EMI has announced the renewal of their exclusive contract with the Berliner Philharmoniker for another five years.

As EMI’s A&R director Stephen Johns commented, it is the BPO’s “uncompromising commitment to the highest of standards in all aspects of their music-making that sets them out as perhaps the finest orchestra in the world”. The first recording to emerge under the new agreement is Ravel’s opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (the cast included Annick Massis, Mojca Erdmann, Magdalena Kozená, Sophie Koch, Nathalie Stutzmann, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, François Le Roux and José van Dam). It is scheduled for release next March.

The new agreement gives both organisations more flexibility than in the past and also allows the orchestra to disseminate performances with Rattle – with whom the label has an exclusive contract – more widely. (A video recording of the Aix-en-Provence Festival Die Walküre, for example, featuring both conductor and orchestra, is due for release from BelAir next month.)

EMI made its first recording with the BPO in 1913 (Beethoven’s Fifth conducted by Arthur Nikisch) and down the years has been associated with many of the orchestra’s conductors, including Furtwängler, Karajan and Abbado as well as guests like Barenboim, Jansons and Muti. Source

Hinduja group company and outsourcing major, HTMT Global Solutions, has allocated $100-million for BPO company acquisitions in the domestic and international markets, a top company official said.

“We are looking at acquisition of BPO companies and have earmarked a $100-million for the purpose. But we are not in a rush,” HTMT’s Chairman, Ramkrishan P Hinduja, said at the company’s annual general meeting held here.  HTMT is a key provider of relationship management solutions, business process outsourcing, outsourced call centre sales/service support and market research.  The company has a presence in six countries with around 75 clients, 21 centres, 9,600 seats and 12,652 employees.

HTMT Global Solutions was hived off from Hinduja TMT, last year.  Describing zibika as a social medium or network on personal finance, Doraiswami said “I am trying to build up a community like Orkut where users can connect with friends and share information on personal finance.”

“We also provide EMI-based search results,” he said, adding “besides, users can compare products and then pick up the one which suits them the best.”  The company provides content on 64 banks and around 15 NBFCs as well as all active insurance players in the market.  The portal already has 2,000 registered users and expects to break-even in two years. “I am aiming for a couple of million users,” Doraiswami said.

Revenues would mainly accrue from advertising, he said, adding the company has just started its marketing initiative. Source

HCL Technologies, India’s fourth largest software exporter, is pursuing a non-linear growth strategy for its business process outsourcing arm and a business model to hedge against currency fluctuations.

Set up seven years ago with 30 people, HCL BPO today is 13,000-people strong, contributing about 12 per cent to the parent’s revenues. It closed FY08 with $225 million in revenues. Over the last five years, revenues have grown by compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50 per cent while net profit has risen by 130 per cent CAGR. At 26 per cent, it has amongst the best operating margins in the industry.

“If we are to become a billion-dollar organisation, then a linear model would mean having 60,000 people on rolls. At that level, only to keep our headcount constant, we would have to add 3,000 people and interview 36,000 per month. This is clearly not sustainable. Hence we have decided to pursue a non-linear model which would also protect us from currency fluctuations,” Ranjit Narasimhan, President and Chief Operating Officer - BPO Services, HCL Technologies. Source

BPO major company Intelenet Global Services has appointed Indian lady Gayatri Balaji as COO (Chief Operating Officer) of its domestic BPO business for South India.
 
She will be responsible for managing operations and all the support functions of the company’s centres in the region.

In her last stint, she ran clinical data management and statistical analysis at Tata Consultancy Services. Source

Business process outsourcing (BPO) company PeopleSupport Philippines has assured all its employees that their jobs will not be affected by a coming merger with Aegis BPO.

“Aegis has no Philippine presence at all, so our operation here will actually complement theirs,” Rainerio Borja, president of PeopleSupport Philippines, told reporters. Borja said preparations for the merger would be completed by October.

PeopleSupport, based in Los Angeles, California, with 8,600 employees worldwide, serves clients in a variety of industries, such as travel and finance. In 2007, it recorded record annual revenue of $140.6 million, up 28 percent from 2006.

Aegis BPO is part of the Essar Group, one of India’s largest and fastest-growing business conglomerates. Early last month, the two companies announced a definitive agreement to merge via a cash transaction valued at $250 million.

Under the agreement, Aegis BPO will pay PeopleSupport stockholders $12.25 per share in cash through subsidiary Essar Services (Mauritius).

The merged company will be called Aegis PeopleSupport, which will have operations in the Philippines, India, the United States and Costa Rica. Source

With the Philippine Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry growing by 30 to 35 percent annually and a projection of 1 million jobs generated by 2010, key players in the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) industry and academe are pushing for a comprehensive and sustainable training program that will develop Mindanao’s human resources on information, communication technology (ICT).

“We need to let the public know the positive economic impact the BPO sector has already gained, and the untapped opportunities that the ICT industry has to offer particularly in creating more jobs and ICT-related businesses,” said Wit Holganza, president of the ICT Davao, Inc. during the first ever BPO Human Resource and Recruitment Forum held recently.

She said the forum, which gathered BPO experts and HR practitioners from local schools and training institutions, is a good start to prepare the human resource pool to acquire skills that will serve the requirements of the BPO industry players.

The supply of qualified ICT-skilled workers is an increasing concern, as the industry needs more ICT graduates with the ICT industry poised for upbeat growth in the next years.

Ditas Formoso, head of the Technical Committee on Government Academe Industry Linkage (TC-Gail) said that the talent pool is growing at a rate of only 10 percent while the industry grows 30-35 percent annually.

In her presentation, she explained that faculty development, industry immersion for students, appropriate school infrastructure and industry-based curricula are factors that make up a talent pool required by the industry. (more…)

Ashish Sinha, a middle-management employee with Lehman Brothers’ business process outsourcing (BPO) unit in Mumbai, was going to move into a bigger house in October for a rent of Rs 16,000 a month. He was also planning to get married in the middle of the month. However, since Monday, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, he found himself jobless. He has approached his new landlord to refund Rs 2 lakh, which he had given as a security deposit.

The situation is worse for Preeti Sagar and her two colleagues, who are in their mid-twenties. They have rented out a flat near their office at Rs 50,000 a month. Now they have no idea how they will continue to stay in that house.

Around 1,200 employees of Lehman Brothers’ BPO in Powai, a Mumbai suburb, are facing similar problems. They have a deadline of 15 days to find a new job. They are free to come to office, if they wish to. And they have been told that this month’s salary is their severance package.

The mood at Lehman’s investment banking and broking business is not too different. The saving grace: employees do not know what is going to happen. “We are simply reporting to office and making calls to head hunters, chatting up with friends and playing computer games,” said an investment banking employee. Many are hoping that Barclays Bank will bail out the Indian operation as well. Full News

Satyam BPO has appointed Vijay Rangineni as chief operating officer to head business transformation with its customers. Before joining Satyam BPO, Mr Rangineni worked at GE Money, India, as chief operating officer. He has more than 20 years experience in the service industry, having worked at American Express and California Micro Devices. Dimension Data has made Paul Bamford managing director of its global service provider vertical market. Mr Bamford, who will be based in the UK, joins the company after several years with BT, Vodafone, EADS and Lucent Technologies. He is expected to grow offerings in service provider markets and co-ordinate regional innovation and intellectual property.

Based in London, he is now charged with building international business development. His team will focus on adding new travel providers to the search engine. He will also drive more traffic to the company’s European and Indian websites through partnerships. Before joining the company, Mr Galaria was general manager for Jaman.com, an online high-definition movie service based in California. He will report directly to Steve Hafner , chief executive and co-founder of the company.

Paul Hanley has joined Deloitte’s security, privacy and resilience group, after moving from Cable & Wireless. At C&W he was global head of corporate security. (more…)

The BPO captives of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG in India had a nervous day on Monday as the parent companies went on a financial turmoil on the Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. Stocks of major Indian IT companies also went south on the BSE.

Whilst Lehman Brothers’ filed for bankruptcy on Monday, the financially distressed Merrill Lynch decided to sell-off its assets to Bank of America which may lead to a consolidation. The Lehman’s bankruptcy filing has put the future of its 700 employees at it’s captive unit in Powaii into uncertainty.

With its bankruptcy, new business may completely stop at its Powaii centre. The exisiting existing employee base at it’s back office unit work on equities research apart from IT maintenance, equities research and fund management. Lehman employs about 3,000 people in Asia Pacific excluding the Indian BPO unit.

The company also outsources to other third party vendors who might be impacted in terms of business. Wipro and TCS are believed to be vendors for Lehman Brothers. A Wipro Technologies spokesperson told ET: “We are in dialogue with Lehman Brothers during this difficult period of uncertainty. Wipro is monitoring the US economic situation closely. Lehman Brothers does not account for a significant portion of our revenue.” Source

“The overall compensation structure design is not competitive when compared to general market practices. This means that BPO employees do not receive as much cash-in-hand as their peers in other industries,” Hay Group, Reward Information Services, Country Head (India) Oscar De Mello said.

“When you add unattractive remuneration to working shifts, lack of career development, and monotonous tasks, it is not surprising that employees leave when offered a small salary increase,” he said.

The short-term incentives account for only four per cent of total remuneration, compared to 10 per cent generally. Moreover, the benefits are also limited to those that can be enjoyed only post-retirement, like pension fund and gratuity, and not during the employment period. While pay is generally designed to give employees more take-home cash, a higher portion is allocated to allowances like housing/rent and not base salary.

“The BPO industry is a critical sector in the Indian economy, worth USD 11 billion and employing over two million people. However, if the industry is to achieve the projected USD 30 billion by 2012, we have to tackle this talent attrition issue now. (more…)