MT India Newsletter

To subscribe, send an email to:
MTIndia-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

31 Jan 2004
********************************************************

Multiplying with networking...

********************************************************
Dear Friends,

Our MTIndia community in its present form is about five years old,
though some associations within the family are a lot older,
established as these were, during the emids days. During this
period, there has been a tremendous response from the members,
bouquets and brickbats included. Your response has brought to us a
sense of achievement and also apprehensions arising out of a very
high degree of expectations generated.

Amidst all this, our driving force, consistently, has been a
passion towards creating a strong community wherein each one of us
is better informed, better networked; and hence better equipped.
Networking is as old as time. Inherent is the idea that we need not
do everything ourselves and re-invent the wheel over and again. We
can all mutually benefit from the experiences and knowledge of
others. It is not a new practice to any of us. We network all the
time. The question is, "how far do you want to go with it?" Time
management and personal productivity are significantly enhanced
when we use the concept seriously and methodically practice the
concept.

My own success in business has come to me largely through
networking and the good cooperation of other people, although, like
the cobbler's son who had no shoes, I sometimes fail to follow my
own advice. When I started my business I thought I was a genius.
After all, I had the education and degrees :o) I then proceeded to
do every bone-headed thing imaginable, wasting precious resources
of time and money until I began to practice what I preached and
reached out to others who were already successful in my field.

I learned how to market and promote my business and how to
manage it effectively as well. Through the generous help of others,
I stopped spinning my wheels learning the errors that others had
already learned. I now spend a good amount of my time helping
newbies to succeed sharing the information that I have received,
adding in my own successes.

And that is the essence of networking because networking is not a
selfish technique, just drawing from the well. It is consistently
helping to fill the well. Not only taking but giving back. The more
help you offer others, the more you get in return.

Towards this end, we at MTIndia strongly believe that the active
involvement of members of the community will go a long way in
promoting the profession and the Industry. We approach you to make
your presence felt.

We are presently looking for pro-active leaders - dedicated
professionals with a passion for this profession, who would
volunteer to take up the reins at local chapters and support goups
@ MTIindia. We look forward to hearing from you.

On a different note, we would like to inform you that the Jobs
Newsletter will now be regularly published from Friday the 13th ...
well . . . of February!!!

Ciao!

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

"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality!"

***********************************************************
ADVERTISEMENT:
----------------------

MTs wanted at Bangalore:

VeriScribe, a wholly owned unit of Medescribe Inc., Michigan, is
looking for MTs and Direct Upload MTs with 2+ yrs exp to work in
1st & 2nd shift. Location: Bangalore

VeriScribe Private Limited,
No 343, 2nd Floor,1st 'B' Main, 7th Block
Koramangala, Bangalore-95.
Ph: 30617711/51104117/9880080232/9844277627.
E-mail: jobs@....

***********************************************************
NEWS AND VIEWS :
------------------------

1) HealthScribe buys out Indian arm

U.S. medical transcription firm HealthScribe Inc said on Thursday
it had bought out a majority stake in its Indian operations from
its local partner and aims to make the nation a hub for its global
expansion.

David Ehrhardt, president and chief operating officer of
HealthScribe, told a news conference in Bangalore the company had
paid about $10 million for a 65 percent stake in the Indian unit
from diversified firm Max India, raising its stake to 85 percent.

"HealthScribe's increased equity stake in HealthScribe India is key
component of our growth strategy," Ehrhardt said.

The Indian unit, which clocked sales of nearly $10 million in 2003,
expects to boost revenue by 30 to 40 percent this year and hire 500
people, taking its total staff size to 1,700.

http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:4019177a:92ed899069
5c16b5?type=technologyNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4239093

2) India sees bright side to US outsourcing threat

Although the US bill could dam up a lucrative portion of the flow
of BPO contracts, for the country's close to $4 billion
revenue-a-year IT-enabled services sector, slated to grow at 54
percent this year, $511 million is surely not a large enough chunk
to be overly worried about. Moreover, NASSCOM's Karnik says that
since the bill is limited to a period up to September 2004, and
that it only covers contracts by government departments, its impact
in numerical terms will be "small because the share of US federal
government contracts in exports of IT software and services from
India is less than 2 percent".

Industry sources also add that sectors such as medical
transcriptions, which depend heavily on third party contractors,
have no cause for worry either. In this sector, the major chunk of
the work flows to India from third parties. For example, says
Suresh Nair of HealthScribe, one of the largest medical
transcription companies, "most hospitals in the US are under
private control and the bill does not seek to debar third party US
contractors from outsourcing work to Indian medical
transcriptions".

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FA27Df06.html

3) U.S. Ban on Outsourcing Smacks of Unfair Policies - India

While a new U.S. federal law banning the outsourcing of government
contracts will not seriously hurt Indian companies, it will
certainly affect trade negotiations at the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), warn political and business leaders here.

The growth in outsourcing to countries like India - of services
such as accounting, billing, transcription, call centres, medical
transcription and diagnosis, number-crunching, administration and
anything that is information technology-enabled - reflects a desire
by big companies and the U.S. government to save on costs at home.

''They expect India and other countries to open up our markets. But
when it comes to accessing their services sector they bring in
anti-outsourcing laws,'' said Arun Shourie, India's minister for
information technology and telecommunications, reacting to laws
passed by the U.S. Senate on Jan. 22.

Shourie said he believed the new law now adopted by eight U.S.
states was a shortsighted move enacted in an election year in the
United States-- and one that would hurt the U.S. economy more than
any other country.

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=22133

4) Outsourced and out of control?

Large-scale outsourcing is growing at a frenetic pace around the
globe. Many outsourced jobs involve countries where significant
privacy laws do not exist; even if those laws are improved under
pressure of potential lost business, effective enforcement would
still appear to be highly problematic. Customer service outsourcing
can give risky access to data such as names, addresses, Social
Security numbers, telephone call records, and medical information.
Recently, a Pakistani subcontract worker threatened to post US
patients' medical data on the web if claimed back pay was not
forthcoming.

There are many fine workers performing outsourced tasks around the
world. Yet, it is more difficult to maintain control over customer
information, security, development, and other critical issues, when
work is performed distantly or under completely different laws. The
opportunities for errors, mischief, and serious misdeeds are
alarming, to say the least. Businesses and governments need to
carefully consider the manners in which outsourcing can be
reasonably exploited, and how it must be controlled.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/29/1075088126639.html

5) Research firms highlight hot trends in outsourcing

For the past two years the Philippine government has been promoting
the country's Information Technology outsourcing and sub
contracting services to attract foreign investment and address the
local unemployment woes.

During 2003, e-Services Philippines 2003 highlighted Animation and
Graphic Design, Business Process Outsourcing, Customer Contact
Services, Medical Transcription and software development.

Boston-based The Yankee Group, a global leader in communications
and networking research and consulting, in a recent news report
said:

"India is the largest offshore destination for global enterprises,
but even with its explosive growth during the past six years, it
constitutes less than 2 percent of the total world IT services
marketplace and its IT professional workforce is less than 10
percent of the size of the US IT workforce.

"Other offshore centers such as Mexico, China, Ireland, Malaysia,
the Philippines and Eastern Europe are much smaller markets with
less developed industry infrastructure."

"The vendor's brand is the ultimate guarantee that the client is
buying into. Once sufficient care has been taken to ensure
continuity in the event of disruption for whatever reason, the
client should be free to manage matters of more immediate
importance for their businesses.

http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO20040124586.html

6) Showcase of IT

From the initial breeze of high expectations regarding Nepal's
potential to tap the out-sourcing markets like Medical
Transcription, Call Centers etc being only realized to limited
extent, the IT sector in Nepal has failed to take off.

http://www.nepalnews.com.np/contents/englishweekly/spotlight/2004/j
an/jan30/national5.htm
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
P. S. Would you like to share this newsletter with your friends
or post it on your site? Please do! But also be sure to read
below:

All original content of this newsletter is © Copyright 1998-2004
Mediweb Infotech Pvt. Ltd. All cited articles are copyright of
their authors and/or respective publications. Please feel free to
share this newsletter with your friends or post it on your site
as long as it is left intact with all links unchanged and this
notice.

Thank you for your interest in MT India!

The MTIndia Team
----------------------------------------------------------------
Please DO NOT reply to this mail id to unsubscribe.