Industry news

Infosys Technologies is seeing its outsourcing deals pick up as major countries leave the economic downturn behind, it has been reported.

In the last two quarters the markets have improved and deals are coming back, CEO and managing director, S Gopalakrishnan, told reporters at an event in Mumbai, according to Rediff.com Business.

“The recovery is led by the United States and other emerging markets such as India and China,” said Gopalakrishnan.

“The US contributes 60 per cent of the total business. Clearly this is having more impact on the Indian IT services. Proactively we are investing more on diversifying our business,” he added.

Currently, the company's revenue distribution is 60 per cent from North America, 25 per cent from Europe and the balance from other parts of the world.

Vodafone has revealed plans to make hundreds of employees jobless as it seeks to ‘remove layers’ between the company and its customers.

The majority of the job losses will be back-office roles, however Vodafone has also admitted some would also be lost within its call centres as reported by Call cEntre Focus.

It too has been reported that in addition to these cuts, the firm will also create 170 customer facing roles, 50 of which will be taken from its graduate programme, over the next few weeks and months.

The decision surrounding cuts seems to have caused some confusion among staff and union leaders alike,

“We’d like to see greater clarity from the company on how this decision will affect staff, a willingness to explore redeployment opportunities and greater assurances about a voluntary approach to redundancies,” said Andy Kerr, Communications Workers Union deputy general secretary.

Contact centre business transformation is a viable option to generate immediate and significant cost savings, according a Datamonitor whitepaper.

The transformation practice involves an enterprise-outsourcer partnership with the express purpose of improving CRM-related business performance whilst reducing risk and costs.

According to Datamonitor and Teleperformance, who commissioned the report, transformation can be achieved by re-engineering processes and transferring contact centre facilities to the outsourcer.

Peter Ryan, lead analyst for call centres and BPO at Datamonitor, comments, “In light of escalating costs and service demands we are seeing a focus on new and innovative contact centre operating models. Business Transformation has emerged as a viable option to generate large and immediate cost savings.”

Intelenet, controlled by the US private equity group Blackstone, has announced today that it has acquired the back office operations of the UK transport company FirstGroup.

The Indian BPO firm acquired the service arm, FirstInfo, for £45m. Intelenet will now be responsible for customer management, ticket issuing and back-office processing across rail franchises including FirstCapitalConnect, First ScotRail and First Great Western.

The deal, which was formally concluded on the 10th January 2010, sees Intelenet take over FirstInfo’s two UK contact centres in Fort William and Plymouth. It also supports the company’s expansion in the UK and the aim to increase FirstInfo’s UK employees from 300 up to 2,000 in two years.

Belen Martinez, First’s rail division business development director, commented: “It will be business as usual and the new contract with Intelenet will enable First to improve services to customers.

“Intelenet specialises in the delivery of contact centre services and there will be investments in new technology and processes at the centres. We will work closely with Intelenet over the coming months to improve service.”

Liverpool City Council has announced it is set to receive funding after government approval was granted for its Building Schools for the Future (BSF) plans.

“Out of the £350m being spent on the BSF project, over £26m will be on IT, around 7.3 per cent of the overall BSF spend, ” a spokesperson for the council said.

The initiative, which forms part of the BSF's sixth wave of spending, will include the provision of ICT services at 24 secondary schools in Liverpool, due to start in 2013 until 2017.

The council is said to be currently seeking a private sector partner to participate and invest in the Public Private Partnership vehicle, GC News has reported.

Midlands-based Accord and Ashram Housing Associations have signed a contact centre and network deal with the newly rebranded Virgin Media Business.

It is hoped the new arrangement will help the Associations deal with its increasingly large call volumes, now up to 6,000 a month.

The network will enable the Associations to direct all branch enquiries through its new Customer First Centre.

“Given the growth and expansion of our housing portfolio in the last five years, our contact points had grown to a number that our residents found confusing,” said Ian Tinsley, Information Systems Manger at Accord.

The Financial Intelligence Unit India, part of the Indian Government’s Ministry of Finance, has signed an IT outsourcing contract with Wipro Infotech. The project is due to be completed in 24 months with a further service period of 36 months.

As part of the deal, Wipro will manage the Unit’s IT in a bid to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of its collection, analysis and dissemination of financial information and highlights the Government’s intentions to use technology to bring efficiency into analysis of data.

Mr Arun Goyal, director of Financial Intelligence Unit India, said: “We are keen on timely implementation of the Project as it will significantly enhance capabilities to collect financial information from various reporting entities, analyse it and disseminate actionable information to various law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

Capita boss, Paul Pindar, has joined a growing group of high-profile sourcing professionals calling for an increase in public sector outsourcing.

The comments were made following figures from the CBI last week that £130bn could be cut from public spending through increased outsourcing.

Pindar said: “Outsourcing companies could easily save money in areas such as benefit payments as well as reducing back office and administration costs. If you look at the total level of public expenditure of £680-£700bn and the level of savings that have previously been made of 25-30pc, there's no doubt significant savings are there."

According to The Telegraph, the CBI has today written to Chancellor Alistair Darling ahead of the Budget to say that "re-engineering the way public services are delivered can increase public sector productivity"

Commenting on the need for increased outsourcing, National Outsourcing Association chairman, Martyn Hart said, “The sector’s ability to cut costs by traditional means, such as staff cuts, is limited, so sourcing and shared service arrangements will come as a matter of course.”

The Main Street America Group has appointed India-based outsourcing giant Wipro in a seven year IT agreement.

In the deal, Wipro will support Main Street America Group’s IT business needs, providing the insurer with applications development, maintenance and quality assurance.

Enthusiastic about the new partnership, Ronald James, Main Street Americas chief information officer said: "As The Main Street America Group continues to increase scale and productivity, we needed to implement more efficient processes while reducing our operating costs.

“Partnering with Wipro could also help accelerate the delivery of our projects even further.”

BPO firms in the Philippines are hiring new personnel on expectations of strong business growth from the United States and Europe, the Asian Times has reported.

Amongst the companies planning to expand are Convergys Corp, which plans to expand its 20,000 workforce by 6,000 employees this year and Stream Global Services which says it plans to add 5,000 workers this year.

With its English-speaking population and cultural affinity with the United States - the world's biggest off-shoring client - the Philippines accounts for between seven per cent and 15 per cent of the global BPO market. The country lags only India, which accounts for between 35 per cent -50 per cent of the global market.

Gigi Virata, information and research director of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP), explained: "The back-office and KPO sector has been growing at a faster rate than the voice-based sector and we believe this trend will continue."