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19 Jul 2003
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Nasscom asks ITES players to curb attrition!

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Dear Friends,

In the backdrop of intense competition and falling billing rates,
the high rate of attrition is set to pose a major threat to the
fast-growing IT enabled services (ITES)/ business process
outsourcing (BPO) industry, warns the Nasscom.

With attrition levels hovering between 30 per cent and 35 per cent,
attrition is fast becoming a much-talked about problem in the
ITES/BPO sector. The most immediate need is to address the issues
of high attrition level in this industry by identifying the
drivers, Nasscom said its July survey.

Managing attrition is becoming increasingly important, not only
because knowledge professionals are the lifeline of a service
oriented industry but also due to expensive staffing costs in this
sector, the apex body warned further.

Though India boasts of a large, highly-skilled talent pool, one of
the major challenges it faces is making sure that this talent pool
is sustainable in the long run. Developing new talent is a long
term imperative, however, the need of the hour is to arrest the
growing attrition rate, Nasscom said.

Some of the major drivers of a high attrition rate are workplace
environmental influences and personal choices that people make,
Nasscom pointed out.

Issues such as vague vision and values, lack of positive direction,
mixed messages, limited or lacklustre training, wrong hiring,
mismatched measures and rewards, overworked employees and burnout
are behind the increasing attrition rates, Nasscom said.

Therefore, the ITES industry should invest in their employees in
the form of salaries, benefits, bonuses, training and other
personal costs, it said. The needs of employees have to be balanced
with that of the customers and the business, it added. This is
where the art of balancing and making trade-offs come into play,
Nasscom said in its report.

Like most customers, employees are reasonable and willing to focus
on the greater good as along as they share in the success and
rewards. It is important to remember that retaining productive
employees results in higher customer satisfaction and lower costs,
Nasscom pointed out.

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) IT experts or cyber-coolies?

The basic reason why India is seen as an outsourcing 'threat' is
simple. In the US, it costs $43,000 to hire a full-time employee in
the ITES business. The cost of an Indian employee is $6,180, or
seven times lower. Because of time-zone difference, India can
provide round-the-clock service on all days of the week. (There
need be no closures on weekends). The average Indian employee's
productivity is high. Big companies like General Electric report 85
to 92 percent-plus 'satisfaction' ratings for its Indian employees.
There is a relatively large pool of English-speaking low-skilled
manpower in India. All this makes India a Western corporate
attraction -- and an IT worker's nightmare!

The crux, the key, is low wages. That's the bottom-line! India's
ITES-BPO, like its computer software business, is heavily
concentrated in low-paid jobs and low value-addition segments.
Indian companies have developed very few finished, marketable
software products, selling which generates the cream. They tend to
develop components or sub-packages/assemblies/programmes that go
into the final products made and marketed by US companies.

Thus, a good proportion of the sub-programmes in Windows 95 and 98
were developed by Indian engineers. But it's Bill Gates who skimmed
off the profits!

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jul/11praful.htm

2) And now, it's business transcription

Medical transcription, or even legal/revenue transcription for that
matter, is passé. Business transcription is what is in.
Well, doing business increasingly demands that you move with the
times. And move around, quite a bit, too, in the process. Business
transcription has emerged as a major IT-enabled Service (ITES)
opportunity purely from the need of businesspeople to get
themselves documented during times when they take the floor in the
boardroom or, for all one knows, speak out onboard a cruising
aircraft.

Or ask, Mr R.P. Lalaji, Chairman and Managing Director of Seview
Support Systems, a leading ITES player based in Technopark here.
"For us, proceedings from sessions aboard an aircraft, an airport,
on board a train, bus or a car could well mean business. And it may
be about very serious subjects or just plain trivia, but they all
get the same professional treatment from us. We count time in
seconds," says Mr Lalaji.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/bline/stories/2003071600241700.htm

3) Manpower Mismatch

There was talk of how the IT majors were already setting up shop in
Goa. Those were the days of the ultra high-powered committees which
included the likes of Dr Raghunath Mashelkar, the director general
of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the
Chairman of Wipro, Aziz Premji. There was a great deal of rhetoric
about how Goa was ideal for technology-enabled services like
medical transcription and call centres. Because Goans would not
have changed their names to Andy and Jane and Tom and Dick and put
on a false accent. Even the Lamanis in Goa now can simulate a
German or an English or at least a cockney accent. And never mind
that Usha Burr Brown ran away with Rs 15 crore of the taxpayer's
money under the pretext of setting up a medical transcription unit
and took several young people for a royal ride.

The tragedy was that on the ground nothing happened.

http://www.oherald.com/newherald/newsEDN.asp?qId=945&qSec=EDN&qNTyp
e=R

4) Think-tank rates RP with high potential for IT and BPO

META Group has given the Philippines a C1 ranking (developing with
high potential for rapid evolution) in the META Group Telecom
Maturity Model (MTMM).

The recent rating is two notches higher from its previous position
of D (underdeveloped) thus putting the Philippine at par with India
and ahead of other Asian contenders in the outsourcing business.

http://www.mb.com.ph/news.php?art=36416&sect=8&fname=IT03072036416f
.txt

5) Manila vs Mumbai

The Philippines is revving up to become a call centre and backend
office powerhouse. But, first, it has to get in the ring with
India, the world's outsourcing heavyweight champion.

The key selling point that the Philippines enjoys over India is its
close historical relationship with the U.S. It was an American
colony for 50 years - this has placed it culturally closer to the
U.S. as compared with India. "This exposure has made many Filipinos
[fairly] competent in engaging an American in a conversation,
because he/she can speak in the American idiom and understand
American slang," says Roxas. This, in turn, has given the Filipinos
a slight edge over the Indians in providing services to U.S.
clients, that require direct customer interaction, such as of the
type needed at call centres and in telemarketing.

But accent and cultural adaptability are not the only ingredients
of success. Qualities such as education, domain knowledge and
training are key determinants as well, especially for higher-end
products and services. India is strong in these areas.

http://cio-asia.com/pcio.nsf/unidlookup/FF2F2DA8D5CCDDD048256D58003
BC8D7?OpenDocument

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