Industry news

The outsourcing of essays for marking and assessment to India is starting to boom in the US, it has been reported.

India has increased the number of essays it receives for marking by three times in the past year, now taking charge of the assessment of around 30,000 per year, according to Business Standard (India) online.

Typically, a professor in India gets paid around $20 per assessment and checks on an average 120 essays per month.

US universities such as Butler University College of Business and University of Northern Iowa College of Business Administration outsource essays to India.

“The concept is gaining popularity in India as it not only allows professors to make some extra money but also helps them get in depth knowledge on a particular subject,” said Madan Padaki, co-founder and ceo of Bangalore-based testing firm MeritTrac in Business Standard.

Ciasco and BT announced today they have extended their longstanding partnership through the launch of a global “cloud”-based IPT solution.

Ciassco and BT’s Onevoice Unified Communications (UC) platform, will launch a scalable, business-grade and global hosted IP Telephony service.

Chris Dedicoat, president of Cisco Europe said; "Cisco and BT are deepening our collaboration today by introducing a unified communications solution delivered through the cloud at a compelling price point.”

The proposed set-up will attempt to reduce costs, allowing businesses to dramatically reduce upfront investment expenditure whilst accelerating the adoption of UC on a global scale.

Dedicoat is also hopeful the new hosted offering will help the company to “bring the benefits of the unified communications to more customers globally.”

Labeling printing solutions company Zebra Technologies has paired up with technical outsource specialist, Qcom, to provide customer service across EMEA and phone support and field service for the UK and Ireland.

In the three year agreement, Qcom will handle Zebra’s first English-speaking technical support line for end-users and resellers.

It will also deliver the full range of the new Zebracare on-site contracts across mobile, desktop, kiosk and card printers.

Paul Vogt, services director for Zebra EMEA, said: “As we continue to expand our service offerings across UK, Ireland and Europe, it is important that that we continue to offer excellent service standards to our existing and new customers throughout the lifecycle of a product.”

Neil Anderson, Qcom’s managing director, says: “This new phase of our relationship, backing the exciting new Zebracare on-site package, will allow an enhanced after-sales service to be delivered to all users of Zebra equipment, building on Qcom’s expertise in outsourcing Zebra printer support.

Learning from Santa...

Santa Claus is in for a pretty important Christmas this year. If it’s not the focus on reduced carbon emissions that is sure to impact the use of his sleigh, then it’s the furore over the outsourcing of his toy-making to specialist elves. Clearly, Santa was way ahead of the times when conducting the ultimate in business efficiency - why has it taken us so long to catch on?

2010 looks to be the year the UK fully embraces Santa’s business model. Only this week care homes outsourcing group, Caretech, announced it expects to see a boom in its business next year. The company attributes the rise in its use to the current climate and subsequent tightening of local authority finances. Old Saint Nic isn’t far off retirement. I am sure it will help him sleep easy in the knowledge that there are care home specialist providers on the market.

Although outsourcing is becoming more commonplace amongst the public and private sector alike, there are still those who are resistant to the concept of using offshore suppliers. It seems there is a growing trend in the US to bring call centre operations back into the country, having previously managed them offshore. Atlanta-based natural gas distributor AGL Resources is the latest to bring its call centre – which was operated by Wipro – back to the US, in a move which will create 75 new jobs locally.

In more positive news, car manufacturing giant Renault Group has not been deterred by the beckoning of process streamlining. Renault have signed a three year outsourcing contract with Capgemini which will see the service provider take responsibility for managing the car manufacturer’s application lifecycle. More than 180 Capgemini professionals will be involved in the project, including technical support, and applications development specialists.

I think we have all learned something from this week’s news round up. All you have to do is follow Santa’s business model and you are guaranteed a long, prosperous business life.

Care homes outsourcing group Caretech has announced it expects to see a boom in its business in the upcoming year.

The prediction follows the company’s unveiling of a jump in revenues, thanks to full-year contributions from its acquisitions, it was reported in the Financial Times.

The current climate and subsequent tightening of local authority finances will contribute to the increase in business, according to Caretech.

“There’s a growing trend toward the outsourcing of care in the current economic climate of expenditure cuts,” said Farouq Sheikh, executive chairman.

“A lot of the [directly provided] local authority care is actually costing us as taxpayers more money, so that’s going to drive the outsourcing process,” he added.

Leading Mexican business Grupo Gigante has announced it has extended its outsourcing contract with IBM for five additional years through.

IBM will continue to maintain the Group's key business processes, including its customer/supplier portal and support for all financial, administrative, commercial, logistic, operating and HR processes, as well as in-store support.

For Grupo Gigante's corporate headquarters and its subsidiaries, Gigante Grupo Inmobiliario, The Home Store and Tiendas Super Precio, IBM will be responsible for fully managing and monitoring the information technology (IT) infrastructure under two managed service modes, applications and infrastructure.

Adrian Valencia, CIO, Grupo Gigante said: "Relying on the support of a solutions and research centre like that offered by IBM at its Guadalajara IT Campus provides us with the opportunity to test new solutions that facilitate strategic business decision-making and bring more efficiency to our day-to-day operations."

Global IT company Wipro is planning a market expansion into new continents following predictions of an expected rise in outsourcing to India.

Wipro official, Suresh Vaswani said in a recent statement that the company was “looking to both expand and venture into niche markets in several countries including Europe, China and the Middle East”.

As a result of the firm getting a foothold in China, this would also provide advantages when looking to expand the business further in Japan, according to the company.

The Chairman of the National Outsourcing Association has defended the call centre running the national Swine Flu Helpline, following reports it had been misdiagnosing patients.

Up to 80 per cent (up to 800,000 people) of people who were told they did have swineflu, may not have actually had the illness, according to reports today.

The National pandemic Flu Service (NPFS) was set up under NHS Direct as a specialised service to take pressure away from its main phone lines. The service enables patients with flu-like symptoms to be assessed via phone or internet and be given Tamiflu vouchers.

However, the decision was taken to use private sector providers so that the service could be ‘flexed to meet the anticipated surge in demand’ an NHS Direct Statement says.

Martyn Hart, Chairman of the NOA, said this was not the blunder the right-wing press were keen to make out. “The fact is that the government doesn’t want swine flu to spread,” said Hart.

“So call centre staff will have been told to err on the side of caution when diagnosing. It’s also very difficult to distinguish clear symptoms described by a patient over the phone. The guys running this phoneline deserve a break.”

Scientists from the Health Protection Agency (HPA), said that at the height of the swine flu scare, the rate of correct diagnosis could have fallen to approximately one in 20. This means that in the busiest week of operation 40,000 doses of Tamiflu were dished out when 95 per cent – 36,000 should not have been.

Invensys Rail, a multinational provider of railway control and communications systems, has teamed up with Cognizant in a research and development (R&D) outsourcing deal.

The agreement will see over 120 rail professionals offered job transfers from Invensys’ existing R&D centre in Hyderabad.

Under the five year contract, Cognizant will manage the company’s R&D process for the UK, Australia, Spain, and the US.

In a statement Cognizant said it hoped the deal would “bring in greater operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness to its [Invensys] global product R&D processes, improve quality and time-to-market, and enhance customer experience”.

"This business relationship is highly significant for the ongoing growth of Invensys Rail in both mature and emerging markets," said James Drummond, Chief Executive Officer, Invensys Rail.

Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

The IT research and development (R&D) offshoring market in India is set to achieve a 23 per cent compound annual growth rate, reaching $21.4bn by 2012, according to a study by consulting firm Zinnov.

Zinnov CEO Pari Natarajan said, despite this growth in the R&D offshoring market in India there is a dearth of required talent pool, it was reported in the Offshoring Times.

Salaries constitute around 70-75 per cent of an R&D company operations and this was also impacting their productivity, said Natarajan.