Business Process Outsourcing News and Information

We have been hearing for quite some time that Wipro, India's third largest software exporter is planning to get into legal process outsourcing. Now it is confirmed that as part of its KPO services it would start offering legal process outsourcing (LPO) services for clients across US and Europe. According to Times of India it would be headed by former banker and Wipro BPO senior VP Ramit Sethi.

Wipro will offer services such as patents and contract management. And for the time being won't go all out to lure clients from the fields of paralegal services and litigation support. It presently employs 80 staff and set to appoint more in future.  

Wipro unlike its arch rival Infosys does not want to go all out promoting its LPO services. The service is more like an extension to its KPO service. Mr. Sethi is not heading the LPO division, in fact he is in charge of the KPO division. For legal domain skills Madhu Khatri will do the consultation.  

Infosys on the other hand is more proactive and has appointed Karlyn Stanley, a former partner in a private equity and an attorney with around 25 years. It has also appointed an offshore director who will be based out of India. Infosys also won't mind getting contracts from hardcore law firms, which is not the case with Wipro.

Mr Sethi while speaking to Times of India said,

The objective is to provide end-to-end services catering to the same global customer. LPO becomes a logical extension given the cost pressures that clients are facing now. We find that there is a very healthy demand for the services.

When we go to market, our first call will be intellectual property-related and contract management work that caters that is outsourced by corporates as opposed to niche legal work for law firms. The LPO currently employs about 80 people and is not very large but from the perspective of the LPO industry where most firms are just starting off, it is quite large.

In the LPO world, there are two kinds of work — corporate outsourcing and law firms outsourcing. We are looking at the former but that doesn't mean we won't take up opportunistic jobs. We have the capability

It seems everyone wants to grab a bite of LPO lozenge. After Wipro, now I have this news where Triton Corp Ltd, a Delhi based low end telemarketing firm (mostly outbound calls to US customers) revealed its plans to get into LPO. Unlike Wipro or Infosys the reason is however, not strategic development but getting involved with a sector which is more lucrative. The company would be providing outsourcing services in the legal space, which includes legal transcription, prescription, intellectual property, and patents.

For outbound telemarketing calls, clients pay around $10-$12, whereas with LPO the management will get not less than $50 per hour. Triton, which has three companies in his bag, Saffron Global, Sai Info and Webrizon India, starts to run the operation from March-April 2009. The management is in the final stage of discussion with three legal clients, but citing legal non-disclosure agreements does want to reveal much.

Triton presently has 950 workers on its board and plans to take the number to 1300 by April 2009. The new recruitment will mostly include chartered accountants, lawyers and company secretaries. 

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India is shining in outsourcing, but why not Pakistan. I wonder. Pakistan is India’s neighbor. More or less culture, education, people etc are similar. As far as human resource is concerned, If Indians can be trained, Pakistanies also can be trained. I know many a Paksitani software engineers who are very successful in different parts of the world. But it seems more than quality of human resource, it’s that non-industry-friendly image that is doing Pakistan more harm.

Nadeem Ilahi Managing Director and Country Head-Pakistan TRG (The Resource Group) in an exclusive interview with The News said Pakistan has potential in call centre and business process outsource (BPO) industry like any other country.

He said there are three important factors in this business, labour and cost, telecom, and infrastructure. Pakistan is fairly well placed as far as these three components are concern. India is the biggest BPO and call centre industry followed by Philippines. Telecom rates are cheaper in India and Philippines as compared to Pakistan but other costs particularly labour cost in India is twice as high as compared to Pakistan. 

“USA buys 80 per cent of global BPO services but the customers are not willing to come to Pakistan due to the US State Department’s travel advisories against Pakistan,” Nadeem said. The BPO business needs people to people contact. Customers’ trainers need to come and train the BPO and call centre employees before they start their campaign. However, he said, in presence of travel advisories the customers’ trainers cannot come to Pakistan to train the workers. Therefore they take their business somewhere else. Source

It seems the problem is stemming from US. 

Note: It's difficult to get an image from Pakistan without blood shed and terrorism. This pic is an artist's impression.

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I finished reading this article which lays down 10 must have reasons on why a start up organization should embrace outsourcing for high performance. I am not disagreeing with the writer there, only wondering if the start up honchos have the necessary resource (raw cash that is) to deploy these external firms. So, before going all out with outsourcing and getting the bests in the business they would have to have lot of money in the bank. And to get finance conventionally form the banks one needs to have a history of successes or been backed up by legacy. For VC funding, it has to have a billion dollar pioneering innovative proposition that can change or answer an issue (if not more) permanently.

The list goes here

1. Outsourcing lets companies be an expert in everything.
2. Outsourcing extends your business contacts.
3. Outsourcing allows for some flexibility with spending.
4. Outsourcing gives companies a chance to work with people they need but might not like.
5. Outsourcing keeps a company thinking about international opportunities.
6. Outsourcing gives employees a chance to practice their management skills.
7. Outsourcing provides a captive audience for refining a pitch.
8. Outsourcing keeps you from hiring the wrong person.
9. Outsourcing makes companies more efficient.
10. Outsourcing lets companies change direction quickly.

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India is shining in outsourcing, but why not Pakistan. I wonder. Pakistan is India’s neighbor. More or less culture, education, people etc are similar. As far as human resource is concerned, If Indians can be trained, Pakistanies also can be trained. I know many a Paksitani software engineers who are very successful in different parts of the world. But it seems more than quality of human resource, it’s that non-industry-friendly image that is doing Pakistan more harm.

Nadeem Ilahi Managing Director and Country Head-Pakistan TRG (The Resource Group) in an exclusive interview with The News said Pakistan has potential in call centre and business process outsource (BPO) industry like any other country.

He said there are three important factors in this business, labour and cost, telecom, and infrastructure. Pakistan is fairly well placed as far as these three components are concern. India is the biggest BPO and call centre industry followed by Philippines. Telecom rates are cheaper in India and Philippines as compared to Pakistan but other costs particularly labour cost in India is twice as high as compared to Pakistan. 

“USA buys 80 per cent of global BPO services but the customers are not willing to come to Pakistan due to the US State Department’s travel advisories against Pakistan,” Nadeem said. The BPO business needs people to people contact. Customers’ trainers need to come and train the BPO and call centre employees before they start their campaign. However, he said, in presence of travel advisories the customers’ trainers cannot come to Pakistan to train the workers. Therefore they take their business somewhere else. Source

It seems the problem is stemming from US. 

Note: It's difficult to get an image from Pakistan without blood shed and terrorism. This pic is an artist's impression.

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What is brain drain? According to Wikipedia, A brain drain or human capital flight is an emigration of trained and talented individuals ("human capital") to other nations or jurisdictions.

As far as India is concerned, its most talented 5% students (the best and the brightest) every year leave for US, UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand etc. thus creating a havoc for the domestic industries like mechanical, electrical, electronics, civil, instrumentation, chemical, biomedical and lastly software engineering. Same is the scenario with other sectors like medicine and food and beverage etc.

But now as India ii emerging in varied fields (poised for a GDP growth of 8% amidst global slowdown), Indians residing in different parts of the world with relevant experience are coming back to India.

Vish Ramamurti is home again. Sixteen years after leaving India to pursue a better life in the United States, the 37-year-old electrical engineer has returned to Bangalore. There were many reasons for his reverse migration: ageing parents, homesickness and a desire to teach his children his native language. But the real driver was job opportunity. Read

As more and more organizations are outsourcing software development functions to external companies, they also find themselves at the receiver’s end as far as security risks are concerned from areas like coding practices, infrastructure and operation.  

Additional efforts and measures are required to tackle these new security risks. One of the best practices of ensuring secure outsourced software is to enhance a software development process with strict security guidelines and assessments.

Here, you can read a dozen of practices that organizations can follow when outsourcing software code development.

1. Define upfront what is meant by security, including the security environment in which the application is to be used and what other resources could be exposed by a security vulnerability, and include the definition in the contract put in place

2. Validate the security mechanisms to be used upfront and set requirements for their use

3. Ensure that the third party is using software coding best practices and that they are documented and validated

4. Demand proof of the level of training, skills and security awareness among the third party's development staff

5. Ensure that expectations are laid out in the service-level agreement, including milestones and deliverables

6. Define acceptance criteria for the security of applications delivered

7. Provide a list of the most critical flaws that are deemed unacceptable

8. Mandate measures for certifying that code is secure, including the use of automated testing tools

9. Define steps required in the audit process and ensure that all code is audited and certified before payment is made

10. Ensure that the right to audit code and perform security checks is written into the contract

11. Define processes for remediation by the third party and ensure that responsibility for bearing the costs of remediation or legal liability, even after the application has been delivered, are written into the contract

12. Specify in the contract that security checks and monitoring will be continued throughout the lifecycle of that application and lay out the third party's responsibility for fixing flaws found at a later date.

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Hmm…India comes handy for all the purposes. Here, I am reading this news where the accounting firm overburdened with inflow of extra accounting work like preparing client tax returns sends much of the seasonal work to an accounting firm which has more than 700 experienced accountants on its board, out of them 140 are certified public accountants (CPAs) and certified accountants (Cas). Pretty impressive! What they are replacing is broadly lower level of work.

More from the article

Welcome to the growing world of finance and accounting outsourcing. What started out with billing, invoicing, general bookkeeping, accounts payable and receivables is now including tax preparation, even audit services.

According to NASSCOM, an Indian trade body representing the outsourcing business, high-end accounting work now accounts for 30% to 40% of the market.

According to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, there are about 140,000 practising CAs in the country, and another 350,000 are pursuing their CA designation. That talent pool is attractive to North American firms.

I remember reading a report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sometime back, where; it says U.S. banks and financial institutions have heightened their liability and political risks by outsourcing functions overseas. As per Deloitte research statistics 80% of the world's largest banks have moved financial work offshore, and much as 15%-or $356 billion-of the financial services industry's cost base will migrate within the next five to 10 years.

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While writing the blog post on Infosys training and development center I stumbled upon some photos of Microsoft Redmond campus. World’s most powerful company, ironically goes without power in one of its offices :-). Find out here.

There are many places to see inside the campus. In the Microsoft Store you will find Microsoft T shirt (with positive comments for a change!!). Though in one of the blogs someone said this is one of the ugliest buildings he has ever seen.

Some are awestruck though

More from Microsoft site

Cafeteria in Building 34 on the Microsoft Redmond

Main entrance to the Microsoft Redmond Campus

Infosys has created a gigantic training and development center in Mysore (in the southern part of India). It is erected on 380 acres of land. Other than state of the art high tech classrooms, the center houses soccer and cricket field, multiplex theatre along with a intra transportation system to ferry employees from one corner from another. It can accommodate 10,000 people per day. The center is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week.   

No wonder. Infosys Technologies chairman, S. Gopalakrishnan termed it as a city by itself. He says the campus is created "to make it inspirational for people to work in the IT industry, and to show that in India you can work in world-class communities.”

Multiplex  at Infosys Campus, Mysore

Inside Multiplex 

Hostels at Infosys Campus, Mysore 

Cycle your way through offices 

Amphitheatre 

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