Employees of Headstrong India, a Noida based outsourcing company were a bit confused, till sometime ago. Even as the company 
communicated its measures to cut costs like curbs on business class travel, it went about doing costly buyouts.

Last month, it bought US-based Lydian mortgage Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firm for an estimated $30 million. But a clear message by its CEO clears all the confusion.

“We do not want to miss this opportunity as new assets will never be this cheap again. We are also busy making strategies to take advantage of the slowdown,” says Headstrong India MD Harsh Singh Lohit. Headstrong is not alone. In a period lower margins and vanishing revenues, the BPO industry seems most optimistic, confident of a great long term future. Simply because as BPO specialists they help global companies trim costs. However in this slowdown, business is not easy to come by, as global companies come to terms with a shrinking market.

So, from tightening travel costs, to striking sticky deals of smaller sizes to offering asset light platform based BPO model to buying new companies, BPOs are leaving no stone unturned to beat the slowdown and even take advantage of it.

Says Manoj Matai, VP of Jindal Intellicom, (a Delhi based BPO) “We have increased marketing budget by 30% and increased sales force in US as about 80% of our revenues come from the US.” Full News

Saturday, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra dedicated Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto to the victims of the recent airline crash and their families. This is the sort of piece that is good for something like that. As Music Director JoAnn Falletta put it in a brief speech, the music is intensely spiritual.

For this occasion, Andre Watts was the perfect pianist.

Watts plays as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. He walks out on stage with hardly a glance at the audience — that’s his style, and he pulls it off. He wears the old-fashioned tails, which I love. He sits down heavily on the piano bench, brow furrowed, head down.

His performance Saturday was deeply satisfying. It was the culmination of a program that tended toward gravity, although there were moments of light. Opening the program was “A Prayer for Spring,” by the young Amherst composer Chris Rogerson, currently a student at the Curtis Institute. Bravo to him for creating a piece people could enjoy on first hearing. This five-minute piece charmed. Source

It may be the hour of recession and lay-offs, but the government-run BPO is on a hiring spree. Multi-national telecom and banking companies are knocking on the doors of Fostera at Sanasandiram to outsource their help desk, loan collection, credit card processing, form-filling, insurance and editing work.

Over the next three months, Fostera (short for fostering rural technology), floated by the Krishnagiri district administration over a year ago, will hire about 500 young people from Tamil Nadu’s hinterlands for monthly salaries ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000. The BPO, which was working just one shift, is switching to three shifts a day to manage the tide of offers, says Fostera CEO MR Ashok Kumar.

Daughters and sons of agricultural and construction labourers, who have barely passed high school, will soon put on headphones and work the helplines for bank and insurance customers in English, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. About 300 young people have already been put through voice and non-voice training. “We look for youth with the right attitude and high energy levels. Communication skills can be instilled, but attitude cannot be taught,” he says.

Fostera, which is presently a 25-seater facility, will soon start two more call centres in Uthangarai taluk in Krishnagiri district, each with a capacity of 75. In Uthangarai taluk, which has high unemployment and illiteracy rates, marriage halls are being converted into BPOs, providing jobs for those above 18 who have finished school. Source

Logica, the IT and business services company, has announced a number of strategic appointments. The new appointments will expand the UK Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team in line with the company’s strategy to broaden its service offerings to support its clients through the current economic climate and to target the growing BPO market. In particular, they will help spearhead Logica’s local government growth initiatives.

Building on Logica’s strengths in payroll and HR, this growing BPO capability will allow the company to design and deliver broader and more integrated back office solutions including finance administration and procurement. These services will continue to be underpinned by Logica’s traditional strengths in business transformation, complex information systems integration, and IT service delivery.

Phil Gooch, Director at Logica said, “As we begin our new year these appointments will help power Logica’s growth and build on the success we have achieved over the past several years. By combining the expertise and fresh perspective that the newest members of our BPO team bring to the table with the deep experience of our current leadership team, Logica is poised for even greater success in the years ahead.” Source

GramIT, the rural BPO initiative of the Byrraju Foundation, is in talks with various funding agencies “to expand the scope and presence of its rural BPO services,” said foundation’s lead partner Verghese Jacob. Byrraju Foundation is the NGO outfit formed by Satyam Computer Services founder B Ramalinga Raju in his personal capacity.

“The initiative has so far received funding from Raju’s personal wealth, while recurring costs were met through customer fees. But now to invest in our expansion, we are negotiating with funding agencies, which could pick up some equity or bring investments along with good customers,” he told Business Standard.

Jacob said GramIT has put its two new BPO centres planned at Chindwara and Sausar in Madhya Pradesh on the backburner as they are yet to get clients. The two centres are expected to employ 200 people.

“Each centre requires an investment of about Rs 80 lakh. Now that the funding from the Raju family has ceased, we want to expand only after we see a visible funding from the family again. If not, we will utilise the money raised from the funding agencies and commence operations at those two centres in the next three to six months,” he said. Source

HCL Technologies said its BPO arm and Ketera Technologies have entered into a strategic alliance to provide source-to-pay  services. Through this partnership with Ketera, HCL BPO will deliver full procurement outsourcing across industry verticals, HCL said in a statement. It added that the platform would help maximise efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase productivity for its clients.

The programme offers mid- and large-size enterprises management solutions to reduce and control corporate spending for direct and indirect goods.

“Ketera creates a source-to-pay loop to identify, capture and sustain bottom line savings with spend analysis, sourcing, procurement, contract management, invoice management and supplier management,” Ketera Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Savignano said.

“The services on this platform will help large organisations to strategically outsource, while maintaining mission-critical operations in-house,” HCL Technologies (BPO Services) Head (KPO) S Rajagopal said. Source

Amtex Systems, a New York based IT consulting and service company has announced expansion of BPO division of its Indian subsidiary based in Chennai. It is said to be investing over Rs 6 crore in setting up a new 4000 sq ft facility here with a 150 seater capacity. This will be in addition to its existing facility.

In a statement, Amtex said it will increase the headcount in the next six months and is looking to hire close to 200 people-both with experience and at the entry level. Amtex President,Sunny Polkala, who founded the company in 1997 said the BPO division is expected to contribute 50% of its overall revenue in the next financial year.

It is among the few Indian BPO companies to have been awarded compliance status with the PCI DSS ( payment card industry-data security standard version 1.1) recently, providing it the niche advantage of handling the extensive customer service demands of direct response TV, a growing service area that only PCI DSS certified BPOs can handle.

” At present, we handle a significant amount of consumer director BPO services and inbound sales calls in sectors like such as media, entertainment and retail. As our customers look to cut costs further, due to the ongoing recession, we see an increase in demand and will soon add clients in the healthcare, telecom ( technical support) and BFSI sectors”, he said.

Amtex employs more than 1500 professionals globally and has 12 offices across six countries, earning Rs 400 crore. It is ranked among the top four privately held companies in global IT consulting and services in New York region. Source

Integreon Managed Solutions Inc., a BPO unit of the Ayala group focused on knowledge and legal data outsourcing services, said Wednesday it had signed a seven-year £50-million service agreement with its first client in the United Kingdom.

It announced the launch of its British onshore-shared services center for the legal market through Osborne Clarke, which it described as one of top 30 UK law firms, with more than 400 lawyers.

Osborne Clark has worked closely with Integreon to help design the suite of services to be provided from the shared services center, where it is scheduled to become Integreon’s first client beginning March, an Integreon statement said.

As part of the contract, 75 business services professionals will move from Osborne Clarke to Integreon. In turn, Integreon will support Osborne Clarke and other law firms’ Middle Office needs, including technology and business intelligence services; knowledge and information management; transcription, secretarial and word processing services.

To oversee the new expansion, former Osborne Clarke chief operating officer Chris Bull has joined Integreon as chief operating officer for Europe, reporting directly to the chief executive, Liam Brown, the statement said. Full News

The downward trend in the economy has forced industry body Nasscom to lower its projection of the revenue growth rate from software and service 
exports (IT and BPO) to 16-17% in the current fiscal from the earlier forecast of 21-24%.

“Factoring the impact of the global economic crisis in the second half of 2008-09, the industry is expected to grow by 16-17% by March 2009, Nasscom president Som Mittal said.

“Despite an uncertain economic environment, the Indian IT-BPO industry will see sustainable growth over the next two years and our estimates indicate the industry will clock revenues of $60-62 billion by FY’11, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 15% per year,” he added. Software and BPO export revenue is expected to touch $47 billion in 2008-09 from the earlier anticipated figure of $50 billion, Nasscom said.

The combined revenue (export and domestic) is estimated to touch $60 billion in 2008-09, it said. The industry, including domestic companies, recorded an overall growth of 28%, clocking revenues of $52 billion in 2007-08.

The exports segment grew by 29% to register revenues of $40.4 billion in 2007-08. With the BFSI sector accounting for almost 40% of the revenues of this sector, the collapse of major banks in the US and the UK, Nasscom was left with no option but to revise its targets downwards from the earlier $50 billion software exports estimate for FY 2009, analysts said. After growing at 28-30% for years, slowdown has hit the export driven industry.

The domestic IT-BPO market is expected to cross Rs 1,11,000 crore by FY 2009 exhibiting a 20% growth rate. Source

Lukas Foss, who conducted the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1963 to 1970, died Sunday in his Manhattan home. He was 86.

Mr. Foss, the BPO’s fourth conductor, helped propel Buffalo into a center for avant-garde music by founding the University at Buffalo’s Creative Associates, a group of composers, conductors and musicians, and helping to organize the creatively explosive Festival of the Arts.

“For sheer innovation, controversy and outrage, there was never anyone in Buffalo music to compare with composer, pianist and conductor Lukas Foss,” wrote Buffalo News classic music critic John Dwyer in 1981.

Mr. Foss, a German emigre, also was celebrated as a composer and pianist. His musical experimentation ranged from electronic music and serialism to improvisation and minimalism.

“Before Lukas Foss came, Buffalo was one thing, and after he began conducting the orchestra, it was something else altogether, especially with what was occurring at Albright-Knox,” said News Arts Editor Jeff Simon. Source