Showing posts with label KPO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KPO. Show all posts

The Future of Business Processing Outsourcing Industry

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Outsourcing is an age old practice and the advent of business process outsourcing is clearly an example of paradigm shift. It is the way in which business operates, or can be operated. The advent of current BPO revolution has been driven by the availability of cost effective technology such as Internet broadband services, inexpensive data storage, continued business process specialization and online analytical processing tool.


The paradigm shift is that, the technology has enabled global exchange of BPO services. Today, BPO industry had matured to the extent that the costs are normalizing and becoming attractive. Over the last three decades Business Process Outsourcing has been catering to number of services like retail, insurance, mortgage, banking, finance, health care, telecommunications, travel, technology, hospitality and many more.

Today, many offshore firms are consolidating and standardizing their operations by outsourcing their business process to third parties. There are many BPO service providers in India that offer cost effective and focused management expertise. In the present scenario many UK and US based firms are looking at countries like India, Philippines, China and other South Asian territories to outsource their services.


According to a research conducted NelsonHall- a BPO analyst firm
✔ 80% of the firm claimed that, outsourcing has increased their competitiveness.✔ 87% of the companies said that, outsourcing had improved their internal processes.✔ While 77% of the companies said that, they could see a significant drop in their operational cost through outsourcing.


The offshore BPO services are expected to grow at a significant rate per year within the Asia-Pacific market. The growth rate will be about $14 billion by the year 2010. The BPO business in India will be booming despite the current economic recession. The economy will stabilize and there five fold growth of the BPO industry within the next five years.


According to a research, ‘Road map 2012 - capitalizing on the expanding BPO landscape’, conducted by Nasscom and Everest Group, the revenue of the Indian BPO industry will touch $50 billion and will add about 2.5% of the gross domestic product by the year 2012. Presently BPO sector employs about 8 lakh people and the annual revenue is about $11 billion. Over the next 5 years the BPO industry will employ nearly 2 million people.


Once again, one reason why BPO has grown over the 10 years is the availability of high end technology and infrastructure. Without the availability of Internet and broadband, this could not have been possible. The development in technology has broken down the barriers of global communication.


Considering the progress made in the outsourcing industry over the last ten years is standardizing and automation of business processes, the next five years promise similar advances. Typically, the multinational companies define market trends and the acceptance of new product and services. Keeping all these in mind, the BPO industry could take a new shape over the next five years.

BPO Industry As A Career Option

Taking a look at the current financial crisis, one may not feel too optimistic about business process outsourcing( BPO) industry in India. However Mr. P. G. Raghuraman, Lead Delivery Centers for BPO in India, Accenture, sees the positive aspects in the growth of BPO service providers and also potential for the industry to attract young professionals as their chosen career.

According to Nasscom study, the current size of BPO industry is $11 billion and it is expected to grow by five-fold in size to $50 billion by the year 2012. This growth in Indian BPO will add nearly 2.5 percent to the India's GDP from the export earnings and employment to nearly 2 million people.
There is popular belief that,there are numerous job opportunities but fewer career opportunities in BPO sector. This is not true,the Indian BPO industry has boundless career opportunities. This is evident from the fact that, over the years the BPO services have grown from just voice to other customer relationship management services like human resources,finance and accounting, learning and procurement, animation and multimedia, legal transcription, content development, as well as industry-specific services focusing on the health care,insurance, pharmaceutical and utility industries.

The companies in the life science industry are quite familiar to the process of outsourcing. They outsource some of their critical process like drug discovery, product manufacture,clinical trials and data management. Thus the mainstream BPO service providers requires special knowledge and skill set to perform the traditional life science functions such as clinical data management and monitoring of drug safety.

India happens to be one of the most attractive destination for such specialized functions due to low cost benefits and availability of high skilled work force.
Today, the Indian BPO companies are creating comprehensive roles for employees by expanding globally and providing them the opportunity to work on multiple verticals. It is indeed a fast growing industry as it provides ample opportunity for growth and entrepreneurship.

This change in the role of BPO sector from transaction-processing to high end specialized services has led to the growing demand of skilled workforce. Today the industry needs capability development. Even the professionals with degrees like M.tech,MBBS,MBA, CA, ICWA are taking up work in domain specific back office processes in advisory,analytical and consulting arena. This requires a clear relationship between IT/BPO industry and the academic world which train the workforce with industry specific jobs.
Nowadays even parents are becoming more supportive to the youngsters who want to join the BPO industry because they genuinely see it as a long term career. There is a realization that, BPO are not only about call centers but providing the right opportunities, skills and global exposure. In a nutshell the employees in the BPO industry are now getting challenging careers with tremendous job opportunities,hands-on experience,information about the culture and customs of various countries across the globe. This experience in understanding and appreciation of diversity is valuable for their personal as well professional growth.

Of late, BPO industry does get support from reputed academia. There are companies who provide training programmes specifically designed for the BPO sector in collaboration with some of the renowned institutions of India. More courses of this nature are being designed by other companies to provide outsourcing services. This one step forward towards making BPO as a long term career opportunity.
outsourcing.

Outsourcing Teaching, Overseas

Saturday, August 8, 2009
How to teach university degree programs offered overseas is a complicated question. Does a university rely on faculty from the home campus to travel abroad for a year, semester or month at a time to teach, hire a new cadre of faculty at the overseas location, deliver coursework through distance education, or some combination thereof?

In offering B.S. in economics degrees at three partner universities in China and Hong Kong, Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business uses a different kind of teaching model, similar in some ways to the three approaches but with a significant, and potentially risky, twist. The programs are based on a lead professor/local facilitator model, in which the professors of record at Utah State rely on local instructors, who are not Utah State employees (but are approved by Utah State departments) to deliver much of the course content on the ground.

The degrees in question are Utah State degrees, as opposed to joint or dual degrees with the partner universities, and the arrangement is described in the business school's 2008-9 annual report thus: “Departments assign 'lead professors' to write the course syllabus, pick the text book and other instructional materials, and to write exams and other assignments for the course. The teaching materials are provided to 'local facilitators' (faculty at our partner institutions) who have been approved by the USU department to deliver the lectures and other course material on-site in China and Hong Kong. Lead professors and local facilitators are in contact each week to make sure that the courses are on-track and to deal with teaching and evaluation issues. Final grades are assigned by the lead professor.” In other words, the instructor who interacts with the students face-to-face on a regular basis doesn't have the ultimate grading authority, but the professor back in Utah does.

In the financial model, as outlined in that same report, “tuition for our students in Asia is shared equally between the Asia program and our partner institutions. The partners are responsible for providing the facilities, textbooks, and for paying the local facilitators. The Asia program in the Department of Economics and Finance and the Huntsman School of Business is responsible for providing lead professors, for counseling students, and for admitting, matriculating, and graduating students who meet the requirements, as well as for arranging visits to the Asian sites by lead professors and administrators."

Utah State’s B.S. in economics, with an emphasis on international economics and trade, is currently offered in English at three sites: the Beijing Institute of Technology, Northeast Dianli University, in Jilin City, and the Institute of Advanced Learning, in Hong Kong. In spring 2009, 560 students were enrolled; according to the annual report, the school expects to grow its Asian program enrollment to 800 students and, once a fourth program location is approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education, more than 1,000.

"One of the preconditions for us to get approval from the central Ministry of Education in China was that they required our program to have face-to-face instruction. One of the challenges U.S. universities have had extending their educational products to China is the high expense of maintaining their own faculty on site. So our model tries to leverage the design and review role of a senior faculty member with a local facilitator who is also a professor, and those professors who are local facilitators are approved by our departments," said Chris Fawson, senior associate dean and a professor of economics in the Huntsman School of Business.

“We think it’s a model that will help foster broader collaboration. While faculty are collaborating on preparing high-quality instructional materials, we hope that they’re collaborating on research interests,” Fawson said.

“Does everybody do that? Well, again, I couldn’t say that everybody does that, in [terms of] faculty that are mentoring graduate students who are teaching courses on our campus. But I can tell you our commitment… We talk about a high level of collaborative interaction, and we talk about our commitment to integrity and our commitment to quality. If I thought that we couldn’t do that, we would drop the program tomorrow, to be honest with you.”

Franchising Degrees?

Inside Higher Ed recently learned of the Huntsman School's degree programs in Asia via an anonymous e-mail, purportedly from a group of Utah State students and alumni with concerns; the extent of such concerns could not be verified.

In fact, some at Utah State see the Asia Degree Program as part of an exciting expansion of international opportunities. Adam Croshaw, a senior and the business school’s student senator last year, said fellow students did not bring any concerns to him during his tenure as their representative. “I haven’t heard much other than I know it exists and there’s excitement ... just because it’s a new thing. The Huntsman School of Business is trying to give their students a better opportunity to do things internationally because that’s the way business is going these days," he said.

Outside Utah, Philip G. Altbach, professor and director of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, said he was very skeptical of this particular model for promoting internationalization, however. “My view, and I am in a small minority on these matters I think, is that foreign degrees should be taught by faculty from the sponsoring university faculty, and not be random local scholars, even if they are ‘approved’ by the home campus faculty. What USU is really doing is ‘franchising’ their degree -- in a McDonald's way -- which is common especially among low prestige British universities in countries like Malaysia these days. Those British institutions have in some cases gotten themselves into hot water with the British quality assurance agencies and the press for low standards, inadequate supervision and the like. USU may well get into that bind,” he said in an e-mail.

Carving up Responsibilities, and Collaborating

Utah State has offered degree programs in China since 2000, but until 2008 operated the programs, then in interdisciplinary studies, through the university's continuing education unit. By narrowing the academic focus to economics, and moving the Asia Degree Program to the business school (which includes the economics department), administrators were both responding to student demand and moving to better safeguard the quality of the program, said Fawson. ”We've felt that degree programs that don't have a core academic home tend to lose their way a little bit. So it was a way to push a program back to college and a department, where the integrity of the academic foundation is grounded and anchored, so there is a reference point of what we are doing from a core academic perspective."

Fawson said the business school absorbed the Asia degree programs in part to serve the broader interests of the university, and also to expand its own footprint in China. "We're looking for opportunities to have high-quality positive engagement in China. We think there's a great ability to build up some brand equity in China and to build a strong alumni base," he said.

In describing the nuts and bolts of the program, Fawson described a lively virtual exchange between lead professor and local facilitator, and also a physical flow of faculty: “Their professors come and spend a whole semester on our campus… And then our professors historically have gone on two-or three-week trips where they actually sit in on classes and observe the classes." Not all local facilitators come to Utah State, but Fawson estimates that about 30 local facilitators, two to five in any given year, have traveled to Utah State in total.

The local facilitators, he said, mostly are faculty with appointments in the partner institutions, although not universally. Not everyone has a Ph.D. – “there’s a strong business orientation to what we’re doing … but they would go through the same kind of screening process that a faculty member would go through here to be approved as a local facilitator.”

In terms of how the Utah State professor assigns a final grade in a course facilitated by a non-Utah State employee, Fawson said, “There’s hopefully [been] lively interaction between the lead professors and local facilitators. I’m sure that there is some variation between how lead professors are interacting with local facilitators, but our expectation is that lead professors take this very seriously.

“There’s a sense of professional responsibility and accountability that comes with that assignment.”

Terry Glover, a professor of economics at Utah State, has served as a lead professor for about seven years, he said, and has experienced the upside and the challenges of this kind of collaboration. “You try to hang onto the local facilitators for some years, because you develop a working relationship and such,” he said, adding that some local facilitators have collaborated with him on data collection and research. “Not only is it a teaching partnership but a research partnership as well.” On the other hand, he’s twice recommended that local facilitators try a different career and those instructors, he said, did not return.

Glover also periodically travels to the partner institutions' campuses, and takes advantage of the ability to do some face-to-face teaching while he's there. He maintains a heavy teaching load, typically teaching two courses each semester at Utah State, and taking on another 3-2 load as lead professor in Asia degree program courses. “Essentially now in the last couple of years, we’ve developed more of a partnership. It used to be Utah State and then the step-cousin, but now it’s a joint kind of partnership,” said Glover.

The model represents an improvement on distance education, Glover said, which is "not our mold"

Instead, “You’ve got someone there, with them, who knows the program, has communicated with me and such, and they know that the two instructors are attuned to each other.... I get lots of e-mails from students and I e-mail them back."

The Huntsman School of Business is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, but the economics department, while housed in the business school, is outside the accreditor's purview. "This program is not an AACSB-accredited program; therefore, none of our standards come into play," said Jerry Trapnell, AACSB International's vice president and chief accreditation officer. That said, Trapnell added, "We see programs delivered in a lot of models.... We've seen similar models to this, sure, where the delivery mode at the remote site is facilitated, assisted or delivered through arrangements with the local faculty. Again, the key is to having very good expectations and understanding of the quality of that faculty, their background, and then the strong communication at work between the Utah State faculty and the faculty there.

"I'll be clear. There are risks there, that essentially they are delegating to someone else to deliver their program," Trapnell said."They're trying to manage that carefully, I'm sure.

“It’s an innovative model, and I expect that as schools seek ways to work internationally, these models will continue to be fairly diverse."

“It looks as if the proposed breakdown of responsibilities is an effort at quality control,” said Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University who has written about branch campuses and the academic workplace. “However, it also shows how globalization hastens on the way in which professorial work can be broken down and reassigned to cheaper and more remote locations. In the twentieth century, professions were able to distinguish themselves from industrial labor process by resisting efforts to separate the conception and execution of tasks. This is an example precisely of that division of labor. It points in the direction of the routinization, at offshore locations, of instruction, while retaining the higher-level tasks onshore

What is BPO?

Saturday, July 18, 2009
BPO, BPO services, Kolkata BPO, KPO, Pune Business, Tech Mahendra BPO
Business Process Outsourcing

BPO stands for BBPO, BPO services, Kolkata BPO, KPO, Pune Business, Tech Mahendra BPOusiness process outsourcing. BOP means basically a form of outsourcing and it involves the contracting between the two parties. One party say ABC Bank has given contract to the XYZ Services Ltd to make a software program for them. The Bank will mention all the criteria to the other parties. Once the cost and time period settlement is over then the outsourced party starts the work. It doesn't need that a Bank or any other firm will keep programmer all the time that's why they outsource their project and in this way thy can say lots of money.

BPO comes under the category of back office outsourcing. Back office outsourcing concludes many things like internal business functions and it can be anything like human resources or finance and accounting, and front office outsourcing. If a Business process outsourcing (BPO) is fixed to serve in the outside a company's country then it is called as offshore outsourcing. But if the BPO projects is contracted to a firm neighboring nation then it is known as near shore outsourcing.

BPO industry comes under the information technology industry. You must have heard the terms like Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO) and let me inform you that these are some of the sub-segments of BPO (business process outsourcing) industry.
BPO, BPO services, Kolkata BPO, KPO, Pune Business, Tech Mahendra BPOKolkata, Inida Sector V site plan building
BPO Revenue:
If any country has taken the advantage of BPO Industry then that is India. India has revenues of around 11 billion US Dollar from offshore BPO. Not only that, India has also revenues of 30 billion US Dollar and it comes from the sector of IT (Information and Technology). There are many cities in India which are getting benefit of BPO sector but the main centers in India are Bangalore, Kolkata (specially Salt Lake & Rajarhat IT park Area), Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Noida, Gurgaon and New Delhi. India is still doing well because the figure show that India has done well even in this recession market.

BPO, BPO services, Kolkata BPO, KPO, Pune Business, Tech Mahendra BPOKolkata, India Sector V IT Park Area
BPO Benefits:
BPO has many benefits but the one of the most important advantages of BPO sector is the way in which it has helped to increase a company’s flexibility.
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