Infosys BPO, the back-office arm of India’s second-biggest software exporter Infosys, plans to acquire captive operations of customers, as the company seeks to grow its share of the $80-billion global BPO market. Almost two years ago, Infosys BPO acquired back office operations of Philips, which assured around $250 million in revenues over the next few years. The acquisition helped Infosys gain entry into Poland and other European countries.

“We are open to similar takeovers if the right deal comes through,” Infosys BPO CEO Amitabh Chaudhry said. “We are not looking at opening any new centres across the globe, but if such a deal comes along that requires them to have a facility, then we would go ahead.”

Infosys BPO entered into a seven-year contract with Royal Philips Electronics of Netherlands to provide finance and accounting services and the processing of purchasing orders in a deal valued at $250 million. The Philips centres are turning profitable, Mr Chaudhry added.  Source

HCL BPO, a division of HCL Technologies, has signed a five-year deal with a Britain-based water utilities client that has around 5,000 employees. As of now, the company has less than 100 people working for the client, but it expects to add more by June-end. HCL is also in talks with four other potential water utilities in the UK and Europe as well as some energy utilities.

“Utilities like water, energy and electricity are relatively immune to the economic slowdown and we are focused on the UK market in the first place, specially for water utilities,” Neeraj Tandon, global head, Retail and Utilities Business Unit, told Business Standard. “HCL BPO has invested in creating service propositions in bringing in the domain skills for creating, building and adapting platforms for the utilities industry and in knowledge management, performance management and process management,” he added. (more…)

The Indian IT-BPO industry is likely to touch revenues of $225 billion by 2020, of which exports will account for about $175 billion, as  per a new report. The industry also has the potential to generate an additional $150 billion in revenues, provided it takes some measures to transform the business environment, infrastructure, talent development and innovativeness.

The report, Perspective 2020: Transform Business, Transform India, by industry association Nasscom and McKinsey, points to a few threats to India’s competitiveness, including a shortage of employable talent, inadequate infrastructure development and growing competition from emerging outsourcing destinations such as China and Philippines.

The projection of $225 billion in revenues is based on a few assumptions, McKinsey partner Ranjit Tilankar said. These include some basic academic reforms such as collaboration with industry on curriculum, increase in employability of graduates from the current 10-15%, at least a 5.5% GDP growth and no impact of protectionism. “Protectionism could put about $50 billion of the projected revenue at risk,” Mr Tilankar said. (more…)

Wipro BPO has lost its outsourcing contract with Delta Air Lines following negative customer feedback. Delta has been Wipro’s client since 2002. Spokespersons at Delta, the Atlanta based carrier, have gone on record saying that it has stopped routing customer service calls to India. The move makes Delta the second big carrier to shift customer service work from India after United Airlines did so in February.

“Customer acceptance of call center representatives in other countries was low, and our customers are not shy about letting us have that feedback,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said in his April 16 message to Delta employees, news agencies reported. When contacted Wipro’s joint CEO Suresh Vaswani told FC, “While I cannot comment on customer specific information, I can confirm that the economic turbulence in the US has had an impact. It’s a matter of new trends in the demand-supply equation,” Vaswani said, referring to the need for US to get back more jobs into their homeland. (more…)

There is an alert for a future problem that is facing the outsourcing industry, where a think tank warned of probable lower rates of growth and the consequent reduction in its labor force, which is directly opposite what the industry has been saying for months—that the sector is not unduly affected by the global financial crisis.

The warning came from the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research Inc. (Eiler), which made a study of the issue.

Eiler deputy executive director Anna Leah Escresa-Colina said a reduced work force without a corresponding reduction in the work could lead to a rise in occupational health damage.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines had recently announced that companies may cut growth rates in 2010. (more…)

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is learnt to be restructuring pay-scales for its BPO employees. The first step being withholding quarterly variable pay. Sources inform that the company had recently brought its BPO arm under the quarterly variable pay structure, thereby withholding the component for the January-March quarter resulting in reduction of March salaries of the employees.

Seeing their company’s logo on the Rajasthan Royals team during the IPL may bring cheers to TCSers. But its BPO arm’s employees aren’t that happy. Sources say that TCS has recently brought its BPO arm under its ‘quarterly variable’ pay structure, which was introduced in April 2008. Under the pay structure, part of the variable pay is paid at the end of every quarter.

TCS BPO’s employees used to get their entire variable pay monthly until March 2009. For the January to March period, this withheld quarterly variable pay has been deducted from the final March salary paid out. The payment of the withheld amount in April is to be decided when TCS’ board meets for its fiscal fourth quarter and annual results on Monday. Source

Controversial American talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who fashions himself as the new ‘face’ of the US Republican Party, has raised another storm by calling workers handling outsourced jobs in India as ’slumdogs’.

Limbaugh, who has been accused of making insensitive remarks from women to disabled to homosexuals, hurled the epithet picked up from the Danny Boyle’s smash-hit film Slumdog Millionaire at a discussion last week on outsourcing of jobs from America.

“There’s a reason (these jobs) aren’t coming back. They’re outsourced for a reason, an economic reason, and they’re not coming back,” Limbaugh said, in response to a caller named Terry from Ohio, who had not even referenced India. (more…)

The Bpo companies of India will continue to expand in the Philippines amid the global financial crisis, Indian Ambassador Rajeet Mitter said. He said the Philippines remains a good investment niche for Indian companies, particularly the BPO sector because of its healthy financial stand.

“The BPO sector is booming. Despite the crisis, we are still expanding,” the Indian diplomat said in an interview during the visit of Indian Navy’s largest ship INS Jyoti which left the country over the weekend.
Mitter said there are 20 Indian BPO companies that continue to operate in the country despite the crisis, including Infosys, Wipro Technologies (Western India Products Limited) and the Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS), which is part of Tata Group, one of India’s largest and oldest conglomerate.

“They are all doing well. I don’t expect any downturn (in investments),” he said. The Indian top diplomat said he is very optimistic that India is having a positive growth amid the global economic slowdown. (more…)

The business process outsourcing industry was not only expected to generate more jobs for Filipinos but would also help fill up available office spaces, both in prime business locations and in “next-wave” cities. According to data from real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis Philippines, the vacancy rate for the Makati Prime/Grade A Office category had surged to as high as 7.5 percent from 1.5 percent just more than a year ago. By end-2009, the firm said this number could breach the 10-percent mark, due to quality and pricing pressures.

“For 2009, the challenge for the office sector is the immediate absorption of the spill-over space from 2008, estimated at around 145,000 square meters (completed and ready for occupancy),” CBRE chair Rick Santos said in a statement. “With BPO as the main driver for office take-up, new office absorption is expected to be flat at around 250,000 square meters, with provincial urban centers like Cebu, Davao, Clark, and Baguio taking their share from Metro Manila,” he added. (more…)

Indian BPO firms are expanding their contact centre operations in the Philippines to handle growing demand. Unlike their IT services counterparts, BPO firms are largely unaffected by the slowdown and continue to see strong volumes as clients of their customers still have to be serviced. Also, some customers are looking to offshore more processes to cut costs. New client wins are adding to volumes.

Companies such as Hinduja Global Solutions, Wipro BPO and WNS Global are ramping up their presence in the Philippines, which has emerged as a hub for voice-based customer services. Almost all Indian vendors offer a significant chunk of these services from the Philippines.

Hinduja Global is setting up a second delivery centre with a capacity of up to 900 seats in Manila. “We expect it to go live by July,” said Mr Partha DeSarkar, CEO of Hinduja Global, adding that the company’s expansion was mainly driven by American clients’ preference for services to be delivered from the Philippines.

Mr DeSarkar expects good growth in the Philippines, largely from sectors such as health insurance and banking. “I would say the Philippines is becoming increasingly popular. Growth is coming from new as well as existing clients,” he added. Full News