nana asked:


I would like to know what the majority of us think are the challenges that Human resources will face in the next couple of years because of globalization and outsourcing.

Bamboo Indoor Fountain

Outsourcing Guy asked:


Why outsource inbound call centers services?

 

Inbound calls are the calls which are made by customer to the center for receiving some kind of service or to take help or assistance related to a product / service. Inbound call Center Services are used by companies to service their customers  24X7—The customer can talk directly to an online executive from the call center to solve their queries/requirements.  These centers are also used as to make their on the spot sales and let customer place orders real-time.  These centers are popularly used as helpdesk centers where customers can get help on the product of the concerned organization.

 

Call Center Outsourcing has many benefits.  This is necessitated primarily because of the requirement of niche skill sets in that area and its availability. The call centers today have professionals who are experienced in wide areas in various services that they can provide. The call center today keep a track of every client transaction be it voice or data.  The tracking of these calls are made to deliver better CRM i.e. Customer Relationship Management.  These records are used by companies for analyzing and for taking preventive action to avoid recurrence of dissatisfied customer’s calls. Thus increasing chances of achieving “Customer Delight”

 

However, these benefits are only a tip of the iceberg. The prima-facie benefit is that outsourcing ensures that companies who outsource their CRM solutions can focus on what they are best at and avoid themselves getting overwhelmed by the trivialities especially when specialized professionals, world class infrastructure and software are available at their disposal.

 

Why give preference to India?

 

Outsourcing Inbound call center services to India is a fantastic option as call center industry is booming in India. Various other reasons that make India a safe haven are:

 

Availability of educated professionals

 

In comparison to any other Asian country, India has the most educated and, good English speaking population available and which is an ever increasing figure by the day as English is being taught in India throughout from the primary classes till the High School / Post Graduation level. 

 

Ample technical talent is also available, which enables India to provide the required technical services without any hiccups.

 

 

Value for money

 

Large English speaking skilled manpower which is readily available at a lesser compensation then their western counterparts. High value of US$ vis-à-vis the Indian rupee.  Good infrastructure, specialized software and innovation for increasing the quality and  reducing cost all help in providing India the best services at very low cost.

 

24X7 services

 

Time zone advantage that India has with major countries enables India to provide 24X7 customer support.

 

Government support

 

Indian government has been giving its support and encouragement to the IT / ITES industry.  This has been visible in terms of building of high tech IT parks in various major cities.

 

Handling of multiple services:

 

Indian call center industry also demonstrated the capability of handling larger number of services which include voice inbound support, online web helpdesk and backend data processing (banking/insurance).

 

 

What are services provided by inbound call centers in India?

 

Some of the popular services which are provided by the Inbound call center in India are given below.

 



Order taking service

800 Answering Services

Phone Answering Services

Upselling and Cross Selling Services

Claims Processing Services

Product Information Services

Class and seminar registration

Inbound sales

Live web chart



 

 

In last few years the Indian call center industry has demonstrated the capability of handling multiple services provided related to customer support and due to its quality services more and more organizations are willing to outsource their customer support services and backend processing to India.



Graco Paint Sprayer

Jeffrey Russell asked:


20 Steps to Successful Outsourcing

Objectives

The following 20-Step Program will provide you with a guide that would help you achieve the following:

* properly organize your team;

* achieve necessary management commitment;

* properly define your own corporate needs, objectives, and priorities;

* identify appropriate alternatives;

* identify and evaluated your risks and benefits;

* select the best alternative for each specified service area;

* developed and negotiated an appropriate and effective outsourcing agreement; and

* provide the mechanisms to administer, maintain, and monitor the contract and to resolve the inevitable problems.

20-Step Program

1. Organize a top management Steering Committee assigned in planning, monitoring, overseeing and searching for your transition to outsourcing. These includes members from your internal information systems division, key user groups, and executive management including marketing and/or strategic management. It is essential to factor the changing needs, markets, distribution channels from the beginning resulting to minimal surprises in the succeeding phases. Management also needs to be informed and be part of the process to make sure that there is due diligence being performed and to provide appropriate stewardship up over these key corporate information assets. This is to minimize the loss of important information resources, losing effectiveness, or leaving the company vulnerable to competition due to a screw up in an outsourcing deal which could lead to legal suits in the future.

2. Identify and engage an expert team to be able to guide you and the organization during the decision, selection, and contracting processes for your outsourcing needs. The team should include a small group of independent experts with specialization in outsourcing such as an information technology consulting professional who understands both you and your outsourcer in your needs and who is by far capable in helping you administer the contract over time, assuring a smooth transition to the systems, and resolve problems when the contract is signed. Then, an attorney with specific contracting, business, and outsourcing expertise to help develop and negotiate and outsourcing that would be beneficial to both parties and make the relationship work. Lastly, an organization development/merger and acquisition professional to make sure that the transition of staff and relationships works well.

This team is also warranted and needed to make tough decisions because perceived or actual weaknesses in your current IS team may have caused the failure of IS within your company in the first place. Also, engaging with independent experts to assist your IS managers will be wise because they themselves would probably be most directly affected by moving to outsourcing and the resulting contracts that goes with it.

3. Identify critical internal resources, such as a particularly competent data processing director or chief information officer, who will stay on your company’s staff internally assigned in managing and administering the relationship between the outsourcer and your company. Determine which staff, and software and hardware licenses and resources should/must go to the outsourcer for the relationship to be mutually successful.

4. Identify what is good and bad about your current installation in terms of:

* service

* capability

* performance

* uptime

* costs

* user satisfaction

* backlog

* on-time

* on-target systems delivery

* controls, etc.

Then assess each strength and weaknesses such as budget constraints, changing needs of internal users, top management commitment, resistance to change, lack of tools and human resources, staff development and ability to attract and retain quality staff, lack of methodology, hardware technology limitations, platform limitations, etc. Quantify and identify which are essential items and service levels and which components should be added, improved and attained in the outsourcing arrangement. Go for the “good enough” systems and targets that are attainable, affordable and of necessary quality.

5. Update the company’s strategic business plan. The typical outsourcing agreement would cover a period of 7-10 years. You should make it a point that you know where your company is going locally and globally in terms of products, markets, manufacturing, sources of supply, distribution arrangements, labor sources, etc., before you develop the systems plan to be able to support such direction and needs.

6. Develop a 7 to 10-year strategic systems plan to identify the long-term needs of the company that translate into the strategic business plan. Also, ascertain the new applications that will be required such as electronic data interchange, integrated manufacturing and production control using robots and automated “smart” buildings, international telecommunication networks, “intranets”, etc., which applications will be updated, which and when it will be discontinued, and which will be developed from the modified new applications software.

7. Identify the alternative hardware and operating systems alternatives and find out the recommended new architecture(s) needed to develop and support the new systems plan. This includes satellite communications, wide area networks, wireless communications, mainframe and client-server usage and inter-connect, specific operating systems, open-architecture decisions, database and programming language decisions, special development and maintenance tools, etc.

8. Understand your cost structure and determine/estimate future costs to build the projects outlined in the strategic systems and architecture plans developed mentioned in steps 6 and 7 above, including estimates of manpower and supporting hardware and software and equipment to aid you in building, upgrading, maintaining, operating, and controlling such systems. You should also recognize that over the next 5-10 years there is a need to estimate all relevant capital as well as operating costs; costs of supervising the outsourcer, likely increases in costs for salaries, benefits, service contracts, etc.; “cost of money”; interest costs; residual value of equipment and facilities; cost of transition, including personnel; cost of changes in direction and level of resources; cost of contract modification, etc. it is important to note that this is the most difficult task so you should be able to utilize your expert team for guidance and confirmation.

9. Identify your current and anticipated usage: normal operations, expanded operations over time, peak periods, off-site processing, storage, archive, integrations requirements, back up and disaster recovery requirements, etc.

10. Review the strengths and weaknesses of the outsourcing alternative. Establish how the outsourcing alternative will aid your company meet its long term goals and why it is a better alternative than staying in-house or partial outsourcing or working with multiple outsourcers. Determine which applications and resources should be outsourced and which to pursue using a different approach. Update this information and re-evaluate the decision throughout the entire decision-making process as new or better information is gained.

11. Using your expert team, identify several outsourcing alternatives. Get hold of the appropriate literature of relevant information from the team’s pre-selected short list of outsourcers. This should cover all of the technical and administrative things you will need to know about your outsourcer, you will also need to know in depth: corporate history and stability; current, new and lost customers; employee numbers, turnover, and experience levels; financial stability through a review of audited financials and footnotes; technological status including methodologies, tools, platforms, expected life of existing hardware; age of current applications; their own business and systems plan; downtime statistics; results of operational and security audits; customer surveys and systems demonstrations (both are critical and must be well planned); conversion commitment success/history (a must if you want your business to prosper); such intangibles as responsiveness, control, competition for resources, flexibility, etc.

12. Determine which areas of your company you would like to outsource. Identify a phased-in approach for outsourcing services if that is the desired method.

Services can be selected for virtually any part of your Information System areas including:

* All activities in a specified area (with only listed exceptions) vs. defined tasks

* Applications software

* Audit trails

* Backup procedures for programs, data, etc.

* Communications equipment, software, and interfaces

* Compliance with applicable laws

* Consulting services

* Daily and periodic processing and reports (accuracy; timeliness; formats)

* Data and program security

* Data conversion

* Data entry

* Development of new programs and systems

* Disaster recovery capabilities

* Equipment

* Help Desk

* Live system operation, management, and control

* Maintenance

* PC installation of hardware, software, and modifications

* PC service

* Personnel

* Physical security

* Pickup and delivery

* Provision of facilities, utilities, etc.

* Responsibility for troubleshooting

* Systems integration

* Systems software, tools, etc.

13. Develop a rigorous request for proposal (RFP) with a uniform format for you to be able to compare such responses from other outsourcers. Their answers to pricing should be simplified so that you can readily understand which are essential or basic services and which are add-ons. Pricing can take on many forms and that the different services may be priced differently or in alternative combinations to your advantage such as flat monthly fees; transaction volume-based fees; fees based upon a customer unit of volume (i.e., number of customers, accounts, credit cards); fees based upon CPU usage required to execute your jobs; fees based upon the number of input or output transactions or both; fees based upon the amount of disk storage or other storage requirements; programming fees. Those may be different from enhancements, new developments, special reports, or rush jobs; data communication line charges; disaster recovery rates; training and seminar fees; consulting fees; documentation charges; conversion fees; etc.

Identify some key clauses that you would like to be integrated in the contract so that you may be able to win some concessions on these during the bidding phase and so that you can determine the sticking points early.

Identify Acceptance Criteria for outsourcer bids and for systems and service acceptance throughout the validity of the contract: the accuracy, frequency, and timing of reports and information; response time for on-line transactions; uptime of the systems or the various components; emergency procedures in the event of downtime or other disruption of services; responsiveness of outsourcer personnel in the event of problems or errors; data archiving; access security; ease of use; unit, string, systems, and acceptance testing methodologies to be used; systems development methodologies and user participation and signoff points; usage of data query, parameter-driven, fourth and fifth generation languages in programs; user of upper- and lower-CASE tools, client-server architecture, and object oriented approaches; etc.

14. Invite bidders to a bidders’ conference at your site and individually take the bidders into a tour of your site. Let your top management and the Steering Committee meet with the outsourcing representatives for at least an hour during the tour. This should set the tone and demonstrate the importance and visibility of the study and resulting relationship. This can be very important if your top management would need to meet the outsourcer’s top management in the future.

15. Evaluate proposals against your pre-established, and fully documented, criteria. Identify different approaches recommended by the outsourcer and compare it from your own research and preliminary conclusions. Be receptive to suggestions but be careful in analyzing the differences. Have a debriefing with the outsourcers for you to be able to discuss alternatives and to clarify proposals.

16. Rank proposals so that you have a backup vendor. This is essential in case negotiations break down with your preferred vendor. This can also give you the confidence to negotiate with the vendors in a tough but fair manner. Identify absolutely necessary criteria early. If the outsourcer does not meet the minimum criteria they should be asked to clarify their proposal or drop them from the list.

17. Checking references is a critical part of the evaluation and comparison of outsourcers. This is very important. You should visit their other customers as well. Review their status reports on key projects and contracts if possible. Don’t underestimate the experiences of the other customers and assume that you will gain a different result.

18. Negotiate the contract using your expert team and using pre-determined target clauses, criteria, and escalating alternative dispute resolution (ADR) options to keep the outsourcing agreement and relationship in line with your mutual objectives and be beneficial to both parties.

Consider and develop a strategy for at least each of the following contract areas:

* scope of responsibilities and services;

* third-party services;

* project managers;

* project development standards and acceptance;

* project timetables and milestones;

* progress reports and meetings;

* problem resolution and escalation of differences;

* acquisition of systems and facilities;

* interim acceptance testing;

* final acceptance testing;

* service warranty;

* proprietary rights cross indemnity;

* documentation;

* training;

* fees;

* change orders;

* personnel;

* company’s proprietary rights;

* exceptions;

* physical security and backup;

* customer access and copying rights;

* termination;

* general provisions including taxes, insurance, most favored provisions;

* force majeure, severability, right to offset, transfer of software licenses;

* ownership of developed software;

* specific concrete definitions and scenarios for those things with multiple interpretations

19. Monitor, manage, modify, and steer the outsourcer and the contract as required over time. Give three-month report cards to the management of the outsourcer. Update and change the contract over time to continue to assure that your needs and, hopefully, the mutual needs of the outsourcer continuously being met.

20. Be Lucky: Ben Rosen, a legendary high-tech venture capitalist who invested almost first in Apple and in Compaq and made it big, said in a speech a few years back that you must “be lucky” in these kinds of long term relationships in uncertain times.



Scented Gel Candles

Catherine Tanoto asked:


So far I only know the disadvantages, like poor quality control, or creating exploitation to the labourers. Can anyone give me specific cases?

Triple Scented Jar Candles

Dr. CIS asked:


Some experts are saying that flexible and robust financial business intelligence systems would have been able to alert upper level management of impending problems. Wall Street’s infatuation with outsourcing led it to save a lot of IT dollars and lose its ability to build new IT systems for new financial environments. Dumb move.

Stainless Steel Paint

John J asked:


Is outsourcing bad enough that I shouldn’t study computer engineering? I am in the United States.

Scented Gel Candles

Jason Thomas asked:


udos to Outsourcing

Is outsourcing good for us? Should we outsource at all? Of course, yes! There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept itself! Just have a look:

I don’t have space in my house to grow vegetables, and I can’t buy a house with a large kitchen garden, so, I outsource them from my nearest vendor.

I can do my dishes and my laundry, but I find it too energy-sapping and time-consuming, so, I’ve hired someone who would save my time.

So, what do I do with so much of saved time? I write…which is in fact, my core competency!

And that’s exactly the point I want to make. Same logical sense applies to your business. If you don’t have enough capital or resources or if you want to save some recurrent costs and focus your time and money on your core competencies, you would outsource. More or less, every business out sources to sustain and to grow.

Outsourcing has today evolved into a preferred business practice for managers to use as a bridge to circumvent business problems, as a handy tool to focus on core issues and as a launch pad to enable businesses to register higher growth rates.

Advantages of Outsourcing

·          Outsourcing enables cost cutting and savings

·          Outsourcing enables you to meet deadlines sans stress

·          Outsourcing enables you to avail of world-class expertise and provide a better quality to your customers

·          Outsourcing enables you to offload the non-core and non-differentiating allied activities in your business and lets you to focus on more important functions….

·          Outsourcing enables you to gain a competitive edge over your rivals

·          Outsourcing helps you to innovate while you contract out the repetitive standardized processes

·          Outsourcing enables you to quickly respond to the changing market equations

·          Outsourcing enables you to function as a compact, coherent and streamlined business

·          Outsourcing enables quick expansion or upgrade in business, allowing you to take more orders

·          Outsourcing enables you to ward off risks

·          Outsourcing enables you to transform a process and remove any inefficiency

·          Outsourcing speeds up your pace towards your long-term business goals

In fact, outsourcing to a cheaper developing country like India, where you are spoilt with choices, with abundant talent in various fields and a vast English speaking population, will only add on to the general benefits of outsourcing. No Wonder, India alone accounts for 40% of the world’s outsourced IT projects.

When to Outsource?

How to figure out whether Outsourcing or more specifically, off shoring, is the answer to the problems you are facing in business? And even if you are not facing much of a problem yet, How to decide if you should opt for it for the sake of cost cutting and other benefits of off shoring? You should definitely consider outsourcing/off shoring seriously if one or more of the following scenarios sound like a description of situations in your own business venture:

·                      When you need occasional or recurrent assistance with a particular function, say, legal matters or some programming need, hiring full-time employee doesn’t make good economic sense. Outsourcing a short-term job would not only be much cheaper but also easily sustainable.

·                      When a small home business owner can’t afford to hire employees but can easily outsource some help at very cheap rates from countries like India where there is a multitude of skilled professionals in various fields.

·                      Even Independent Professionals can outsource the help needed in day-to-day office life like secretarial and clerical help or the expertise and specialized skills like IT, graphic designing, legal services, patent filing etc. This can be easily achieved by contracting out to other professionals (commonly known as virtual assistants or kpo consultants) through the internet. They offer their services and operate either independently through their own sites or through a dedicated and comprehensive portal for outsourcing like www.e-guru.in . They are experts in their field, would not ask for the usual employee benefits and don’t need to be managed since you are their client.  For example, a doctor might need accounting services or a public speaker might need someone to develop software, and or an event manager might need a copywriter and so on.

·                      When there is a skill shortage in a particular field, say programming and other IT skills, difficulty in finding right candidates coupled with high pay packages only underline the need for outsourcing. In fact, off shoring to a country like India, with abundant skilled professionals and lower currency rates would result in huge savings for you in terms of costs as well as quality

·                      When your office has a history of acute employee stress, mounting pressures around deadlines and work-overload, you can ease off the burden by contracting out the time-consuming standardized processes which are the repetitive, easier and non-core parts of the business, thus enabling better productivity for yourself and your employees.

·                      When a fast changing non-core process is a continuous drain on your resources. For instance, if you need to keep upgrading your IT processes according to the latest soft wares and technologies, but that’s not your core competency, then it is better to consider outsourcing it to the IT experts in India who can better manage and run the process at fractional costs than to hire a full-time software development staff.

·                      When you aren’t satisfied with the quality of output of an in-house non-core business process, you can either re-train your personnel or hire more experienced candidates at higher salaries, both of which mean spending more.                               

        On the other hand, you can avail of world class quality as well as reduce your costs by off shoring the same to India. Though non-core processes bear no direct affect on the customers of your product or service directly but a shoddy quality doesn’t bode well in the long-term. (At the same time, I would add a word of caution, you first need to examine and understand the reasons for an internal function’s inefficiency and under-performance so that you know what to expect even if you eventually outsource it.) 

·                      When one needs to expand to meet the growing demand and deliver increasing number of orders in time, but one doesn’t have the infrastructure or resources to drastically upgrade yet, outsourcing is the perfect solution.

·                      When one needs to start a new process in-house in a short period, one can outsource for immediate commencement of services and then slowly establish a dedicated in-house staff for the same.

·                      When you need to transform an in-house process, it is advisable to outsource it on a short-term basis for the change to occur in a stable manner and once the operations are running smoothly and steadily, you can transfer it back home.

·                      When a project or function is being inefficiently performed in-house for any reason, outsourcing it would insure you against the operational and financial risks.

Let me point out here that in recent times, though other avenues are fast picking up, but off shoring of IT services to the developing nations like India, is being particularly hailed as a generally successful deal for one and all. Areas in which outsourcing is gaining momentum are: Internet related programming, scripting languages, databases, graphic designing, animation, web hosting, accounting, recruitment, editing, copy writing, .NET technology, sql server, oracle, C/C++, embedded systems and similar projects most of which are being hosted for outsourcing at www.e-guru.in 

Conclusion

Making the right choice is less about choosing whether to outsource or not and more about what to outsource and to whom! So, I urge you to do your own homework, in-house research about what processes qualify for outsourcing, cost-benefit analyses, putting in place a stream-lined management policy regarding pre and post-outsourcing functions and goals, carefully selecting a destination which would offer you sufficient choices, signing up through a reliable channel, following up on it and the works.

In a nutshell, I would say, your action as well inaction - both will have a bearing on your business! And it is better to prepare yourself now and act before it is too late. Outsourcing is a boon for one and all. So, don’t chicken out, there is a whole lot of competition out there in business which is continuously trying to oust you. Just plan for it, go ahead with it and ensure yourself a place in the marketplace of future!



Give Your Kitchen A Makeover

yen yen asked:


Why multinational companies choose to outsource their HR functions, what obstacles does companies face when outsource, any negative outcomes of outsourcing HR function?

Unfinished Kitchen Cabinets

Nina!!Sanshe!!! asked:


Shouldn’t there be a law where there can be no more outsourcing for the US. Has anyone hit on that yet in the elections because it can boost up our economy and value of the american dollar which canmake it more marketable for other countries to invest in.

Has there been any talk about outsourcing in election?

Vinyl Siding Cost

James W asked:


To what extent will software outsourcing be stopped ?
To what extent will BPO’s outsourcing be stopped ?
To what extent will call center outsourcing be stopped ?

Wood Fireplace Inserts