Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest software services firm by revenues, is competing for 5-6 business process outsourcing (BPO) deals worth up to $150-200 million, a senior executive said. The outsourcing deals are largely in verticals such as banking and financial services, retail and energy & utilities.

“In the banking and financial services space, there is a boom in the US in the mortgage and collections space,” TCS vice-president and BPO services head Abid Ali Neemuchwala said. The Indian IT firm is also seeing demand from life sciences and healthcare, telecom and media sectors.

TCS provides BPO services such as finance and accounting, human resources outsourcing, supply chain management and customer support through centres in India, China, South America and Europe.

TCS is also seeing new growth areas such as regulatory compliance and risk management emerge, in the aftermath of the financial crisis in the US and Europe.

North America and the UK remain the largest markets for TCS’ BPO business but the firm is also seeing traction in continental Europe, Latin America and India. Mr Neemuchwala said the focus of the BPO business in the domestic market is on deals in the travel and hospitality and insurance sectors. TCS is also competing for integrated IT- BPO deals in the government sector in India. Source

As the economic slowdown hit most sectors, cost rationalisation has become imperative for companies to survive. In this exclusive report Sunanda Jayaseelan get us the story of the Infosys BPO in Bangalore and how they are reviewing their HR strategy to save costs. It maybe a late entrant into the domestic market, but Infosys BPO is hoping to catch up fast. and to do that, it is adopting an aggressive policy to save costs.

Senior VP & Head - Global Delivery, Infosys BPO, Swami Swaminathan said, “If you look at Indian companies, the level of intensity of skills that you require is less and therefore we are able to hire from Tier 3 and 4 cities and get those folks here and the cost is less. It is hiring employees from tier 3 and 4 towns instead of top cities, and is offering salaries 10-15 per cent lower than its counterparts. It hopes that cut in training costs and lower rentals in smaller towns will add up to 30 per cent cost efficiencies. This is going to be its strategy to expand its presence as well. (more…)