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Jan 07, 2006
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Fraud???

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ADVERTISEMENT:
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Good wishes from WORLDTECH on the occasion of Republic Day
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INTERVIEWS in Hyderabad for proofreading position for WORLDTECH's KOLKATA
unit.

Only those with more than two years of experience and exposure to final
level proofreading need apply. Selected candidates will undergo three
months' orientation at Hyderabad. Compensation linked to merit and
performance alone. Interviews at Hyderabad on January 26th, 27th, and 28th.
Apply in confidence with details. Last date for receiving complete
applications for these interview dates is January 21, 2006.

Contact: Venkat Nimmagadda, General Manager, HR, at Worldtech MGR
Estates, Saibaba Temple Road, Punjagutta, Hyderabad 500082.
Tel # 040-2335-2700/2698 or mail your resumes to
contactus@...

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Dear Friends,

This is a mail I received a couple of days back...

<Fraud. I am a US MT of over 30+ years. I had hired an Indian company to
assist with my workload. Their website guaranteed 98% and at times 99%
accuracy, claiming to have 2-level QA. I review each and every report prior
to submission, as I know there are problems with the English language,
punctuation, keen listening skills and attention to detail with most of the
MTs I have worked with - to include US MTs (I QA for 2 companies, MT for
another company and have about 15 local clients). Anyway, on numerous
occasions over the months I asked them to improve the quality of the
reports, as I was making so many changes and at times even redoing the
reports myself. I sent feedback, emails, IMs, compare documents, samples,
links, everything I could think of...and the quality continued to fail. They
claimed to have changed QAs at times, but I never saw a difference, except
worse and worse. This company NEVER had 80% accuracy, let alone 98 to 99%. I
did pay this company throughout this period of time, except for the last
couple of months. I felt that the time I was spending, doing their QA,
sending feedback, etc., they did not warrant pay. I have since severed the
relationship (last month). They feel that I owe them money, to which I am
not going to pay (there was no contract signed). They have now threatened to
contact my clients..which is not a problem. As a matter of fact, I provided
them phone numbers and contacts. However, I would like to report them as
defaulting on their end of the agreement, having not met their "guaranteed"
standards. How can I go about doing this? Who would I report them to? I
might add...I have another company in place in India, who are doing a
wonderful job...I QA and provide feedback, but they are very careful in not
making the same mistake and they care very much in the work that is produced
and submitted and always meet TATs (the other company did not meet TATs set
forth either). With regard to the first company I discussed, it is because
of companies like that which give off-shoring a bad name. I know many people
throughout the US, and have told them about this company. I hope to hear
from you soon. Thank you so much. Melissa>

Comments?

Cheers!

Maj (Dr) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.mtindia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) Outsourcing in Asia Pacific will lose luster in 2006 - but not MT!

Organizations that have outsourced certain information technology functions
to third parties will likely take some of these functions back, and run them
in their own remote centers that will be established in 2006, Canada-based
research firm XMG said .

XMG, however, noted that the outsourcing of medical transcription jobs to
Asia Pacific, specifically India and the Philippines, will continue due to
concerns of an aging population in the United States, and regulatory issues
unique to North America.

"The unique regulatory regime for healthcare in the US (HIPAA) makes it the
dominant source of global demand for outsourced medical transcription
services. Majority of the demand will increasingly be outsourced to offshore
destinations in Asia such as India and the Philippines, but to an
increasingly smaller group of high-quality service providers," XMG said in
its 2006 predictions.

XMG added that the demand for transcribing patient care records into
electronic format for greater record integrity and accessibility will drive
continuous growth in 2006 and in the coming years. Global revenues on
outsourced medical transcription services in 2005 is already estimated to be
at 2.2 billion dollars, with the US market accounting for more than 85
percent of global demand, XMG said.

http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=62080

2) MT logs on to tier II cities

Forced by the paucity of talent in the large metros, medical transcription
companies are following the BPO bigwigs to smaller cities. With this, cities
like Coimbatore, Madurai, Tirupur, Trivandrum are seeing a lot of action.

For instance, Mumbai-based medical transcription company Spryance employs a
large number of people in tier II cities. The company has adopted the HBT
model and it hires people only for quality assurance and editing work.
Spryance currently employs 1,110 people out of which around 770 people are
HBT's. Rajiv Shetye, vice-president, Spryance says that 60% to 70% of these
HBTs come from cities like Coimbatore, Madurai, Tirupur, Trivandrum and
Baroda. For Spryance, outsourcing work to HBT's in tier II cities makes a
lot of sense. "Outsourcing to HBT in B-class cities makes sense. B-class
cities, especially in the South, have plenty of human resources which have
largely remain untapped. We want to leverage on the talent available in
these cities," Mr Shetye says.

Even companies like the Bangalore-based Healthscribe have shifted their
focus to tier II cities. In June this year, HealthScribe, a subsidiary of
the US based medical transcription company, Spheris opened a facility at the
STPI IT Park in the Kumaraguru College of Technology campus in Coimbatore.
Coimbatore is
Spheris' second centre after Bangalore. The company has invested around Rs
10 crore on this facility. Choosing Coimbatore for setting up a second
centre was an easy decision for the company. "A majority of Spheris's
employees come from the Coimbatore and Palakkad belt in the South.
Coimbatore has a good educational system which churns out thousands of
talented graduates and engineers every year.

With medical transcription companies moving to B cities, the boom in this
ndustry could generate enormous employment potential in these cities.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=113926

3) Alpha Systems ties up US-based RTC

New York-based Reporters Transcription Center (RTC) and Coimbatore-based
Alpha Systems have set up a joint venture named Trans-Venture BPO Solution
PVT LTD. The 50-50 venture, with US two million dollars investment, will
have its own training and production facilities in Coimbatore, and would
employ over 500 people during its first year of operations, Randall A
Czerenda, RTC president, told reporters.

RTC has been dealing with Alpha for the last six years and being very much
impressed with its commitment to quality and business practices, picked
Alpha to go with, when it was decided to expand and set up production
facility in India, Randall said.

Alpha handles more than 40,000 lines per day from RTC, its CEO, C R
Vasudevan said, adding that both Alphaa and Trans Venture would continue to
source work from RTC and hope to build one lakh lines per day before the end
of this year.

http://www.chennaionline.com/colnews/newsitem.asp?NEWSID=%7B4E8012BF-01FF-4FB7-8\
4C7-D5AB309568A5%7D&CATEGORYNAME=Business

4) Transcend Secures $5.6 Million Credit Facility

Transcend Services, Inc. announced that it has secured a four year, $5.6
million credit facility with Healthcare Finance Group (HFG) which replaces
the Company's previous $2.0 million credit facility with Bank of America,
N.A. The new facility includes a $3.6 million revolving accounts
receivable-based line of credit and up to $2.0 million of term loans to fund
acquisitions. Borrowings bear interest at LIBOR plus 4%, are secured by
Company assets and require that the Company maintain certain financial and
other covenants.

Transcend also announced today that Sue McGrogan, a co-founder of the
Company's subsidiary, Medical Dictation Inc. ("MDI"), has invested $300,000
in Transcend as of December 26, 2005 through a reduction in the January
31st, 2006 installment payment on the note payable to Ms. McGrogan related
to the MDI acquisition.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&ne\
wsId=20060104005235&newsLang=en

5) BPOs will have to sharpen their new skills

The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector that has so far focused on
basic services is set to graduate to newer services. The traditional
services have seen billing rates erode over the last three years by as much
as 33%. Besides, labour costs have gone up by 10%-15% year-on-year and the
current delivery is largely from the more expensive Tier I cities (like
Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore). This could, in the long- run, make it unviable to
offer the basic services. Much like medical transcription became unviable
after billing rates crashed.

Says, Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom: "There will be a distinct shift from
traditional BPO services to Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) kind of
services. I see companies getting deeper into areas like HR and F&A." So,
instead of just managing payroll, vendors may scale up to take care of
career and retirement planning.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1356064.cms

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The MTIndia Team
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