United Telecom to join BPO bandwagon ...

Business Process Outsourcing indisputably remains the hottest segment in the information technology industry with new BPO outfits starting up operations even at this rather late stage of the hype circle.

The latest to throw its hat into the ring is United Telecom, one of India's biggest business houses.

United Telecom has invested $5 million to build a sleek 2,50,000 square feet building in a seven-acre campus at Whitefield in Bangalore. For telecom and other equipment, it has invested $7 million, taking its total investment into the BPO venture to $12 million.

Initially, United Inter-Active Center Limted, as the BPO venture will be called, is to begin operations with about 100 seats. In about 3 years, it hopes to ramp it to 4000 seats and become the second largest BPO company in India, after GE.

More Outsourcing to India

London-based Allen & Overy and Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie have both announced that they are outsourcing support services from their respective headquarters to jurisdictions in Asia.

A&O will relocate around half of its document production department to Chennai in southern India. The deal - negotiated with US firm Office Tiger - will deliver cost savings to A&O as graduate-level staff are available at far more competitive salaries in South Asia, said the firm's head of operational services in London, Stephen Chernikeeff.
Chernikeeff added that the London-based project would not directly affect its operations in Hong Kong and Singapore.

"It is possible we will integrate the work sent to London from our international offices with the work we will send to Chennai."
Partners at the firm's offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and other locations would also have the option of requesting that work remain in London, he said.

Meanwhile, Bakers is finalising the relocation of three separate IT functions to South-East Asia.

Procurement Outsourcing Poised to Double

Results of the survey, which entailed querying more than 200 procurement directors from a wide variety of industries across Europe and the United States, indicated that companies in France are most likely to outsource their procurement in the near future, with 64 percent of respondents there saying they would do so by 2006. Companies in the United Kingdom and United States were the next most likely to outsource procurement functions by 2006 (58 percent each), followed by companies in Italy (42 percent). Thirty nine percent of all companies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland said they anticipate outsourcing procurement processes in the next three years.

'Survey results show that procurement outsourcing is here to stay,' said Richard Laub, the partner who heads Accenture's European procurement practice. 'Looking ahead, however, the principal challenge will be to derive more than just cost-savings. Procurement outsourcing is a powerful weapon that savvy companies can use to build new strategic and competitive advantages.'

HSBC to OutSource More Business to India

HSBC already employs 5,000 people outside the bank in India alone, and this number is expected to increase as the bank moves more jobs to Asia. HSBC has already announced that it will move 4,000 jobs in the UK to its centres in Asia and while the unions there are up in arms against the plan, Mr Mehta does not believe that the outsourcing trend can, in any way, be reversed.

One more good new for Indian Outsourcing Industry