Catalyzing Excellence In Education

THE NEW WAVE-OPPORTUNITIES GALORE
BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING

India's new sunshine sector is an emerging opportunity - oriented avenue for her ever-growing technical literate human resource, which is being churned out every year after a grilling and exhaustive four-year rigmarole of theoretical knowledge.
What is this 'SUNSHINE SECTOR', the jargon used is BPO or the ITES. Those not so familiar with the abbreviation should know that BPO stands for BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING or ITES, which is INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ENABLED SERVICES.
Considered to be a low-end labor-intensive service of data entry, medical transcription and simple call center functions in the nineties now projects an astonishing transformation which would provide over 2 million jobs, a revenue of US$ 24 billion by the year 2008 which may perhaps be just a small slice in the Global pie of US$ 122 billion.
By the time you pick this magazine, chances are that this report would be outdated. Don't blame the mavens for that. The reason is fast transformation of this industry.
To educate ourselves, we must understand in layman terminology, what the BPO/ITES comprise of, these are:

Engineering Services	R & D operations
Chip Design	Medical Transcription
Application maintenance	Networking (LAN)
Financial research	Payroll & accounting services
Insurance-claims processing	Credit Card Services
Employee Leasing	Telemarketing
Software services/Content development	Legal
Accounting Services (Taxation)	Help Desks
Remote Maintenance/ Technical Support services	Sales Support
Statistical/Data Analysis/Actuarial Services	Architectural
Logistics/Material Management/Inventory Control	Call Center

As on 31 March 2003, the sector employed 171,000 professionals. The present growth rate is 70%; the ever-expanding diverse services allow addition to the existing processes thereby making India a major back office to the world.
This explosive growth is driven by many factors, which allows India her uniqueness as a provider;
Way back in 1999, London based banker Joseph Sigelman and his friend Randy Altschuler-a New York based equity researcher took a flight to India. They wrote their business plan in the seven hours in flight and, finally, floated a BPO outfit Office Tiger Chennai, initially for office documentation work only. Three years since, Office Tiger is the fifth - largest third party BPO company in India with revenues over $25 million.
In the next 18 24 months, there will be 8 to 10 third party operators with revenues in excess of $100 million. The companies that are projected to pull through this $100 million mark by March 2005 are Iflex, GE Capital, WiproSpectramind, Daksh services, Office tiger, ExlService.com, Network Services, Msousce, Hinduja TMT, Tracmail, Pogeon
ADVANTAGES FOREIGN COMPANIES What do they get by off shoring their work to INDIA? The impetus is driven by many factors.
Cost Cutting Pressure to reduce costs as skilled manpower is available at a much cheaper price elsewhere. These savings from reduced costs could further be passed onto the consumer or investor to be reinvested.
· Time factor India works when the world sleeps…
· Lack of manpower Skilled manpower is not present in abundance. And the present lot works out to be quite expensive.
· Focus on core competencies Foreign companies want to concentrate on their core work…
· Redeployed manpower: Displaced employees are reallocated…
ADVANTAGE INDIA
· Abundant manpower India is very rich in terms of technical & non technical (graduate work force) manpower. Approximately 15 million graduates, graduate every year. Clearly this resource is in abundance and India shall utilize it well.
· English speaking - the Indians are most adept in speaking English - accent training…
· Location on the globe allows us the time factor - today's data is returned fully processed the next day…
· Communication & awareness - the personnel possess soft skills of 'handle with care'…
· Training is imparted with utmost care & urgency…
· Cost of employment is among lowest - software engineer in India is available for US $ 6 per day…
· Government of India has announced a special policy for Call centers…
· Incentives provided by Government to promote industry…