<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/rss/rss20.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>

<rss version="2.0">
 <channel>
	<title>Richard is considered a leading expert on Asia-Pacific outsourcing by ComputerWorld magazine. His column called &quot;View from Offshore&quot; is a feature of the publication. Richard has also been called the guru on outsourcing by Dr. Michael Clancy, President of the Economist Intelligence Unit (affiliate) and the Asia-Pacific expert by Call Center Magazine. In addition to ComputerWorld, he is a thought leader for a host of other international publications.</title>
	<link>http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/author/index/748/Richard-Mills.php</link>
	<description>Richard is considered a leading expert on Asia-Pacific outsourcing by ComputerWorld magazine. His column called &quot;View from Offshore&quot; is a feature of the publication. Richard has also been called the guru on outsourcing by Dr. Michael Clancy, President of the Economist Intelligence Unit (affiliate) and the Asia-Pacific expert by Call Center Magazine. In addition to ComputerWorld, he is a thought leader for a host of other international publications. - Latest business
news &amp; management advice on how best to build your own business -
Free, independent business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change
Management &amp; much, much more.</description>
	<language>en</language>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<pubDate>Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:40:03 +0000</pubDate>
	<managingEditor>admin@buildyourownbusiness.biz</managingEditor>
	<webMaster>admin@buildyourownbusiness.biz</webMaster>    
	<item>
      <title><strong>Outsourcing's Next Phase has Begun</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[&amp;quot;Outsourcing in India has reached a near term peak and meaningful expansion from this point forward will result in higher costs and lower quality delivery.&amp;quot; Business Leaders in Asia have been saying this to each other for months now. Today, we are seeing deliberate action to move capacity from India to next step destinations like Philippines, China and Vietnam.

Even major business publications have picked up on the evolving situation. Both Forbes (India: Good Help is Hard to Find) and BusinessWeek (India's IT Challenge) recently published feature articles that directly address the growing problems in India and the viability of the next step destination countries.

Looking at current events in Philippines, we can get a better idea what is going on. Sykes, a large US-based contact center and IT support organization, has operations in both India and Philippines. The company said it would shift much of its Indian capacity to Philippines where it already has 7000 employees. &amp;quot;We moved calls to other facilities in Asia to get a higher rate of return,&amp;quot; was the official statement from Dan Hernandez, Sykes's vice-president for global strategies. But knowledgeable observers in the region say that the rate of return differential must be large for a company of Sykes' size and prominence to forgo India after already putting capacity in place.

Ambergris Solutions is another large contact center organization with operations in Philippines. The company just received a $43.5M investment through Telus International, a Canadian-based global IT Solutions provider. Jim Evans, who played the key local role in coordinating the deal, says his company wanted a &amp;quot;strategic investment&amp;quot; in the outsourcing industry in Asia and Philippines offered the best long-term opportunity given all the options including India.

As Asia Pacific VP for global B2B services provider GXS, Victor Lee oversees the professional &amp;amp; customer services operations in the region. ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1422/Outsourcings-Next-Phase-has-Begun.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1422/Outsourcings-Next-Phase-has-Begun.php</link>
    </item>
    
	<item>
      <title><strong>The End of Call Center Entrepreneurship</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[There have been few entrepreneurial ventures in business history as rewarding as the offshore call center. Within Asia, there are numerous tales of entrepreneurs who made tons of money for themselves by creating substantial value for their customers and employees.

A recent one is Ambergris Solutions Inc. in Manila. The company was started a few years ago by three young entrepreneurs with little money of their own and even less call center experience. They had a lot to learn about running a call center, and it took 18 money-losing months before they stumbled upon their first paying customer. But over the two and a half years that followed, their business grew explosively to almost 3,000 employees serving a roster of blue-chip clients. A couple of months ago, controlling interest of the thriving enterprise was sold to a large Canadian IT organization called Telus International in a deal valued at $43.5 million. Many would agree this was an adequate paycheck for just a few years of work.

This story gives the impression that starting a call center in Asia is an easy path to fast riches. However, just a week or so after the announcement of the Ambergris deal, Gartner Inc. released an astonishing report that said, &amp;quot;As many as 70% of the top 15 Indian business process outsourcing start-ups will cease to exist in the coming months.&amp;quot; Gartner added scathingly that &amp;quot;despite the hype, only a small fraction of customer service outsourcing will be done at offshore locations.&amp;quot;

Dropping Like Flies

The two situations might seem contradictory, but they aren't. Margins in the call center sector have declined steadily over the past couple of years as customers demand lower bill rates and agents insist on higher salaries. The result has been a squeezing out of the smaller (and often newer) operators, which are unable to spread their fixed costs over a larger base of revenue producing agents. Throughout India and the Philippines, there has already been sig ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1421/The-End-of-Call-Center-Entrepreneurship.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1421/The-End-of-Call-Center-Entrepreneurship.php</link>
    </item>
    
	<item>
      <title><strong>Security Risk in Outsourcing</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Both India and Philippines are the subject of long-standing travel warnings from various embassies. Some say India is on the verge of nuclear war with Pakistan. In Philippines, terrorist bomb threats are all too common. Is it any wonder that Gartner Group cites security as a &amp;quot;key concern in outsourcing?&amp;quot;

If one only looks at the screaming headlines, then it is difficult to understand why so many intelligent people are building outsourcing operations in these apparently &amp;quot;unsafe&amp;quot; countries. But if we speak with the people actually leading the operations in Asia, we get quite a different perception of the risks involved.

John Standring is the Manila-based General Manager of the IT outsourcing facility for Safeway, the huge American supermarket chain. He feels that while there are security risks in Philippines, they are not much different from those &amp;quot;of any big city in the world.&amp;quot; He believes that with &amp;quot;proper security measures&amp;quot; there is little to worry about. It seems to me that this same advice would be appropriate for anyone visiting New York or Washington for the first time.

Shaun Paterson is VP of Operations for the large outsourcing facility of Thomson Financial, the Canadian global financial information powerhouse. He takes a similar view. Shaun feels the streets of Manila are &amp;quot;safer than those of London,&amp;quot; England (his home country) -- he says female friends visiting from Britain feel the same way. As someone with many years of Philippines experience in IT and Business Process Outsourcing, Shaun feels qualified to say that security risks are at most trivial.

Almost all experienced managers I have spoken to make similar assessments. Some have said that the risk of personal injury is higher while driving a car to the airport for an overseas trip than it is being in the overseas country. One American manager made the point that he can't understand why there aren't travel warnings for the US since there is ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1420/Security-Risk-in-Outsourcing.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/53/1420/Security-Risk-in-Outsourcing.php</link>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>