Outsourcing revenues from the telecom sector in India are set to grow at a CAGR of 31% to nearly $2 bn in 2012, according to a  first-of-its-kind study on the potential of the domestic BPO industry by Ernst & Young. Bharti has been growing at CAGR of 41% in the past two years. The telecom industry has been adding around 10 million subscribers every month with a subscriber base of 375 million in 2008-09.

India’s largest mobile services provider, Bharti Airtel, which played a pioneering role by outsourcing many of its non-core functions in 2005, is changing the way Indian firms have traditionally run business and putting pressure on others to follow suit, the consultancy said in the study. Telecom revenues made up 50% of the domestic BPO revenues at $661 million in 2008.

“This domain (telecom) has already witnessed a couple of large outsourcing deals in recent months and the trend is expected to continue,” said Ernst & Young partner Milan Sheth. The trend started in August 2005 with Bharti Airtel signing a $272.2-million deal with four global BPO companies—IBM Daksh, Mphasis, Teletech and HTMT—to outsource its call centres. (more…)

Three senior support managers at Satyam Computer’s BPO unit have resigned. A company spokesperson said Satyam BPO Global Head (Human Resources) Naresh Jhangiani along with V Satyanandam (Head of corporate services) and Kulwinder Singh (Head of marketing- Asia Pacific) have resigned.

“Apart from Jhangiani, the other two executives are from middle management. They had put in their papers a month or two back as they look out for better opportunities,” the spokesperson said.

Last week Vineet Nayyar, the CEO of Satyam’s new owner Tech Mahindra, had said Satyam has an excess staff of 10,000. The spokesperson said that these exits do not have a bearing to the statement and “there would be no impact on the company of their (three managers) exit”.

“The company is looking at smoothening the process and no significant impact is expected on the daily operations as these executive work for supporting teams,” he said. Satyam BPO was set up in 2002 as Nipuna and handles most of Satyam customers.

Its clients come primarily from the banking, financial services and insurance verticals along with manufacturing. It has about 2,400 employees and has one delivery centre each in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. Source

The result of the survey conducted by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) and Outsource2Philippines (O2P) showed that 83% of the respondents said they were affected by the crisis but stated that the impact was “moderate” or “minor.” Meanwhile, 16% of the surveyed BPO executives said the effect of the crisis on their business was “significant,” and only 5% responded with “very significant.”

About 60% of the executives in firms affected by the crisis indicated that their firms have responded by introducing new services.

This is our free preview of this article. To enjoy reading the story in full, please log in to Codex. Or, if you are not yet a subscriber, please subscribe now to get complete access to Philippine business news daily from BusinessWorld. Source

It seems light is round the corner at the end of the tunnel. According to a report, Infosys BPO has opened the gates for hiring again.  The company signals business needs and new projects as reasons why it has started rehiring.

The report says the company has about 200 vacancies coming up on a month on month basis. The report quotes BPO vice-president and HR head K Raghavendra saying that the openings are at the entry level and the company plans to recruit for various processes across all service offerings. He added that the company is recruiting for both voice and non-voice offerings. Raghavendra also said that a few new positions are also being created and in certain other cases back fills are happening on account of attrition.

Infosys BPO had earlier been in news for laying off more that 600 contract workers. The BPO facility currently has about 17,238 employees. After Infosys concluded its annual performance appraisal exercise in mid-March, the company had shown door to 2,100 people across the country. (more…)

Tech Mahindra, the new owner of scandal-hit Satyam Computer Services, is locating a brand new 1000-seater BPO unit at the plush DLF Towers 
in Kolkata’s eastern fringes. It is poised to conclude a two-stage acquisition of 50,000 square feet (sqft) of prime floor space at DLF Towers on a long term lease.

When contacted, a senior Tech Mahindra executive told ET: “We will acquire about 50,000 sqft of floor space at DLF Towers on long-term lease in two stages. We’ve just taken 25,000 sqft and will acquire the balance shortly. We propose to launch our Kolkata BPO unit in the Rajarhat IT zone by mid-July as a 500-seater facility that will be scaled up to a 1000-seater facility in another nine months.”

At present, Tech Mahindra runs four national BPO units in Noida, Chennai, Gurgaon and Pune. This apart, it runs two offshore centres in Belfast and Newcastle. Tech Mahindra has some 4,000 employees operating at its four BPO units in India and another 500-odd in Northern Ireland and the UK. (more…)

Wipro Technologies said that its Business Process Outsourcing divison, Wipro BPO has partnered with Oracle for ‘best-of-breed  HR platform solutions.’

Wipro has also selected The Hackett Group, a global strategic advisory firm, to provide empirical data, best practices and world-class performance insights on the development of its innovative bundled solution platform, it said in a release here.

The solution simPlify, allows employers to reduce and control cost as it provides an opportunity to centralise and standardise processes while eliminating duplicative management structures.

The solution has the ability to leverage a many-to-one technology capability, while maximising service quality and HR customer satisfaction. Source

Essar Group-owned BPO Aegis has acquired Australia-based UCMS Group for $40.7 million (Rs 200 crore). Aegis’ Australian affiliate, Aegis BPO 
Services Australia, will pay UCMS shareholders $0.68 per share, which is a 133% premium over Thursday’s closing price, the company said on Friday.

With this acquisition, Aegis will add 2,000 UCMS employees with the combined entity having a staff strength of 35,000 spread across India, the Philippines, the US, Costa Rica, Kenya and Australia.

Aegis, which has annualised revenues of approximately $500 million, is looking to complete the deal by August 2009. Currently, the BPO’s revenues out of Australia is about $5 million. UCMS Group had revenues of around $157 million in the last financial year. Aegis will fund this deal through internal accruals.

This will be Aegis’ twelfth acquisition over a three-year period. Last August, the company acquired PeopleSupport for $250 million, which gave it a larger presence in the Philippines. Earlier this year, Aegis offered to buyout the US-based BPO ICT Group for $128 million, which was rejected by the latter. Full News

Much lesser employees are jumping jobs in the BPO industry, courtesy the ongoing global recession. As a result, attrition rates (the number of people quitting per 100 employees) for several listed BPO firms have come down by 5-13 percentage points on a sequential basis.

Genpact’s employee attrition rate for the quarter, measured from day one of employment was down by 5 percentage points to 21 per cent from 26 per cent in the preceding quarter and 24 per cent for January-March 2008. If the attrition rate, were to be measured after employees completing six months of employment (as many of its competitors do), Genpact’s attrition rate would be 18 per cent.

EXL reported a record 12.8 percentage points dip in attrition for billable employees at 21 per cent from 33.8 per cent reported in the previous sequential quarter. “Operationally, our attrition management and employee engagement programme, in combination with the weaker economy, has resulted in record low attrition levels,” the company said in its earnings statement. Full News

Convergys Corporation, a global leader in relationship management, recently announced the dedication of its newest integrated contact center facility in Cebu City. Convergys is now the largest BPO provider in Cebu City with over 3,300 employees throughout three contact center facilities.

On hand locally to dedicate Convergys’ Cebu i3 contact center were Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, Cebu Acting Mayor Mike Rama, and Convergys Chief Information Officer Jim Goetz.

In a short period of three months, Convergys has also announced the opening of its UP-Ayala Land TechnoHub facility in Metro Manila and the Nuvali TechnoHub facility in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. These new Convergys contact centers were simultaneously dedicated from the Nuvali TechnoHub facility by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Convergys President and CEO Dave Dougherty, and with other senior executives in attendance. (more…)

Adlabs Films, a Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company, on Thursday said it has commenced its BPO business for the media space  providing digital restoration and content processing services. The BPO would be a one-point solution for the transition from analog to digital and physical media to digital data, the company said in a statement here.

“The globalisation of media services is well underway. The comprehensive services of the media BPO enable a distinctive and complete offering to Adlabs worldwide clients,” Adlabs Films’ Chief Executive Officer, Anil Arjun, said.

The BPO would provide services like restoration, encoding, transcoding, compression authoring, format and standards conversion, duplication and dubs, meta-tagging, repurposing/versioning, QC and broadcast logistics and archiving. The BPO has already commenced business with 300 employees and has recently obtained an order for digitization and digital restoration of 1,000 films preserved by the National Film Archive of India (NFAI). Source