the business has grown from 250 employees to more than 1,500 in five years during which it has experienced 50 percent year on year growth.

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The required skills have become higher, creating opportunities for a more specialised workforce in this sector.For long, a job with a business process outsourcing (BPO) company has been looked upon as a stepping stone to another, longer-lasting career. Such has been the attrition in the industry.

Financial services knowledge process outsourcing industry is expected to be worth $5 billion by 2010, a study by KPMG said.

Time was when everybody and anybody cashed in on the BPO euphoria and set up call centres in India. That was in 2001-02. Circa 2007 and many of them have disappeared or are languishing. The wall seems to have got higher now for anybody thinking of entering into the BPO sector as costs and domain expertise are a big entry barrier.

The Indian BPO sector, excluding that of KPO, has by and large not seen any third-party service provider entering into this segment in the recent past and if there are any, it is the existing players expanding or opening captive centres.

According to market estimates, there are around 700 ITeS companies in India and only 400 of them are serious players. Today, it costs anywhere between $10,000-25 ,000 per seat and one needs about 1,000 seats for running a viable voice-based operation. Avinash Vashistha, CEO of advisory firm Tholons, says that unlike IT outsourcing, BPO is a capital-intensive segment as one needs to make heavy investment in setting up the infrastructure and hiring people.

After selling his interests in cellular service provider Hutchison India to Vodafone, the Hong Kong-based Li Ka-Shing is said to be looking out for buyers for one more of his ventures in India.

Speculation is rife that Hutchison Whampoa is planning to exit 3 Global Services, their captive BPO unit in India. Launched in 2003, 3 Global Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hutchison Whampoa group and has its set-up in Mumbai.  Read More