UK firms prefer Indian Market to offshore

UK firms that offshore their IT functions are increasingly favouring Indian suppliers, a new national study has found. According to independent sourcing advisory firm EquaTerra, Indian IT services firms such as Wipro and TCS are steadily increasing their profile and popularity among UK IT decision makers.EquaTerras Outsourcing Service Provider Performance Study 2007 polled highranking executives at 110 of the UKs top IT spending organisations and evaluated GBP 34bn worth of UK contracts.

The study found that all UK firms that offshore all or part of their IT function now use India as one of their offshoring locations, and plan to continue using this strategy. Indian firms are also leading the way in quality, with four out of the top five service providers ranked in client satisfaction located on the subcontinent.

Phil Morris, managing director of EquaTerra Europe, said, Business people are making the decision to outsource to India because they cant find the same resources in the UK. Indian firms such as Wipro and TCS are achieving real satisfaction in providing skills, flexibility and quality of work and the globalisation of services will require larger, more global suppliers such as Accenture, IBM and HP to reposition their overall delivery models and structures in order to keep pace with newer market entrants.

The report also revealed that offshoring is becoming more popular. Some 57 per cent of firms polled had utilised near or offshoring within the last twelve months, compared to 47 per cent last year.

BPO deal for eTelecare

eTelecare Global Solutions Inc. has signed an agreement to provide inbound sales services to one of the worlds largest software providers.The business process outsourcing BPO solutions company said it was able to clinch the deal because of its good track record and wide range of services.

Part of eTelecares appeal to this client is our ability to deliver a range of BPO services that go well beyong inbound or outbound sales services. In particular, our ability to provide technical support in addition to our longstanding voice and nonvoice sales and backoffice capabilities was clearly a factor in our winning the business, eTelecare president and CEO John Harris said.eTelecare anticipates that the contract will later be expanded to include technical support services. It did not disclose further details.

The company has maintained a revenue target of between USD300 million and USD310 million for 2008.

For the first six months of the year, eTelecare posted an unaudited profit of USD2.5 million, down 78 percent from USD11.2 million last year. Revenue was positive, climbing 20 percent to USD148.6 million from USD123.5 million.

TeleTech signs BPO contract

TeleTech Holdings, Inc one of the largest and most geographically diverse global providers of business process outsourcing BPO solutions announced that a leading healthcare provider has selected TeleTech to support its open enrollment program for Medicare Part D coverage for the fourth year in a row. The client, a Fortune 100 provider, first began working with TeleTech in 2005 and the business has continued to grow since that time. Under the terms of the new agreement, TeleTech will provide support to Medicare Part D beneficiaries.The program will help beneficiaries navigate the complex plans and guidelines in the federal program that subsidizes the costs of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.We have been working with major healthcare providers to implement support for a variety of healthcare compliance and enrollment issues since 2005, said Kenneth Tuchman, chairman and chief executive officer of TeleTech. We are excited that this longtime client has asked us to continue to provide support to its consumer base for complex Medicare Part D coverage.TeleTech, a leader in serving the healthcare industry, brings together advanced technologies and human capital to deliver superior return on investment to clients through highvalue, innovative solutions. TeleTech assists clients with agility and growth by transforming their infrastructure and business processes to optimize existing assets, lower costs, and provide new revenue streams.

TeleTech is one of the largest and most geographically diverse global providers of business process outsourcing solutions. They have a 26year history of designing, implementing, and managing critical business processes for Global 1000 companies to help them improve their customers experience, expand their strategic capabilities, and increase their operating efficiencies.By delivering a highquality customer experience through the effective integration of customerfacing frontoffice processes with internal backoffice processes, they help their clients to better serve, grow, and retain their customer base.TeleTech use Six Sigmabased quality methods continually to design, implement, and enhance the business processes they deliver to the clients and also apply this methodology to own internal operations. Also have developed deep domain expertise and support approximately 250 business process outsourcing programs serving 100 global clients in the automotive, communications and media, financial services, government, healthcare, retail, technology and travel and leisure industries.Their integrated global solutions are provided by more than 50,000 employees utilizing 39,000 workstations across 89 delivery centers in 17 countries.