Friday, September 26, 2003
Issues in getting small businesses to send work offshore
Why do small businesses, who are quite comfortable in outsourcing tasks like payroll processing to US companies like Paychex and ADP, not so keen when it comes to sending some of their work to cheaper offshore locations like India?
An article in the latest issue of Knowledge at Wharton seeks to find out. Click Here to read the article.
The opportunity in patenting services
Patent writing and evaluation services are markets set to boom, says Alok Aggarwal, the Co-founder and Chairman of BPO firm Evalueserve.
In an interview to Knowledge at Wharton magazine, Aggarwal points out that some 300,000 patent applications are filed in the western world each year constituting a $5-7 billion market. Outsourcing of patent writing services could significantly lower the cost of each patent application—now anywhere between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece—which would help expand the market. “There are so many small startups that don’t want to file their patents. If costs came down to $4,000 or $5,000, they might consider doing so,” Aggarwal says in the article.
His company, as can be expected, is already tapping into the opportunity by providing services like patent writing, evaluation and assessment of their commercialization potential for Western law firms and start-ups.
Click Here to read the full Knowledge at Wharton article.
How Indian companies are climbing the value chain
BPO services companies are moving beyond call-centers and routine data-crunching tasks toward higher-end services, says an article in the latest issue of Knowledge at Wharton. The higher-end functions being "offshored" these days include information research, financial portfolio analysis, customer data mining, statutory reporting and inbound insurance sales, the article says quoting an executive of a management consulting firm.
The Bermuda headquartered, Gurgaon back-ended, and New York front-ended BPO services firm Evalueserve is cited as an example of a company that's moving up the rungs. "Evalueserve provides services like patent writing, evaluation and assessment of their commercialization potential for law firms and entrepreneurs. Its market research services are aimed at top-rung financial services firms, to which it provides analysis of investment opportunities and business plans. Another major offering is multilingual services -- Evalueserve trains and qualifies employees to communicate in Chinese, Spanish, German, Japanese and Italian, among other languages. That skill set has opened market opportunities in Europe and elsewhere, especially with global corporations," the K@W article says.
The company's offshore-onsite mix is also highlighted as a strength. "Evalueserve’s model works on a mixed platform where anywhere between 50% and 80% of the work is handled out of an Indian facility, while the rest is done at the client’s location. For example, a patent filing assignment from a U.S. corporation may involve the Indian staff writing the patent in English or say, Japanese, and evaluating its commercial potential. But the client or its law firm would do the actual filing in the US".
The article also quotes some examples of recent "value-added" projects carried out by Evalueserve:
• Evaluating the commercial prospects of inventions in Russia and China. Evalueserve’s client, which specializes in extraction of intellectual property from Russia and China, was hired by the US Commerce Department to analyze such inventions with the objective of keeping such technology out of the “wrong” hands.
• Research for a hedge fund’s database, tracking financial statements of 2,300 companies.
• Research and analysis of value-chain segments and industry developments for a market research firm specializing in IT and telecom.
• Market forecast studies for an OTC drug worldwide for a research firm.
Click Here to read the full Knowledge at Wharton article.
Outsourcing of Wall Street research
"Wall Street firms are increasingly turning to India for low-cost help to crunch numbers and research industries", says a report in the latest Far Eastern Economic Review.
As the report points out, financial research is eminently outsourcable and "offshorable". A large amount of the work that goes into putting together a research report--earnings forecasts, stock comparisons, industry backgrounds--can be easily (and cost effectively) done in India.
The challenges, as Joseph Sigelman, co-CEO of OfficeTiger, points out in the article are in getting processes into place. In the first 3-6 months of the outsourcing contract, the client's productivity can actually drop, before climbing. Client concerns about confidentiality also require a series of extra measures. "(At OfficeTiger) no employees except senior managers are allowed to bring cellphones into work. There are no CD-ROM drives on the computers and printing is strictly monitored. Employees are instructed not to talk about their clients, who in some cases are competitors," the FEER report says.
The FEER reporter has been filed by by Joanna Slater out of Chennai, India. Why Chennai? Because that's where some of the leading BPO firms focussed in this area--companies like OfficeTiger and Irevna--are based. (Incidentally, even other categories of research firms--like the market research firm Frost & Sullivan--have their Indian operations based out of Chennai.)
Click Here to read the full FEER article.
(Free registration required)
Monday, September 22, 2003
GHCL to acquire additional 7% stake in US BPO firm
The Ahmedabad-based Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd (GHCL) is to acquire an additional 7% stake in US-based BPO firm Colwell and Salmon Communications Inc in October, reports Economic Times. GHCL had acquired a 69% stake (for about Rs.11 crore) last year.
Colwell and Salmon Communications provides tele-marketing and market research services. It reported revenues of $6.8 million in FY03, a 28 per cent increase over the previous fiscal year. The company's Indian JV with GHCL, Colwell and Salmon Communications (India) Ltd, has recenbtly set up a center at Noida (near New Delhi) and is catering to existing clients of the US firm, the ET report adds.
Click Here to read the full ET report
Click Here to visit the web site of Colwell and Salmon Communications (US)
Click Here to visit the web site of Colwell and Salmon Communications (India)
