Talking to newspersons in India, Cameron said that presently his new coalition government is evaluating the deals signed with IT and BPO vendors thus far. He said that the government is basically trying to ascertain the cost of the services vis-à-vis the worth of its money spent on them. According to Cameron, this is nothing unusual, but common like in any other business.

It may be mentioned here that soon after the Cameron assumed power in Britain following the recent polls, the government had announced to review all IT contracts keeping in view the cost-cuts initiated by it in the wake of the prevailing debt crisis as well as to uphold its pre-poll commitments. This has given rise to panic and apprehension among the IT majors who had signed large contracts with different government departments in the UK. There were reports that most of the large contracts would be subjected to renegotiation or cancellation.

In fact, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest software exporter which had entered into a £600 million contract to administer the employment savings trust in Britain, is also expecting a renegotiation of the deal. Several news and industry websites in Britain had condemned the TCS deal with the Personal Account Delivery Authority (PADA) of the UK government. Expressing his surprise over the hasty manner in which the deal was signed, the then shadow pensions minister of the Conservative Party, Nigel Waterson that the Troy would call for a review of the contract if elected to power.

Meanwhile, Som Mittal, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the nodal body of Indian IT services vendors, informed that Britain contributes approximately 18 per cent of the revenue generated by the Indian firms through BPO, IT and engineering services. Welcoming Cameron’s statement, he said that this was different from the stand adopted by the US President Barak Obama regarding outsourcing of jobs from America. Fulfilling his pre-poll commitments, Obama had put an end to the tax incentives enjoyed by the US multinationals that outsourced their jobs to other locations, including India.

A website report quotes Convergys’ Philippines country manager and Asia-Pacific and EMEA director Marife Zamora as saying that the proposed recruitments would augment the company’s workforce to approximately 25,000 in the country by the end of 2010. Presently, the company employs around 20,000 people in the Philippines.

According to Zamora, an expansion project undertaken by Convergys in the Philippines made room for 2,300 extra workstations for its contact centers in the country and enabled generating 3,000 new employments. The new recruits would be based in the company’s contact centers in Metro Manila (2,800), Cebu City (2,000) and Bacolod City (600). She further revealed that the stupendous performance and high client demand for services from the Philippines enabled the company to undertake the expansion program.

Ever since Convergys commenced operations in the Philippines way back in 2003, it has opened 12 contact centers in the country – Metro Manila (7), Cebu City (3) and one each in Bacolod and Sta. Rosa, Laguna. The company offers services to an assortment of industries that include technology, financials, telecommunications, healthcare, cable, retails and several other sectors.

In order to fill the vacancies at its different contact centers in the Philippines, Convergys has lately been depending on the social media networks. The company has opened new pages especially for recruitment in social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Multiply and Friendster, where interested candidates may search for ‘Convergys Philippines’ and send in their applications to the company’s HR department. According to Convergys director (business development), Jomari Mercado, by utilizing the power of the social networking sites, the company aims to reach out to the talent pool using these social media websites. He said that the approach was not only cost effective, but also helped them in addressing the right kind of talents.

Meanwhile, Convergys executives in the Philippines have been endeavoring to enhance the English-speaking skills of their existing talent pool with a view to provide top-notch services to its global clients.

A financial news website reports that Diligenta had initiated this pioneering conversion program with the BPO’s maiden client – The Phoenix Group. The purpose of the program was to enhance operating competence with the intention of improving customer experience for the Phoenix Life policy-holders.

According to Phiroz Vandrevala, TCS executive director and Diligentas chairman, the success of this conversion program underlines the strong position of the company in the life and pensions outsourcing market in the UK and indicates a change of step for the BPO industry, vis-à-vis regulatory restructuring as well as the shifting customer requirements. Vandrevala said that Dligenta was well-placed to take care of the requirements of the customers in this quickly-developing milieu. He added that the new project has once again expressed the company’s aptitude to provide real business advantages through its expert industry know-how.

Another website report quotes Phoenix Life managing director (operations) Tony Kassimiotis as saying that this is indeed good news for their clients and in general, would denote an improved experience for them. Citing an example, he said that in due course two million policy holders of the company would have complete access to self service as well as online request services by means of the Internet. Kassimiotis further said these two million policy holders would also witness a decrease in processing period while making inquiries regarding their policies.

In fact, the new development is also a noteworthy capability accomplishment which will do well for Diligenta’s prospective clients too. The utility form will make sure that when Diligenta enters into new deals it can strengthen the strategy portfolio of new customers on the same BaNCS insurance platform patented by TCS. In other word, it both Diligenta as well as its clients would stand to gain through reduction in long-run average and marginal costs with infrastructure and continuing operations as well as maintenance. One of the important benefits to the clients would be Diligenta’s capability to respond faster and successfully to any key regulatory change. In addition, the customers will also have the option to receive instantaneous quotes regarding maturities, transfers and surrenders over the phone.

David Andrews, Xchangin Plc founder and CEO, along with Nimesh Soni, the BPO firm’s India arm managing director, will also be present on the occasion.

According to a news report, Cameron, accompanied with a high-level delegation, will visit Bangalore on Wednesday. During his maiden visit to India after assuming office, will visit India’s second largest software exporter Infosys Technologies and the country’s defense major Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bangalore on the same day. Krishna further said that Xchanging Plc would be the first MNC to establish a green technology-based hub in a tier-III site to augment its growth in India. He, however, refused to provide financial details regarding the new facility.

Another news website reports that the BPO firm based in London has been operating in Shimoga in a rented property from 2008 and had employed approximately 300 youths from the area. The new facility in Karnataka will be set up in a special economic zone (SEZ) and is likely to be the biggest rural BPO venture till date in India. In addition to Shimoga, the £750 million BPO firm also has offices in Gurgaon, Bangalore and Chennai in India.

The new venture by the London-based BPO firm is being seen as part of the company’s endeavor to make the best of the cost advantages that add to the business process outsourcing business by establishing its facilities outside major cities and towns where the operating costs are likely to cut into the cost arbitrage gains of BPOs.

Krishna said that Xchanging Plc offers non-voice back office facilities in different verticals, such as technology, accounting, procurement, human resources and other sectors – insurance, banking, retail, manufacturing and real estate. The BPO firm, with functional proficiency and domain understanding, employs over 8,000 professionals spread across 42 countries.

While almost 50 per cent of the sourcing consultants covered by the survey globally admitted that the demand for IT outsourcing was once again showing up, advisers in Europe said that the requirement had dropped from 45 per cent in the first quarter of 2010 to 40 per cent during the second quarter of the year. In fact, several sourcing advisers are now of the view that the prevailing fiscal environment in Europe is either slackening or compelling enterprises to reorganize their outsourcing plans compared to the situation during the first quarter of 2010.

According to a news report, the global sourcing advisers surveyed by Equaterra took into consideration the demand for business process outsourcing (BPO), information technology (IT) outsourcing, IT services provided by other third parties and additional internal process enhancements.

Among the most notable findings of the study undertaken by Equaterra is that as many as 55 per cent of the sourcing advisers surveyed said that the fiscal environment in Europe was slackening and forcing people to reorganize their outsourcing policies. In fact, this view was held by only 36 per cent of the sourcing advisers during the first quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, another report says that notwithstanding the decline in revenues from Europe during the first quarter (April 1 to June 30, 2010) of the 2010-2011 fiscal, India’s second largest IT revenue earner Infosys Technologies continue to have faith in business gaining momentum from the region. According to B G Srinivas, Infosys head of European business, the deals in pipeline appear to be good enough.

Srinivas is optimist that there will be growth in demand for IT and BPO services from Europe. At the same time, he says that the major question is whether the growth will pick up the pace with the prevailing debt crisis in the region. He hoped that the latest intervention should aid in diminishing the panic and things ought to return to normal in the next one or two quarters.

It may be mentioned here that Infosys is seeing toehold in financial services, energy and utilities, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and retail, while telecom seems to be a ragbag. According to Srinivas, several Global 1,000 firms in the UK, Germany Switzerland and France have shown keen interest in outsourcing their jobs to India, particularly in the AMD, consulting packaged implementation, systems integration and BPO sectors. Although he said that the company was looking at two major contracts of the size of $40 to $100 million from Europe, he refused to reveal further details.

A news report quotes TeleTech chairman and CEO Kenneth Tuchman as saying that his firm would leverage the social customer networks as a route to provide superior customer service as well as marketing. The outcome of this would mean an utmost unified user experience that is accessible throughout customer contact channels ranging from company website to the contact hub. Tuchman claimed that the collective solution would help the clients to generate new revenues, facilitate customer management, streamline knowledge management as well as undertake customer analytics.

According to Tuchman, one of the assets that organizations usually fail to utilize completely these days is the volume of content, knowledge and sway the social customers have on any business and identification of their client experience. He added that leveraging the finest prevailing social and conventional CRM systems help their customers to make the best use of such promising asset for gaining customer, withholding them as well as their allegiance in an enhanced manner.

Meanwhile, Lyle Fong, Lithium Technologies CEO and co-founder, said that they were delighted to be able to enter into a strategic partnership with TeleTech. He said that TeleTech comprehends that the vibrant customer networks are vital for an organization’s customer-related functioning. Fong further stated that the unified solution offered by Lithium Technologies and TeleTech offers assessable return on investment (ROI) by means of superior services, savings on expenses as well as fresh prospects for revenue earnings.

Precisely speaking, the combined solutions offered by Lithium Technologies and TeleTech offers service, marketing and sales advantages to the present-day businesses that require setting up amalgamated customer management solutions. Such resolutions comprise four elements that link the gap existing between the channels of the conventional contact centers and the social media. These modules facilitate superior brand control, customer reference selling and also help to expand the reach of customer service, Fong added. Precisely speaking, they release unexploited opportunities worth millions of dollars for any enterprise, he concluded.

Owned by India’s top most business firm providing consulting, information technology and business process outsourcing services in as many as seven Latin American nations, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru and Ecuador, TCS made this announcement as the Indian tech firm focuses on one of the rapidly economically developing regions globally. According to a forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this region is expected to develop by around seven per cent during the current year.

A financial news website quotes an interview by TCS manager (Chile, Peru and Ecuador) Alejandro Valenzuela in a news agency saying that the company sees a highly belligerent growth in the Latin American region and desires to increase the sales to be in excess of $1 billion during the next five years. Valenzuela further said that the Latin American region was of great importance to TCS since its economic growth rate is one of the fastest in the world.

A report made public by IMF states that the economy in Brazil, a member of the BRIC (Brazil-India-Russia-China) group and a regional giant, is among the major promising markets, including China, India, Russia and Peru. According to Valenzuela, the financial industry is at the core of Tata Consultancy Services’ operations in the Latin American region.

Substantiating his comment, Alejandro Valenzuela said that TCS considered the financial sector in the region to be most pertinent since it involves exhaustive use of technology. He, however, added that the leading Indian tech firm was also seeking openings in the retail as well as the mining sectors in the region. In fact, Tata Consultancy Services, which has recently ventured out in Peru seeking clients in the mining industry, has already won clients, such as Xstrata Plc. Software, and is rapidly growing in the Asian and Latin American markets.

Stating that the export earnings earned by the Indian subsidiaries of IT MNCs, mostly from the US and European nations, has grown three times during the last seven years, the report says that presently there are as many as 750 MNC subsidiaries in India employing over 400,000 professionals.

According to an online report, in addition to tech firms that have their R&D centers in India, several major service vendors, such as Accenture, IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) too have established their operations in India with a view to serve their international customers. Besides, several financial service companies and banks too have established their back-office operations in India to take the benefit of inexpensive personnel in the sub-continent.

In fact, MNCs that establish subsidiaries in India for their non-core activities, including IT and BPO services, with a view to make savings are now exploring ways to monetize their finances and transfer their work to outsources having operations in this country. Previously, they had no alternative, but to perform even their non-core jobs in-house, as the outsourcing industry was in its preliminary stage in India.

Industry experts are of the view that firms establishing operations in the country with a view to develop core products are expected to continue expanding in India. On the other hand, a number of companies are utilizing a hybrid form in India which enables them to execute their core activities in-house at their subsidiaries, while outsourcing the non-core jobs. Microsoft is said to be an ideal instance of utilizing such hybrid model in this country.

The report released by NASSCOM and Zinnov Consulting states that the major fragments of the MNCs’ Indian subsidiaries that are engaged in R&D and engineering operations make up $4.8 billion in export earnings. Similarly, the subsidiaries engaged in IT and BPO services constitute $3.4 billion and $2.9 billion in the country’s export earnings from outsourcing. According to NASSCOM, a number of subsidiaries of these MNCs not only provide significant cost savings, but their output too is higher compared to the parent organization.

The report concludes with the suggestion that there is a need to localize global processes providing more administrative facilities to the India centers of the MNCs even as they maintain their global systems.

The shortlisted multinationals include IBM, which presently manages the telecom firm’s IT operations in India and Sri Lanka, Accenture and Hewlett-Packard (HP). Tech Mahindra and Wipro, India’s third largest IT services vendor, are among the two domestic information technology firms in the fray for the project that is speculated to be among the largest IT contracts covering as many as 15 nations in Africa. Quoting anonymous sources, a financial website reports that IBM is being considered at the favorite contender for the contract.

Nevertheless, despite being a current vendor of Bharti, IBM is said to be confronted with solid challenge from the other four shortlisted companies which have offered tempting terms and conditions. The same source, an executive of the telecom major, further said that Bharti is seriously considering the offers placed by the other contending IT firms since it desires to expand its IT alternatives rather than placing all the ‘eggs in the same basket’.

It may be mentioned here that during the end of April 2010, Bharti Airtel had solicited Request for Information (RFI) regarding outsourcing its operations valued at more than $1 billion following its acquisition of Kuwait-based Zain Telecom. According to experts, this is a hint from the telecom major that it was seeking more favorable offers compared to what is being present by it current collaborators.

The news report further quotes executives of top IT firms, speaking on the condition of anonymity, the Indian telecom major had floated an amended tender for its information technology deals earlier in July this year owing to a number of terms and condition, which, they reported benefitted the present vendor of the company IBM. However, this could not be ascertained.

Global IT giant IBM is presently having contracts with three major Indian telecom firms, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, while Wipro serves Telenor and Aircel. Tech Mahindra, on the other hand, has a deal with Etislat DB (Swan). In addition, Tech Mahindra has earlier worked for Zain Telecom. The other two contenders, Accenture and Hewlett-Packard are yet to enter into any deal with any Indian telecom company.

Even as the British Home Office has already scrapped the agreement for e-borders, the tech advisory firm is of the view that the deals signed just prior to the elections in the UK are more likely to be affected by the introduction of the new £100 million cap. According to Ovum, the mega contract between Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest software exporter, and the Pensions Administration and Delivery Agency (PADA) worth £600 million is among the first major contracts that would be renegotiated. In addition, it is anticipated that the contract between Serco and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for business link worth over £100 million is would also come up for inquiry.

A news website quotes Ovum senior analyst and the author of the report John O’Brien as saying that there is no denying the fact that the new British coalition government has made it even more difficult for the IT sector to win government contracts. He forecasts that since this attitude is sure to make business and life more troublesome for many IT vendors for a number of years now, it is likely that a number of them will abandon the market and turn to new opportunities in other areas. Nevertheless, the report points out that IT firms that will be able to comprehend and respond to the latest demand and persist with the government vertical will stand to gain afterward.

Concluding his report, the Ovum analyst says that he does not believe that everything has come to an end for the £8.5 billion annual IT spend by the public sector in the UK. John O’Brien writes that contrary to the view held by many, the new coalition government has not waged a war against the IT industry. Instead, it is just trying to cut costs to meet the present economic crisis in Europe as well as by rejecting programs that are very risky and do not seem to be worth the value of money. Besides, the coalition partners in the government are also keen to fulfill their respective pre-poll announcements, he added. He further says that there are several IT services vendors who are still optimistic about the situation and feel that if they are able to pass through this phase successfully, they would be able to retain their growth in the government vertical.