Industry news

Rising star of Indian offshore business services, Genpact (once part of General Electric) has announced that it is on the acquisition trail in India and Europe, offering the intriguing prospect of a small number of Indian companies stepping in to acquire depressed stocks as the economic chill spreads across the West and the rupee rises against the dollar.

Genpact president and CEO Pramod Bhasin said: “While captives are an interesting proposition, we would like to acquire in the verticals of finance and HR." The company will be eyeing acquisitions in India, US and Europe, he added.

Bhasin used the platform at this year's annual Nasscom conference to say that his company is also ramping up operations in China, where the company experienced growth of some 40 percent last year.

On the economic gloom elsewhere in the world he had this to say: “Business is as usual. We are sharpening our skills. There is a general uncertainty in the US market, and there might be a dip in the short-term but US will remain the largest economy.”

Genpact is one of several business process outsourcing (BPO) specialists in India that are also planning a move into keeper into knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). Genpact, in particular, is now pushing the idea that talent, skills, and expertise will become the true currency of the outsourcing industry, as client companies focus less on short-term cost-cutting measures and more on sourcing creatively to complement local services.

Two growing areas of KPO are actuarial and analytical services, where there is a considerable skills base in India. However, local wages remain at a relatively low percentage – albeit a rising one – of similar positions in the US and western Europe, so cost clearly remains a major part of the attraction for potential clients in the US and Europe. India is doing healthy business selling knowledge-based services and expertise to US-based and other client companies.

On the second day of the Mumbai Nasscom event, Bhasin took part in a forum on 'Making Corporate Boards More Effective'. There he said that he believed boards are “overwhelmingly burdened with governance issues, they’re automatically tuned to think about risks and compliance issues more rather than focus on strategy.”

Salil Parekh of Capgemini, who is acting CEO of the company's India operations, said: “Managing the boards is a challenge. We need to make the board members more active. One of the way to do this is to make them accountable," which is a very different take on the governance question.

Francois Enaud, CEO of Steria (which recently acquired Xansa) said that companies on the acquisition trail should not put money and time into small acquisitions.

Indeed, it may be that we are about to see some big acquisitions this year, as India begins extending its presence and expertise deeper into the West.

Here is a challenge from this blog to you, the people who make our industry work: Let's work together to formulate the total cost of outsourcing; a new TCO for the 21st century.

Why do I make this challenge? First, because there has been some good news this year for one part of the massive NHS IT programme. The final rollout of the Pacs project, which involves digitising medical scans and patients' x-rays so they can be examined on computers by specialists, was completed on time earlier in the year.

That this is news for perhaps the wrong reasons – the shock of a technology project for the NHS being completed as it was envisaged, and within the promised timescale – shows how far some public sector outsourcing projects have fallen in a public psyche already troubled by data privacy issues and a collapse of confidence in the Government's ability to handle personal information.

This got me thinking about the total cost of all large outsourcing projects. What are the real metrics for measuring the success or otherwise of an outsourced service, apart from the total contract value (TCV) of deals, whether they be in sterling, rupees, or dollars? Or the amount shaved off the bottom line by sourcing expertise and services from outside the walls of the local enterprise?

Genpact is one of many companies saying that skills and expertise should now be our industry's real currency, rather than the ability to lower costs. But how do we measure the hidden costs of seeking skills from outside of our own enterprises, for example, or from an offshore destination?

Beyond that, what price can we put on the undoubted damage to our industry of the public's shattered confidence in the public sector – which, after all, should be serving them, not mishandling or losing their data? Or of the debacle over the wider NHS IT project? Can this impact be measured – in an equation that factors in missed deadlines and over-budget costs and gives us a calculation of the real cost ? Surely this should be something that can readily be calculated?

And what of other hidden costs?

It's a sad fact that for many people outside of our industry, the public face of outsourcing is the call centre or help desk staffed by people who have little or no local knowledge of the caller's location. These are everyday experiences for many people; these are real examples – not of poor service by the outsource service provider, but of poor management and training by the client. But what are the costs of this to the client, and to the outsourcer – the cost of the customer who feels let down, and who has no interest in the money that his credit provider might be saving?

Over to you.

The good and the great of the Indian outsourcing industry gathered in Mumbai this week under the gathering storm clouds of a US-led recession. But delegates at the Nasscom (the National Association of Software and Service Companies) event were remarkably upbeat, confident that European business would compensate for any shortfall coming out of the US.

Certainly there were optimistic noises coming from the trade body. The Indian technology industry is expected to generate around £32 billion in revenues in 2008 – a 33 percent year-on-year growth, according to Nasscom's 2008 Strategic Review. Services and software exports are expected to contribute around $41 billion, with the domestic market generating more than $23 billion.

"The Indian IT industry has been rapidly evolving, the growth is on track to achieve, if not exceed the targets for 2010. The trends indicate that the domestic market is poised for growth with IT spends trending upwards, particularly by the government," said Nasscom President Som Mittal.

As a proportion of national GDP the Indian technology sector will hit 5.5 percent in 2008, up from just 1.2 percent in 1998. It is also expected to contribute a net value to the economy of up to 3.9 percent. The Nasscom study found the technology industry also fuelled a 36 percent increase in direct exports and boosted direct employment by a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent over the past decade.

All of this has a beneficial knock-on effect on the Indian economy with every rupee earned by the Indian technology-business process outsourcing (BPO) industry leading to an additional rupee being spent in the economy.

That said, the shadow of a US economic downturn was never far from delegates thoughts. With unfortunate timing, Forrester Research this week cut its outlook for US and worldwide information technology purchases in 2008, citing a downturn in the US. The market is expected to grow 2.8 percent, down from an earlier forecast of 4.6 percent. In the UK, meanwhile, the Bank of England has also predicted a slowdown in growth, and suggested that further interest rate cuts are unlikely in the short term as inflation is rising.

In India itself, the pressures have been showing of late with three leading firms – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro – posting uninspiring quarterly earnings. "These are challenging times," warned Nasscom chairman Lakshmi Narayan. "There's a new world order. The current belt-tightening is not temporary. The industry will have to operate at a new performance level. Those who cannot keep pace with this will be driven out.”

But he added: "The robust growth of the Indian IT-BPO [business process outsourcing] industry by over 33 percent in the current fiscal year reinforces the confidence of global corporations in India. As we move towards 2010, trends indicate that the industry is firmly poised for broad-based growth across industries and service lines.” Nasscom will tomorrow (Friday 15th) release the findings of a study carried out with Deloitte entitled Indian IT Industry: Impacting the Economy and Society . The report is a follow-on from Nasscom Foundation's annual research publication titled Catalysing Change , which highlights the state-of-play of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the IT and ITES industries. This year, the report has looked beyond the boundaries of CSR initiatives, and has undertaken a more comprehensive study for identifying and assessing the overall social and economic contribution of the IT and ITES industry in India.

The study finds that IT is now the largest employer in India's organised public sector. and that IT has made socially relevant products and services available as well as involving itself in the training of workforce for technical and non-technical jobs. The technology sector has also made a contribution towards education, employability and health, as well as encouraging better working opportunities for women.

"While the IT / ITES industry has made a promising start, there is indeed a long way to go,” said Saurabh Srivastava, chairman of Nasscom Foundation. “With the encouragement and support of its member companies, the application of its best practices, innovative strategies and the entrepreneurial spirit, it is on track to set an example that would encourage others to emulate and help positively change the face of India.”

As part of efforts to keep the momentum going, Nasscom is lobbying the Indian government to extend its Software Technology Park of India (STPI) scheme beyond 2009, especially for the benefit of small and medium-sized firms. Among other benefits, the STPI scheme which is set to expire in 2009, provides a 10-year income tax exemption for units situated in software technology parks. "We have sought a blanket continuation,” confirmed Narayanan. "Extension of STPI will also encourage smaller companies to move to Tier II and Tier III cities.”

The scheme is at the centre of a turf war between two arms of the Indian government. The finance ministry thinks the IT sector is now so large that it should not expect to keep getting tax breaks beyond March 2009, when the STPI scheme ends; the department of information technology, on the other hand, is pushing for a two-year extension of the tax concessions.

The odds seem to be in Nasscom's favour based on remarks by A. Raja, Union Minister for IT and Communications who told the conference that he was hopeful that they would be extended beyond 2009. “We have received feedback from the industry players for the continuation of the STPI scheme,” he said, adding that his ministry is asking for a dedicated incentive package for the Indian IT and BPO industry in the forthcoming Indian budget. “We are looking into the issue of extending the STPI scheme on a priority basis. We feel there are many start-ups and small and medium enterprises for whom special economic zones may not be a viable option.”

Raja also said that a new Information Technology Act with additional cyber security muscle, IP protection and steps to combat piracy effectively will be passed in the next session of Parliament.

“We are hopeful of tabling these changes in the next session and the revised IT Act will be a reality,” he said, an announcement that was met with cheering by delegates. “We will be strengthening the IT Act 2000 based on the feedback we’ve got from the industry. Besides, we also feel that there is a need to launch many more schemes along with the human resources ministry to create a better employable talent pool.”

All this was important in order to keep India ahead of the game in the global economy, he said. “I am deeply impressed that the IT industry is on par to reach $60 billion in revenues by 2008 and provide employment to two million people, an increase of 370,000 over the previous year,” he said. “Eighty percent of the population is bereft of Internet connectivity and the IT industry should come with affordable products and services so that the fruits of IT revolution will reach the masses.”

Outsourcing firms are still running into conflict with their customers as a result of lack of planning with the result that both sides are having to settle for less out of the relationship.

According to a study by Deloitte, Why Settle for Less , while some 83 percent of companies achieved an ROI of over 25 percent on their outsourcing projects, 49 percent would have defined service levels that aligned better with their companies' business goals if they could start their outsourcing projects again from scratch. A disappointingly small 34 percent of respondents felt they had gained important benefits from their service providers' innovative ideas or transformation of their operations.

But the complaints don't just run in one direction. By a three-to-one margin, outsourcing service providers said that their client companies did not have a solid outsourcing plan, lacked the operational data needed to make sound decisions and did not understand how the to-be organisation would really work.

The purpose of the survey was to document respondents’ experiences and uncover insights that could be applicable across all industries when undertaking an outsourcing programme,” said Paul Robinson, principal, global leader, technology. “A much larger than expected level of company/outsourcer conflict was reported, and many of the companies expressed disappointment with the outsourcers’ overall ability to provide continuous process and technology improvements.”

There are certainly some depressing conclusions to be drawn from the report. Strikingly, 39 percent of the 300 respondents reported that they had terminated at least one outsourcing contract and transferred it to a different vendor in their careers and, of those who reported that they were “Dissatisfied” or “Very Dissatisfied” with their largest contract, half had brought the function back in house. In addition, 61 percent reported that they had escalated problems to senior management in their contract’s first year, with 15 percent reporting five or more such escalations.

"Outsourcing is working financially for a majority of companies in this survey, however, executives' propensity to lead with cost reduction and labour arbitrage without emphasising the need for overall optimisation stymies their companies' chances to realise the full benefits of outsourcing," said Peter leader of Deloitte's Outsourcing Advisory Services group. "The themes of unrealised potential and lost opportunities to use outsourcing as an opportunity to innovate echo throughout this report."

To improve the situation, executives should look at cost reduction as a basic requirement in an outsourcing arrangement and then look beyond this. Most companies are foregoing the much greater benefits that would be generated with a more transformative approach which is not occurring. Only 34 percent of executives surveyed reported significant benefits from innovation/transformation, and just 28 percent of executives had seen benefits from business process reengineering as a result of their outsourcing contracts to increase market share, and turned to outsourcing.

Outsourcing needs to be considered within the context of five other aspects of the business:

• Operational Strategy. Given their focus on cost reduction, most outsourcing initiatives are designed to support a company’s operational strategy. But companies should also think about other aspects of operational strategy beyond cost, such as productivity, the quality of services or products, and time to market.

• Competitive Strategy. Companies need to examine how outsourcing will affect their competitive position. Outsourcing initiatives need to be designed carefully so that they don’t undermine the company’s strategic positioning.

• Financial Strategy. Companies should consider items such as financial engineering, financial risk management, allocation of capital, evaluation of project financing options, financial leverage e.g., debt/ equity ratio), and working capital.

• Marketing Strategy. Examine how outsourcing can support its marketing of products and services, pricing strategy, pace of product or service introduction, and customer service.

• R&D Strategy. Outsourcing can support a company’s efforts to develop innovative products to meet current and anticipated future customer needs.

Deloitte argues that there are a number of questions that companies need to ask before they embark on an outsourcing initiative. These include:

• Did you clearly define the strategy? Companies need to ask themselves if they are outsourcing the right things for the right reasons. Transferring a dysfunctional operation to a vendor in hopes of saving costs through economies of scale or arbitrage can be a case of "your mess for less."

• Do we have a solid foundation? Companies need to ask if they have defined and quantified what they expect from outsourcing. The creation of a business case and the establishment of effective service level agreements (SLAs) should not be given short shrift; but in practice this is too common.

• Vendor selection now means something different. Companies need to select the right service provider, one that is capable of delivering strategic process improvements as well as cost reductions. When things do not go well in outsourcing, most companies automatically scrutinise the service provider, but do not recognise that their decision to select a vendor on cost alone may be the actual root cause of their problems.

• Striking the deal. Companies need to ask if their contracting process is mutual and flexible. Contract negotiation is a pivotal point in the outsourcing process. After the deal is signed, are you getting what you paid for? It can be tempting to think the signing of the outsourcing contract is the culmination of the outsourcing process. But in reality, effective performance management, especially the insistence that service providers actively search for, develop and implement strategic improvements, is the crowning component of an effective outsourcing initiative.

The Deloitte survey included more than 300 senior executives at mid-size and large companies. Interviews were also conducted with senior executives at 31 of the largest outsourcing providers and with senior partners and partners at several legal firms. The executives and legal firm partners came from the United States (42 percent), the United Kingdom (25 percent) Germany (25 percent) and Canada (eight percent).

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Turquoise, the multi-lateral trading facility established by nine leading European investment banks today announced that it is partnering with AppLabs, the world’s largest independent testing, quality management and certification solutions company, to deliver the testing programme which will verify and ensure that the trading platform is fit for purpose.

As Turquoise’s test partner, AppLabs will design, develop and build the test strategy for the project. AppLabs will then extensively test the trading and surveillance functionalities to assure the quality of the delivery and ensure Turquoise launches successfully in September 2008.

Commenting on today’s announcement, Yann L’Huillier, Chief Technology Officer of Turquoise said: “We are ambitious for Turquoise and acknowledge that to achieve our goals we will have to assure the market place that the integrated trading platform is functionally reliable, robust and efficient and that it will perform to the highest standards. Bringing to bear the experience of AppLabs to thoroughly test the Turquoise platform will help us to achieve this goal."

Graham Smith, Head of Client Engagement, Europe at AppLabs said: “With our extensive testing experience and in-depth understanding of trading platforms, AppLabs will be able to ensure that the functionality and efficiency of Turquoise’s trading system will exceed the expectations of the marketplace at its launch.”

HP has secured a £340m deal with Unilever to manage technology infrastructure in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Turkey and the Middle East.

“In this space, HP has demonstrated a distinctive collaborative approach combined with a clear expertise in the delivery of global services,” said Neil Cameron, Chief Information Officer, Unilever.

HP will provide Unilever with an infrastructure capable of adapting to changing business needs by "standardising, virtualising and optimising" Unilever's enterprise computing environment.

“This agreement is a natural extension of our current relationship. The intention between both parties is to leverage HP’s scale, expertise and industry leadership to ensure Unilever has access to world-class technology at substantially lower costs.”

BAA has signed off on a five-year application management outsourcing contract with Logica.

Logica will take on 400 applications such as staff rostering and BAA's Oracle Enterprise Suite. It will work to streamline performance of its end-to-end application support, maintenance and development processes.

Commenting on the contract Richard Rundle, BAA IT Director, said: “Logica was clearly the right business partner to form part of our multi-vendor strategy. As a leading Applications Services provider in Europe, Logica demonstrated that it had the capability, experience, expertise and geographic reach to deliver lower-cost, high quality, enterprise-wide solutions. Through this contract BAA will be able to achieve a more consistent approach to its IT services and applications across the business. It will allow us to manage our applications at an optimal cost, whilst maintaining strong service levels.”

Logica’s strategy will involve 50 roles transferring to the company and the delivery of outsourced support services through an onshore-offshore model.

Forrester has today revised its previous estimates of global IT spending with a new figure of 6%. A previous report from the company estimated 9% growth for 2008.

"Our forecast is based on a mild recession in the US economy in the first two to three quarters of 2008," said Forrester Research Vice President Andrew Bartels. "While it is by no means certain that the US economy will in fact experience a recession, the risks of one are high enough to justify a more conservative outlook for the IT market.

The US remains the biggest user of IT goods and services but slowing growth across the pond will increasingly be felt around the world. US spending growth is estimated at 2.8%, down from its previous forecast of 4.6%.

Outsourcing industry stalwarts and NOA past and present directors Nigel Roxburgh, Rory Graham, and Rob Aylott today announce their appointment at Bluerock Consulting, where they have re-united to launch the strategic Source-to-Service practice for this UK based boutique consultancy that specialises in the management of change within the financial services sector.

Each adds over 20 years of sourcing experience to Bluerock. Much of their shared vision on Best Practice was developed together during their tenure on the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) Board. Their central positioning of the NOA opensource Best Practice framework at Bluerock bears testament to this background.

Outsourcing veteran Nigel Roxburgh is one of the founding members of the NOA and currently holds the position of Research Director, heading up this industry body's research initiatives into outsourcing business issues as well as running its thriving financial services Special Interest Group. Nigel has recently held senior positions at Accenture and Xansa and is a specialist in outsourcing in the banking, investment and insurance sectors.

Commercial strategist Rory Graham recently left the legal profession - having held Partner positions at a number of legal firms including Bird and Bird, and Baker McKenzie - to make his foray in the broader world of outsourcing consultancy at Bluerock. Rory is a past Board member of the NOA and held the position of Legal Director.

Seasoned outsourcing industry professional, Rob Aylott, was a sourcing practice leader at both KPMG and Orbys and brings a wealth of deal strategy and offshoring expertise and received an NOA lifetime achievement award in recognition of his industry standing.

Kevin Webb, Bluerock's Head of Technology, and former Partner and Consulting Director at KPMG comments: "With so much experience under their belts, having Nigel, Rory and Rob join Bluerock will get our new sourcing practice off to a flying start."

Additionally, Chief Executive, Julian Sawyer, puts this in its strategic context by commenting: "Bluerock has aggressive growth plans over the next five years and having a team which is highly knowledgeable about financial services sourcing will be crucial to achieve our vision. This represents another exciting step in our development."