The Government of Tamil Nadu is holding talks with various companies and colleges for setting up of Rural Business Process Outsourcing Centres, with an aim of taking the IT sector to rural areas. The government recently unveiled its highly ambitious Rural Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Policy, unveiling an incentive-based approach to encourage establishment of BPOs in rural areas.

“We are holding talks with several companies and engineering colleges as part of the process”, officials said. The government wanted the engineering colleges to offer training to the students so as to make them employable in BPO sector when they passed out as graduates.

 On setting up of the BPO centres in rural areas, officials beliave it will take some time, as the government was looking to bring BPO providers and entrepreneurs under one platform.

The officials job is to bring the entrepreneurs and companies on to one platform. Firstly, they have to finalise the companies that will provide employment and identify those entrepreneurs who are ready to provide basic infrastructure. Source

Educational Testing Service (ETS), the leading provider of education assessments and psychometric research, has awarded Accenture /quotes/comstock/13*!acn/quotes/nls/acn (ACN 36.70, -0.20, -0.54%) a seven-year, $160M contract extension to continue managing its end-to-end supply chain, under a business process outsourcing (BPO) agreement. The contract was signed in May 2010.

Under the agreement, which was entered originally in 2005, Accenture will continue to manage all aspects of ETS’ supply chain, including the printing, publishing, warehousing, distribution, tracking and shipping of tests and test materials to more than 10 million test takers in 160 countries every year. This allows ETS to continually improve the control, accuracy and integrity in its operations.

“Working with Accenture these past five years, we have saved millions of dollars in print, transportation and supply chain costs — savings that we have been able to pass on to our customers, while continuing to provide them world class service,” said Diane Bailey, Vice President Production and Logistics, ETS.

“We are privileged to have the opportunity to continue providing vital supply chain and customized BPO services to ETS’ global organization,” said Rob D’Avanzo, a managing director in Accenture’s Communications & High Tech group. “An efficient and simplified supply chain process will help ETS continue to achieve control and efficiency over its entire operation.” Source