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INTRADE 2009:
Great platform
for ICT firms
Using tech
transformation
as enabler of
business change
More firms
moving into
Cyberjaya
Cloud Sourcing:
The rise of
on-demand
business
process
outsourcing

o rtu n itie s
O pp o ce ss
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Worksrhcoing
on Sotuegies: in Le ga l Pr
Stra inside
u tso u rcin g
See etails
for d O
 CONTENTS

s
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go
“IT andces”
ervi
s

32

Complexities, 10

18
Conflicts &

Contradictions

20

14
 40
8

7 SAP telesales hub in Malaysia

8
Gates says no to tough
immigration policy

10
INTRADE 2009: Great platform
for ICT firms

14 Cover: LPO to the fore

18
Complexities, Conflicts
& Contradictions

5 Questions: With Dushan Soza

20
of WNS Global Services

24
24
Real option: Call centre
outsourcing

28
Cloud Sourcing: The rise
of on-demand BPO

Using tech transformation as

32
enabler of business change

40 Management: Inevitability
of change

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LEGAL Process Outsourcing (LPO) is indeed gradually
gaining acceptance among corporates today.
Market research firm, ValueNotes, estimates that LPO
theteam
the revenues will increase from a projected US$640 million in
2010 to more than US$4 billion by 2015 – reflecting massive
growth in this fairly new segment.
LPO allows corporations to streamline repetitive and
Managing Editor/Publisher: document intensive tasks through the use of lower cost
Sritharan Vellasamy professionals and software solutions to automate various
legal process tasks.
Consultant: Numerous LPO providers, mainly from India, have had
Sundra Surian success over the years by making available services such
as document review, legal research and writing, drafting of
pleadings and briefs and providing patent services.
While cost and client pressures are primary drivers for
law firms and MNCs to outsource, data security seems to
editorial editorial@wordlabs.com.my be the biggest concern to them.
“Although the ones that offshore and the ones that do
Sub Editor: Simon Vella not offshore differ significantly in terms of their comfort
Art Director:Steven Choo level associated with offshoring, the apprehensions
Graphic artist:Shafie Osman are more or less on similar lines – quality, security and
Contributors: Tamyne Menon, confidentiality,” explains Neeraja Kandala in our Cover
Dorothy Llew, Mohd Arshad Story.
Coordinator:James Wee Meanwhile in the Conversation segment, Managing
Director of WNS Global Services, Dushan Soza, speaks on
how Sri Lanka is successfully harnessing its accounting
talent pool to position itself as an attractive global location
for Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO).
sales sales@wordlabs.com.my Dushan – one of the main speakers at the Chartered
Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) World
Vikraman Visno Conference held in Kuala Lumpur recently – said the
Resh Nathen country is wisely focusing on a couple of key strengths,
such as accounting and finance rather than trying to be
“all things to all firms”.
Its capital Colombo now has the world’s largest pool of
UK-qualified English speaking accounting professionals
contact admin@wordlabs.com.my outside the UK itself.
There is no doubt you will be hearing more from this
South Asian nation – more so with the painful 20-year civil
war firmly behind them. – Sritharan Vellasamy

WORDlabs MEDIA (001645509-W)

27-1, Metro Centre, Jalan 3/146,
Bandar Tasik Selatan,
57000 Kuala Lumpur;
Phone: +603 90564770, 90580971;
Fax: +603 90564771, 90580972
3(CIMA-Ad).indd 1 10/20/08 12:43:11 PM
Outsourcing | news bits

Month-long ICT campaign Key findings of

The National ICT Month (NIM)
2009 campaign organised by
PIKOM, Malaysia’s information
and communications technology
association, is projected to generate
RM750 million in sales by year-
end.
Its chairman David Wong Nan
Fay said the nationwide month-long
campaign, themed “ICT – Enabling
New Success”, reinforced the as-
sociation’s key agenda to push the
country’s economy up the value
chain by leveraging on ICT.
Events in NIM 2009 include a
two-day leadership summit, an
exhibition, an eWaste recycling
campaign and a Buy Online cam-
paign.
“In a month’s time after the
launch of NIM 2009, we forecast to
capture sales of RM260 million,”
Wong said at a media briefing
after the NIM launch at the Kuala
Lumpur Convention Centre.
The event was officiated by Sci-
ence, Technology and Innovation
Minister Datuk Dr Maximus Johnity
Ongkili. In conjunction with NIM
2009, Multimedia Development
Corporation (MDeC) announced the
launch of the MSC Malaysia Great
ICT sale, its first-ever ICT solutions
sale targeted at local small and
medium enterprises (SMEs).

 prototype developments,
Its vice president of industry
development division, Saifol Bahri
Mohamad Shamlan, said MDeC
was targeting RM3 million to RM5
million in total sales from the
event.

 ter on July 20 in
“The sale will bring together more
than 50 vendors to create unique
bundles of products and services for
PIKOM ICT
Strategic Review
2009/10
Ongkili … NIM SMEs through easy-to-select, value-
2009 was kicked added solution bundling options,”
off by the minis- Saifol said.
 supply of quality graduates
The ICT sale runs in conjunction
Kuala Lumpur. with NIM 2009 from July 20 to Aug
20 in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and
Johor Baharu.
• Malaysia’s Gross Domestic
Products (GDP) is expected to
recover to 1 per cent in 2010
following a contraction in 2009.

• Usage of e-procurement
services is still low due to
the cost constraint, lack of
awareness and IT skills among
private sector.

• The widespread labour
shortage, “head hunting”
practices, upward pressure on
wages, long-term employability
and loss of IP to competitors
are great concerns among the
ICT players.

• Empirical evidence based
on a rural community study
revealed that those with
vernacular language (Malay,
Chinese, Tamil) proficiency have
lower Internet usage compare
to those familiar with English.

• Only 3.4% of R&D in Malaysia
has been commercialised.

• 14 types of ICT grants
(provided by MOSTI, MDeC,
MTDC, MATRADE and
Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd) are
available for the ICT sector
towards financial ideation,
commercialisation, market
development, branding and
exports. 

• Provision of broadband and
are imperative for Malaysia to
remain competitive and move
up in the global information
society ladder.

MIDA entices Mavcap commits

Mideast firms
Malaysia has invited companies
from the Middle East to set up
services-based operations in the
Southeast Asian nation, particu-
larly to serve the regional market.

 “GCC companies are also
Malaysian Industrial Develop-
ment Authority (MIDA) director-
general Datuk Jalilah Baba said
opportunities for investments by
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in
Malaysia’s services sector included
business and professional services,
integrated logistics, information
and communications technol-
ogy (ICT) services, education and
training, health services and
tourism services.

The Malaysian
RM50m to outsourcing
government in April announced
MALAYSIA Venture Capital Management Bhd (Mavcap)
has committed RM50 million to its two outsource partners,
the liberalisation of 27 services Astra Partners Sdn Bhd and Questmark Capital Manage-
sub-sectors, with no equity condi- ment Sdn Bhd, a move that can further stimulate growth
tions imposed.

 in the Malaysian venture capital industry.
The two venture capital management companies were
invited to set up regional entities chosen based on their strengths in terms of experience,
such as operational headquarters, track records, networking, domain area of investment
international procurement centres, and value proposition.
regional distribution centres, re- “With the funds disbursed to our outsource partners
gional offices as well representative who in turn invest in high-growth businesses, we give
offices to serve as affiliates and entrepreneurs the opportunity to establish and grow a
subsidiaries in the region,” Jalilah business based on innovative products,” Mavcap chief
said at the opening of MIDA Dubai executive officer Husni Salleh told news agency Bernama.
office recently.

 Husni said that since its inception of the Outsource
GCC groups Bahrain, Oman, Partners Programme (OSP), Mavcap has been able to
Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and build an extensive venture capital industry network in
the United Arab Emirates.
 Malaysia.

6 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009


Liberalisation
to attract more
British investors
The United Kingdom welcomes Ma-
laysia’s recent moves on liberalisation
of the services sector and opening up of
the economy, Malaysia’s news agency
Bernama quoted British High Commis-
sioner Boyd McCleary as saying.

 impact this is having in Malaysia, with
“Malaysia has been very successful in
securing inward investment and I know
that the UK companies based here are
doing well and enjoy operating in this
region. I am sure these measures will
attract more investments into Malaysia,”
he said.


McCleary said this during the opening
of the Chartered Institute of Management
Accountants (CIMA) World Conference
SAP telesales hub in Malaysia
Global software giant SAP AG
has finalised an agreement with IT
services company Datacom SEA Sdn
Bhd to establish a callcentre in Malaysia
to provide business process outsourc-
ing (BPO) for demand generation and
telemarketing services covering more
than nine countries in Asia Pacific.
I was reported that SAP ended con-
tracts with vendors in nine countries in
order to consolidate its telesales callcen-
tre here and expects to generate about
200mil euros (RM1bil) in sales.
Multimedia Development Corpora-
tion (MDeC) Chief Executive Officer
Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali welcomed the
move by SAP. Badlisham said: “MDeC,
being the driver of the MSC Malaysia
initiative, offers the ‘Best of All Worlds’
for businesses, local and international,
to set-up their operations here.”
Andrew Peel, General Manager of
NEWS BITS | Outsourcing
2009 held in Kuala Lumpur from July
13-14.
“As the leading consumer economies
began to slow down, so did their demand
for goods and services and we can see the
a healthy growth of plus four percent in
2008 to a projected decline to minus four
percent this year,” he said.


The conference, themed “The Global
Village – No Boundaries, No Limits”, Arroyo
focused on managing global profitability
in the downturn, outsourcing as a com- out to
boost BPO
petitive strategy, managing costs, shaping
the future, and the impact of the current
economic crisis on globalisation.


business
Business process
outsourcing sector in
Philippines is expected to
receive ample boost after
President Arroyo urged
Congress recently to pass
a law that will create the
Department of Information
and Communications
Technology. 


In her 9th State of the
Nation Address, Arroyo cited
the role of the BPO and
tourism sectors as engines of
growth in the country. 


She noted that while
electronics and other
manufactured exports
Datacom Connect, said: “Our experience rise and fall in accordance
and track record in the technology busi- with the state of the world
ness was critical in understanding SAP’s economy, the BPO sector
needs. However, our Malaysian opera- has remained resilient and
tions’ language and cultural diversity as continues to grow. 

well as their customer service ethos was “With earnings
key to our successful bid. of US$6 billion and
“When MDeC agreed to support our employment of 600,000,
tender to bring this business to Malaysia, the BPO phenomenon
we further enhanced our value proposi- speaks eloquently of
tion. The Multimedia Development our competiveness and
Corporation was an invaluable partner productivity. Let us have
in this success,” a Department of ICT,” the
As part of this agreement, Datacom President. 


will manage inbound and outbound The Philippines’ BPO
demand generation services including sector is projected to earn
telemarketing, lead generation, database US$13 billion in revenues by
optimisation and cleansing and inside next year, capturing 10% of
sales lead generation qualification. In the global IT-BPO market,
addition, Datacom will provide and according to the Business
manage a sales support hotline for SAP’s Processing Association of the
customers and prospects. Philippines (BPAP).


July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 7
Outsourcing | news bits

Infosys opens “I can’t make

Philippine any predictions.
Immigration
BPO branch policy could get
Indian outsourcer Infosys BPO has
more difficult. It
opened its first branch in the Philippines would be a big
using collaboration technologies from
Cisco.
mistake.”
The new centre, which will support
multiple clients in the technology industry,
features the IP-based Cisco Unified Contact
Centre. “The entire IT infrastructure is built
on a Cisco plat-
form and we
will continue
to expand the
centre,” said
Infosys Philip-
pines’ Madhusudan Menon.
“Through this project, Infosys BPO Philip-
pines may emerge as one of the largest Cisco
Unified Contact Centre implementations by
the end of the year.”
Infosys‘ Philippines branch extends
the global relationship between the two
companies, which began in India in 2002
and now includes six geographic delivery
centers across the globe.
“Cisco’s relationship with Infosys is
strategic in nature and crosses various busi-
ness organizations, providing tremendous
synergies for both companies,” said Mark
Homan, Global Operations senior director
at Cisco.

Indian outsourcing
industry to register
single-digit growth
India’s revenue from offshore outsourc-
ing will likely have single-digit growth
in the fiscal year to March 31, 2010, the
president of the country’s top outsourcing
trade body said.
The forecasted growth will be less than an
estimated 14% to 16% growth in outsourc-
ing exports in the year to March 31, 2009,
and far lower than in the year to March 31,
2008, when growth in exports was 29%.
Exports include services performed for
customers abroad, billed in their currency,
with the money brought back to India.
India’s outsourcing industry has been
affected by customers’ delay in finalis-
ing outsourcing budgets, and the overall
slower growth of business in key markets
like the US., said Som Mittal, president of
the National Association of Software and
Service Companies (Nasscom).
Preliminary estimates by Nasscom
suggest growth in export revenue will be
between 7 % to 12%, though it is more likely
that it will be less than 10%, Mittal said.
Tough US
immigration policy
unfortunate: Gates
Microsoft co-founder Bill
Gates sought to allay US President
Barack Obama’s concerns that
the American job market could
be hit because of the outsourcing
industry.
“I can’t make any predictions.
Immigration policy could get
more difficult. It would be a big
mistake,” said Gates at an event
organised by India’s National As-
sociation of Software and Service
Companies (NASSCOM) in New
Delhi recently.
He added: “The US Congress is
very tough on immigration. But
why not make an exception for
smart people? Free exchange of
talent is very important”
At the event, Gates also lauded
the success of the Indian IT indus-
try, adding that it was high time
the country focussed on high-end
research and development to
maintain the competitive edge.
“At first some of the IT boom
was built on low-cost labour. And,
of course, as time goes on, you
don’t want to have that as the
only differentiator and it’s not a
sustainable thing, because others
can come along with that as well,”
he said, pointing to competition
from other nations.

8 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009


Tech Mahindra
enlists BT
to boost Satyam
Tech Mahindra, the new owner
of India’s fraud-hit outsourcing firm
Satyam Computer Services, is enlisting
the help of long-term partner BT Group
as it seeks to rehabilitate the company,
India’s Financial Times reported.
The UK telecoms group holds a 31%
stake in Tech Mahindra, which took
over Satyam in April. It is assisting with
issues such as corporate governance
and client relations, according to C.P.
Gurnani, chief executive of what is now
called Mahindra Satyam.
“Since we have BT Group as inves-
tors in Tech Mahindra and we have
Mahindra & Mahindra to reinforce
our commitment to governance,
Aussie outsourcing
to grow steadily
Australia’s outsourcing market is
tipped to rise at a rate of 4% per year
over the next five years, according to
new research by IDC.
In a report titled, “Australia Out-
sourcing Services Market Forecast and
Analysis 2009-2013”, IDC valued the
outsourcing market at A$6.4 billion
(US$5.3b) in 2008, and tipped a com-
pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
4% over the next five years, taking the
market’s value to nearly A$8 billion
(US$6.6b).
The figures encompassed sub-markets
including applications management,
desktop management, hosted applica-
tions management, hosted infrastructure
services, IS outsourcing and network
management.
IDC senior IT market analyst, Marina
Beale, conceded Australia’s outsourcing
Starbucks brews deal with Unisys
UNISYS Corporation announced that
Starbucks Corporation has selected Uni-
sys to provide data centre outsourcing
services to support the coffee company’s
continued expansion in China.
Under the two-year contract, Unisys
will provide systems management,
network management, asset tracking,
and software image and voice systems
management services delivered from
the Unisys Global Services Centre in
Shanghai.
we have requested them that they
can appoint a joint inspection team
and do an inspection on a periodic
basis,” Gurnani told the Financial
Times.
Satyam was one of India’s top five
information technology companies
until January this year, when its chair-
man B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to
fixing the accounts to invent a US$1
billion cash pile.
Government-appointed directors
took control of Satyam until they were
able to sell it off in a deal valued at
US$1.1 billion to Tech Mahindra, part
of the Mahindra & Mahindra industrial
group.
rate is higher than other countries in the
Asia-Pacific region.
“Asia-Pacific countries have reviewed
their services forecast down where as
Australia has kept it consistent at around
4%,” she said. “We are still seeing rev-
enues flow in from outsourcing contracts
that have already been signed and we
also expect to see new deals coming up
towards the end of the year. There is
still potential for growth but not by too
much.” While no particular vertical is
prone to outsourcing, some unusual
players have entered the game.
“We are seeing the trend affect the
finance sector as well as business analyt-
ics, which is unco mmon,” Beale said.
“But in general, it is coming from all
areas and to anyone who is feeling the
pinch and is reconsidering alternative
outsourcing models.”
The contract expands the existing re-
lationship between Unisys and Starbucks
in China. Unisys has provided end-user
support services, including service desk
and nationwide infrastructure support
services, to Starbucks retail stores, sup-
port centers and manufacturing facilities
in China since 2007.
The new deal enables Starbucks to
simplify its IT management by working
with one vendor for both service desk
and data centre support.
NEWS BITS | Outsourcing
Big Blue
to snap up
SPSS
IBM has offered US$1.2 billion in
cash for SPSS, a business software
company that helps businesses to
forecast trends by identifying shifts in
consumer patterns.
The American computer
company’s acquisition of SPSS,
which is subject to shareholder
approval and regulatory clearance,
follows a spate of deals in recent
years in the business intelligence
sector, such as Oracle’s purchase
of Hyperion, SAP’s acquisition of
Business Objects and IBM’s own
deal for Cognos.
According to Interactive Data,
the market research company, the
worldwide market for business
analytics software will grow by 4 per
cent to $25 billion this year.
GM ‘outsourcing
pioneer’ retires
General Motors announced
a major management shakeup
recently, and CIO Ralph Szygenda is
among those leaving the company.
The 60-year-old Szygenda
will leave on Oct 1, after 13 years
in the role. He
has been called
an “outsourcing
pioneer”.
Szygenda, who
joined GM at a
time when EDS
dominated its IT
operations, was an
outsourcing and
business process
re-engineering maverick who cut
billions from the company’s IT budget
and who negotiated a $15 billion
deal a few years back that was often
described as the biggest in history.
He will be replaced by Terry Kline,
currently GM’s process information
officer for product development.
His third-generation outsourcing
plan was designed to get outsourcing
providers to compete with each
other while also streamlining their
operations by cooperating on
standards.
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 9
Outsourcing | INTRADE 2009

INTRADE 2009:
Great platform for ICT firms
Malaysian ICT sector should take
full advantage of the upcoming
INTRADE Malaysia 2009 exhibition
to further grow their export markets,
said Susila Devi – Senior Director
of Product and Services Develop-
ment Division of Malaysia’s External
Trade Development Corporation
(MATRADE).
Susila said: “INTRADE 2009 is cer-
tainly an ideal platform to establish
contacts and explore opportunities
with businessmen from various
countries. 
“As such, I would like to urge
the ICT sector to make use of this
opportunity to promote their products
and services in order to penetrate the
international market.”
INTRADE Malaysia 2009, the
third in its series, is, organised by
MATRADE at its Exhibition and
Convention Centre (MECC) in Kuala
Lumpur from 10-12 Nov.
In 2007, the inaugural INTRADE
Malaysia with the participation of
over 300 companies had generated
potential sales of products and ser-
vices of RM3.38 billion. 
Meanwhile, the 2nd INTRADE
Malaysia last year saw the participa-
tion of 350 companies and generated Susila ... ‘I would These buyers are pre-screened INTRADE 2009. Themed: “Leader-
potential sales of about RM2.6 bil- like to urge the ICT by MATRADE’s offices overseas to ship in the Marketplace through
lion.  sector to make use ensure genuine interest in sourcing Creativity and Innovation”, the
She said: “These encouraging re- of this opportunity from Malaysia. event will host prominent speakers
sults indicate the effectiveness of trade to promote their Susila also encouraged companies and industry experts to share their
exhibitions in generating potential products and to register early for the trade exhibi- experience and views on current
export businesses not only for large services in order tion and update their company economic development and how
companies but also for SMEs.” to penetrate the profiles. She said: “Early registration companies could stay ahead with
Susila is optimistic that such trends international will give MATRADE sufficient lead innovative ideas.
would continue despite the current market.’ time to match Malaysian companies
economic downturn. “MATRADE is with the appropriate buyers.”
targeting the participation of 300 In addition, the 3rd KLITF (KL For more details call +603-62754133
companies in INTRADE 2009 despite International Trade Forum) will or e-mail: enquiry@intrademalaysia.
the challenging business environ- be organised in conjunction with com
ment. To date, 90 per cent of the
booth space has been sold and we are
confident that the targeted number of WHY PARTICIPATE IN INTRADE MALAYSIA 2009
exhibitors can be achieved.”
She added: “Given that an interna- Focus exhibition: 300 exhibitors from 30 countries.
tional trade event is organised practi- Incoming Buying Mission: Grab this opportunity to meet pre-screened
cally in our backyard – Malaysian quality international trade buyers from around the world. This special
companies must make full use of this business matching programme is organised by MATRADE through its
platform as it is a cost effective vehicle overseas network.
to reach international clients.”
“The SMEs also must understand Networking Opportunities: Enhance and strengthen your networking
that despite the economic gloom they business and investment opportunities by interacting directly with international buyers.
must continue with their promotion Cost effective: Affordable to both Malaysian and foreign participants as well as highly efficient
activities in order stay competitive for tapping global opportunities.
and visible.” Promotion: A well-planned strategy involving extensive promotional campaigns to maximise
A unique feature of INTRADE awareness and draw international trade buyers.
Malaysia is the Inward Buying Mis-
sion (IBM) programme.  Through its National Pavilions: Source new business and investment opportunities from various regions
network of over 40 offices worldwide, and see the best of national pavilions showcasing their country’s capabilities and quality
quality international buyers are in- products and services.
vited by MATRADE to participate in Government Support: A government backed trade exhibition aimed at promoting inter-
the business meetings arranged with national trade and investment. It is hosted by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Malaysian companies.

10 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

Outsourcing | InsIghts
Using fewer application
outsourcing providers
delivers greater benefits
By KhOO KOK YEOW
The ouTsourcing marketplace
has matured rapidly during the
past few years as most global 2000
companies have outsourced or have
considered outsourcing some aspect
of their businesses. While these
companies have experienced the ex-
pected cost savings for outsourcing,
they are asking “what’s next?” and
are now demanding a measurable
increase in business performance
through outsourcing.
companies
ompanies are seeking ways to
rein in costs as a result of maintain-
maintain
ing financial footing in the global
economy. similarly, liquidity and
preserving capital is paramount
today, especially for companies in
survival mode. As companies look
for ways to reduce costs, Application
Development and Maintenance
(sometimes referred to as ADM)
outsourcing has grown in popu-
larity as an area with significant
opportunity.
however, in their attempts to
leverage the benefits of ADM, some
12 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
companies have amassed a com- the simple reality localised decision-making across
plex network of multiple suppliers to is that many an enterprise, or the simple desire to
meet their needs. And all too often, outsourcers of retain competitive tension.
managing this type of network can ADM tend to on the other hand, in many
create an enduring nightmare. so accumulate cases, the extent to which multiple
how are leading-edge organisations whole families of suppliers are utilised is a conse-
achieving more by engaging fewer suppliers. And as quence of localised decision-making
ADM providers? time progresses, processes across the organisation
recently, Accenture and the ever- there’s a cost and individual preferences to lever-
est research institute interviewed to it. A cost age relationships with suppliers.
companies that have reduced their is borne for in either case, the evidence from
supplier mix, as well as leading setting up each experience suggests that organisa-
suppliers that observed the impact relationship, as tions really need to be determined
of supplier consolidation across well as managing to rationalise the number of sup-
their customer base, to look at how it, resulting pliers in their ADM portfolio before
leading-edge companies are meet- in missed undertaking the effort. While the
ing their ADM goals with fewer opportunities savings are very significant, so, too,
suppliers. for economies of are the challenges.
scale.
What is the Motivation? high Costs of Accumulating
According to the study, the moti- suppliers
vation for using multiple The simple reality is that many out-
suppliers runs the sourcers of ADM tend to accumulate
gamut from
variations in
suppliers’
capa-
bilities
t o

“In their attempts to
leverage the benefits of
ADM, some companies
have amassed a complex
network of multiple
suppliers to meet their
needs. And all too often,
managing this type of
network can create an
enduring nightmare.”
whole families of suppliers. And as
time progresses, there’s a cost to it.
A cost is borne for setting up each
relationship, as well as managing
it, resulting in missed opportunities
for economies of scale.
There are also operational hic-
cups caused by inter-linkages in
project management, testing, and so
on when there are so many moving
pieces across multiple areas (e.g.
performance monitoring, reporting,
ensuring accountability) that can
result in costly project overruns and
significant operational downtime.
As a result, leading buyers are ratio-
nalising the number of suppliers in
their ADM portfolio and attaining
financial benefits plus a less com-
plex sourcing environment.
On a Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) basis, savings of 22 to 28%
can be achieved by working with
fewer suppliers. This includes both
one-time and recurring cost reduc-
tions. For example, one-time costs
can be reduced 35 to 40% by work-
ing with existing suppliers instead
of new suppliers, through savings in
specifying, tendering, evaluating,
selecting, negotiating, contract-
ing, transitioning, managing and
governing the additional work.
These are largely hidden costs, since
buyers often aren’t aware of them
or don’t quantify them.
Recurring costs can be reduced
20 to 25% as fewer contracts, fewer
invoices, and fewer compliance
relations are managed, but mostly
from economies of scale that enable
fewer providers to offshore more
and more senior roles into their
global delivery networks.
Complexity Arising From
Multiple Suppliers
The initial approach involves the
buyer adopting a “no regrets” ap-
proach for building its ADM supplier
portfolio. This includes:
• Limiting the number of suppliers,
by achieving consensus on the
principle that “fewer suppliers is
almost always better”
• Segmenting suppliers into strate-
gic or specialists
• Ensuring appropriate scale neces-
sary to build mutually beneficial
Whatever relationships with suppliers
While this approach for design-
reasons ing a supplier portfolio is applicable
there may across most types of buyer organisa-
have been tions, how to organise and operate
for using the portfolio can take multiple
forms.
multiple
ADM – Three Necessary Steps to
suppliers Consider:
in the Buyers must work through three
steps to appropriately manage com-
beginning, plexity and cost in the organisation-
high specific situations. These include:
performers • Decide which organisational
entity that will be included. (e.g.,
are now enterprise level versus specific
consolidating business units, geographies)
their vendor • Determine the engagement
base. model
• Manage and optimise day-to-day
operations by carefully managing
three key areas: division of work,
scope and scale, and governance
model
Steps for Organising and
Operating the Portfolio
First, the details of the approach
should focus on the organisational
entities included in the optimisa-
tion as the critical foundation that
shapes future decisions. Will they
Insights | Outsourcing
select a truly enterprise-driven ap-
proach towards optimisation versus
starting off in a few major groups
and then expanding scope?
These choices are closely linked
to the buyer’s organisational struc-
ture, decision-making processes,
and culture. Most large buyers are
unlikely to start optimising their
ADM portfolios by increasing the
scope of entities to include, but
rather, deploy a new model in one
area and then seek to increase scope
to include other business units/
geographies.
Second, companies should evalu-
ate and choose between two broad
engagement models:
Harmonised: acquire talent at
the best price and the buyer defines
the primary tools and processes for
service delivery.
Orchestrated: Attaining results
from suppliers through defined
objectives while requiring the sup-
plier to determine how to attain
results.
Third, with the proper engage-
ment model, buyers must manage
and optimise day-to-day opera-
tions.
Division of work: highly
interdependent delivery increases
the requirement of coordination,
thereby impacting productivity.
Scope and scale: the scope of
work outsourced has implications
on the complexity associated with
managing the work. Also, the extent
to which the buyer provides the
supplier scale benefits determines
the potential cost savings.
Governance model: creates
a more predictive environment
through re-use of IP/frameworks.
This lowers both one-time costs
and recurring costs associated with
managing performance of multiple
suppliers.
Whatever reasons there may have
been for using multiple ADM suppli-
ers in the beginning, high performers
are now consolidating their vendor
base. When a company succeeds at
reducing or limiting the number of
suppliers in its ADM portfolio, it can
achieve significant benefits such as
greater business impact, improved
quality and productivity, and cost
savings.
Khoo Kok Yeow is a Director at Ac-
centure where he leads the Outsourcing
Practice in Malaysia. 
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 13
Outsourcing | Cover story

The confidence in
the management
team and the
offshore service
providers’ capability
and reputation are
important factors for
buyers of offshore
legal services. Buyers
need to be confident
that the service
provider is reliable,
can be trusted with
their data and is
dependable in terms
of the delivery of
quality output.

LPO to
By Neeraja Kandala
The offshore legal services indus-
try is evolving in terms of the service
Opportunities provider capabilities and service

the fore
offerings. A number of offshore legal
in legal process service providers have mushroomed
outsourcing over the last two years. There are
more than 160 service providers
despite buyer offering offshore legal services from
concerns destinations such as India, the Philip-
pines and South Africa.
Even as legal services outsourcing

14 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

 Cover story | Outsourcing

Exhibit: Cost pressures – The primary driver!

Cost Pressures 50% 43% 7%

Client Pressures 43% 21% 29% 7%

Competitors
21% 14% 29% 36%
Offshoring

Turnaround Time 21% 14% 14% 50%

Increasing
7% 29% 36% 29%
Workload

Very High/Extremely Important High/Important

Moderately Important Low /Not at all important

Source: ValueNotes’ report on Legal Services Outsourcing: What do Law Firms Think?

but have decided not to offshore

further.
The survey results found that
more than half of the respondents
were not aware of the reasons for
not offshoring. While another large
group of law firms said that they do
not feel the need to send their legal
work to another destination, merely
4% of the respondents indicated
that they (are considering or) will
consider offshoring in the future.

Why Lawyers Offshore?

is gradually gaining acceptance,
several law firms still have ap-
prehensions about sending their
work offshore. According to a recent
survey conducted by ValueNotes, a
large number of law firms, irrespec-
tive of their size, were hesitant about
sending work to another country.
While this does result from lawyers
not being convinced about the ben-
efits of offshoring, it also indicates
certain concerns that have not been
addressed.
Exhibit:
Why ‘No’ to offshoring?
Tried &
Rejected Will consider
10% 4%
Not required
36%
Don't Know
50%
Source: ValueNotes’ report on Legal Services
Outsourcing: What do Law Firms Think?
Low Perceived Benefits
While legal services offshoring has
received significant media hype,
a large proportion of law firms in
the United States do not consider
offshoring legal services, and this
is largely due to lack of interest and
awareness. There are several law
firms who agree that offshoring
needs to be considered but are cur-
rently not ready to do it. There are
others who have explored offshoring
(in the form of pilots) in the past,
As in the case of most of businesses,
cost reduction is the primary driver
for offshoring legal services. Accord-
ing to a Patent Attorney of a New
York based law firm, “Price is a very
important factor driving offshoring.
I knew I could get someone inexpen-
sive to do some very detailed work at
a price I couldn’t get in the US.”
Some legal functions require
quite a bit of training, but may be
labourious and somewhat repetitive
in nature. It is much more efficient
and cost-effective to offshore these
tasks. The global meltdown and
dwindling profits is only increasing
the pressure.
Corporates are more amenable to
offshoring as they have substantial
legal work and are already comfort-
able with the concept of offshoring.
Successful offshoring of IT, Business
Process Outsourcing, Finance & Ac-
counting and other processes have
made corporations more confident
about offshoring.
Having understood the benefits
of offshoring, corporates are now
pushing law firms to use offshore
service providers. Says a Partner
at a New York based Am Law 200
Firm, “We are not driven to offshore
simply to save costs. Instead, we are
likely to do it only if a client requests
it or if it makes sense for some other

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 15

Outsourcing | Cover story
Push button … As
in the case of most
of businesses, cost
reduction is the primary
driver for offshoring
legal services.
reason.” Several law firms indicated
that their clients are increasingly
suggesting using offshore service
providers. Understandably, the mo-
tive behind clients pressurising law
firms is again “lower costs”.
Other significant drivers include
client pressure (to cut costs by off-
shoring), increasing workload, time
difference and competitors’ decision
to offshore.
Law firms that considered
turnaround time as an important
driver are largely mid-sized and
smaller firms and that typically
Exhibit: Important factors while selecting a service provider
Source: ValueNotes’ report on Legal Services Outsourcing: What do Law Firms Think?
16 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
offshore short term projects. The
“time difference” is most relevant
for such firms, are looking for quick
turnaround times.
Smaller law firms are typically
short on paralegals and attorneys.
Given the increasing workload and
manpower shortage, these firms
have started offshoring some of
their work to lower cost destinations.
Some of the smaller firms that do
not offshore currently said that they
will consider offshoring depending
on the volumes of work. If their vol-
umes grow to the extent where they
cannot handle the work in-house
or with their US-based outsourcers,
then they are most likely to send
work offshore.
Drivers Outweigh Concerns
There seems to be some awareness
about the benefits from offshor-
ing, especially amongst those who
offshore. However, for the majority,
Smaller law the drivers do not seem to be strong
firms are enough. Obviously, the benefits do
typically not appear to be substantial to help
over-ride their concerns.
short on The assurance of cost savings is
paralegals not enough to outweigh some at-
and torneys’ concerns about offshoring. A
attorneys. partner at a US based law firm says:
“Despite these cost advantages, we
Given the outsource most of the work to small
increasing law firms and solo practitioners in
workload the US as a matter of convenience
and and quality control.”
While cost and client pressures
manpower are primary drivers for law firms to
shortage, offshore, data security is the biggest
these concern. Quality of work delivered
was the foremost concern for the law
firms have firms that have not experimented
started with offshoring so far. While other
offshoring concerns like client conflict and cul-
some tural differences also exist, they are
relatively less intense.
of their Although the ones that offshore
work to and the ones that do not offshore –
lower cost differ significantly in terms of their
destinations. comfort level associated with offshor-
ing, the apprehensions are more or
less on similar lines: quality, security
and confidentiality.
 Cover story | Outsourcing

Factors for selecting providers

Offshore legal service providers are at
varying levels in terms of attributes
like scalability, domain knowledge,
process maturity, onshore presence,
etc. Law firms have to choose a
service provider best aligned to meet
the strategic or tactical objectives
for offshoring. Since service pro-
vider capabilities differ significantly,
choosing the right partner then
depends on the specific objectives of
the law firm.
The management team of a ser-
vice provider is ranked as the most
important parameter when deciding
to offshore. According to a partner of
a New York based Law Firm, “There is
a lot of effort required into selecting
the right people to do the work and
helping them understand what they
need to do and giving a precise set
of instructions. If you intend on a
longer-term contract, definitely go
for a visit. Get a sense of the
technology, computer
te restingly, There are several law firms
systems and security
In ased who agree that offshoring
UK b rms
measures taken by the
service provider.” needs to be considered but
The confidence in
law fi onshore are currently not ready to
do it. There are others who
gave nce a
the management team
and the offshore service have explored offshoring – in
providers’ capability
prese r priority, the form of pilots in the past

and reputation are im-
portant factors for buyers
of offshore legal services.
citing ot ntinuous iniders even
Buyers need to be confident
that the service provider is
reliable, can be trusted with
and cservice provshoring
with case of off services
their data and is dependable
in terms of the delivery of
quality output.
in thevely simple r support
Although some respondents
mentioned that it is preferable
to work with service provid-
ers with US presence, onshore
presence has not been accorded
greater weightage as compared
to other factors. While this at-
tribute is not a high priority for
clients, service providers have to
anyway build an onshore presence
in order to establish trust.
Interestingly, UK based law firms
gave onshore presence a higher
priority, citing the need for close
and continuous interactions with
service providers even in the case of
offshoring relatively simple services
like secretarial or support services.
This problem is less acute in the case
of the US market.
Many of the law firms hire
contract attorneys and outsource
work (within their own country of
operation). At times, law firms get
huge document review projects with
tight timelines. They have project
management expertise but are un-
able to execute the project because of
manpower shortage. Hence they out-
source to contract staff within their
highe close
e n e e d for eractions
h t
relati ecretarial o
like s es.
servic
home
country. Service
providers, by having an on-
shore presence definitely stand to
gain. Clients, to start with, might
be more comfortable outsourcing
to service providers in their home
country rather than offshoring
directly to another country.
Huge Opportunity
The UK and US-based law firms,
and in-house legal counsels are
the key buyers of legal services.
Corporates and law firms vary
significantly in terms of volumes
of work being outsourced or
offshored. Today, the volume of
work offshored remains relatively
low for almost all the services as
compared to volume of outsourc-
ing within the US or UK for the
same services.
Despite the buyer concerns,
there exists a huge market for the
offshore legal services industry.
– but have decided not to
offshore further.
Further, while a significant num-
ber of buyers have low comfort
level due to lack of familiarity with
the process of offshoring, a large
number of law firms are shying
away from offshoring for lack of
awareness. Most of the buyers are
simply not aware of offshoring, the
process and the benefits. While the
low levels of interest and aware-
ness may appear discouraging,
this is an indicator of the untapped
potential in this market.
With the rising cost pressures,
corporates as well as law firms will
adopt offshoring as part of their
business strategy. Going forward,
the momentum will build up
further once sufficient maturity
is achieved – both by buyers and
service providers.
Neeraja Kandala is the Principal
Analyst, Legal Services at ValueNotes,
a leading research provider focused on
the outsourcing industry.

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 17

Outsourcing | InsIghts

Department handling specialised

resources. The appraisal policy creates
a contradiction for him as he would

plexities,
like to give top ratings to all his direct

Com
reports for having far exceeded the
stiff performance targets set for them,
but HR policy mandates that he
follow the “bell-curve” performance
appraisal system and rate 10% of his
staff as poor performers.
The Head of Department ap-
proaches HR department to present
his case but he is told that “the policy
cannot be diluted and sacrificing a
few good employees is an unfortunate
reality of corporate life”.

Conflicts &
From HR’s perspective even though
they can empathise with the limita-
tions of the one-size-fits-all approach
to performance appraisal they opt for
a compromise or tradeoff. However,
the ripple effect that follows goes
largely unseen by many in organisa-
tions.
The negative consequences of this
tradeoff can imply loss in employee
morale and confidence (impacting
their ability to perform), employee
churn (which is a big loss in the

Contradictions
long run) and other subtle ways of
inimical human behaviour from an
organisation perspective.
This places greater pressure on
HR to create more complex systems
to check and correct such inimical
behaviour exhibited by employees.
More complex systems however, only
aggravate the negative behaviours
as it now becomes a cat-and-mouse
game between the “oppressed” and
the “oppressor”.
Not identifying a contradiction or
incorrect handling of contradictions
BY ADIt
tYA BhALLA Let us consider a few scenarios to can create more complexity and
understand this. sow the seeds for conflict within the
Human beings represent a kind organisation (between departments
of paradox: they prefer simplicity Complex phenomenon, or within departments) or outside
but are fascinated by complexity simple Models (with other stakeholders of the busi-
and complex creations. We see HR comes out with a “bell-curve” ness ecosystem).
examples of that in every aspect performance appraisal system The figure illustrates the path
around us including work places that requires rating 10% of staff as towards conflict through incorrect
and processes designed within excellent performers, 10% as poor handling of contradictions or para-
organisations. performers and the remaining in doxes encountered every day.
When confronted with a between. Consider the response to recession
negative situation one of the The positive intent of HR is to by different organisations. Falling or
proven strategies is to find a way create an objective performance stagnant revenues and/or high cost
to eliminate it. rating system based on merit. base does impact the financial vi-
Complexity and complex Let us take the case of a Head of ability of an organisation but coming
scenarios pose one such negative out with simple responses to cut costs
situation to us and our behaviour can have many negative unintended
towards them typically follows the consequences.
recommendation – eliminate it at Conflict For example, some organisations
the earliest. have adopted a worldwide freeze on
So that should be good, right? Complexity IT investments of any type. On the
Not quite. This strategy may back- surface it will stem the tide of rising
fire if we apply to a situation costs and force people to manage
where both negative effects Compromise within the existing setup but it also
and positive outcomes exist or Trade-off ignores the negative aspect by paint-
at the same time. Such ing all IT investments in the same
situations are referred to Contradiction color.
as contradictions or di- Recession has provided organisa-
lemmas or paradoxes. tions an opportunity to integrate

18 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

 Insights | Outsourcing

systems to provide seamless con-

nectivity. Such changes will help
create agile operations that provide
additional benefits through faster
request fulfillment for instance. Freez-
ing IT investments will ensure that
operations continue to perform inef-
ficiently and provide poor customer
service at a time when they should be
excelling to stem the loss of customers
to competition.

Simple phenomenon,
Complex Models
This situation is also commonly
found in organisations. Simple re-
quirements are met through complex
systems that continuously evolve on
complexity, sometimes without the
managers realising it.
A very commonly found example
in the industry is the concept of
Maker-Checker.
The Maker is the person who has
to perform a task like entering data
into a system and a Checker’s job is
to do a 100% check of the quality of
the work done by Maker.

Human
Checker

Software
Application
Checker

Data Entry Data Entry

Operator 1 Operator 2

Some organisations have added

complexity to the process by mak-
ing two people enter the same data
(called double data entry) and then
having a system perform the role
of the Checker (refer figure). If the
system finds any discrepancy then
it is referred to a Human Checker for
manual checking.
The original positive intent of
the business operations team was to
prevent errors from creeping in.
Using a low-skilled resource to
perform the task provides the benefit
of low cost operations but creates Take it out … Our breeds more complexity by requir- compromises or trade-offs end up
the negative consequence of errors behaviour towards ing an entire new administrative creating complex systems that
creeping in. complexity setup to manage such an unwieldy are cumbersome and unwieldy to
This is a contradiction and the and complex process. manage.
strategy for handling it should be scenarios typically Compromises or trade-offs do This then becomes the genesis
different. follows the not lead to elegant solutions but of conflicts within the business
However, the reactionary mode recommendation – complex creations that are an ecosystem.
towards eliminating the negative eliminate it at the awe to look at from a distance but
influence has bred an entire industry earliest. a terrible headache to understand
practice of Maker-Checker that is and manage from within. Aditya Bhalla is a Consultant with
wrongly interpreted as “Best practice” QAI Innovation Practice. He is a Six
as it is passed down from one genera- Conclusion Sigma Master Black Belt, and MATRIZ
tion of managers to another. When confronted with contradic- Level 3 certified. He can be contacted
In reality it is a Bad Practice that tions organisations that opt for at adityabhalla@yahoo.com.

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 19

Outsourcing | conversation

5 questions: With Dushansoza

oza of WnsGlobalservices
Delving into the subject of Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO), Sritharan
Vellasamy shares a conversation with Dushan Soza – the Managing Director of WNS
Global Services – at the sidelines of the recent CIMA World Conference 2009 in Kuala
Lumpur. A graduate of UK’s Reading University, Dushan spearheads WNS’ BPO
operations in Sri Lanka. He is responsible for the set up of the country’s first “Finance
and Accounting Centre of Excellence”, employing a talent pool of over 375 finance and
accounting professionals as well as setting up a legal services pool of 100, all engaged in
providing high-end Finance & Accounting and Legal services to a host of global clients.
The WNS group, which is listed in NYSE, employs over 23,000 professionals operating
from a number of locations spread across India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Romania, USA
and UK. Soza, a former professional cricketer, had earlier given an in-depth presentation
on “Outsourcing as a Competitive Strategy” at the high-profile event.

Do you believe organisations will
outsource more in response to the
global financial crisis?
Outsourcing probably was in the
backburner in the first and second
quarter of the year as many decision
makers were uncertain with regards
to the depth of the economic abyss.
However, after the second quarter
the picture is a little clearer and we
are indeed seeing greater stability.
Thus, we are actually seeing more
outsourcing activities happening
among corporate biggies.
At the end of the day, there’s
guaranteed cost savings when it
comes to outsourcing, be it during
the gloomy times or otherwise. In
my opinion, any company with
directs costs such salary bills which
could cost up to about 40-45%
of their total revenue should see
outsourcing a strong component to
their business.
Why is Sri Lanka an attractive des-
tination when it comes to FAO?
It is due to the talent pool, in my
opinion. Plainly put – Sri Lanka has
always been know as a “counting
country” for some reasons. It is
interesting to note that most of the
CEOs in the country, nearly 80-90%
of them, are finance graduates.
At the same time, allow me to say
that Sri Lanka did not have much
strength in the general outsourcing
space at the start – if compared to
countries like India or Philippines.
This is due to the limited number of
public higher education institutes
in the country.
Consequent to this, many stu-
dents are left out of the public educa-
tion system due to high competition
for the little seats available to further
their tertiary education. So, a large
number of them naturally looked
towards alternative courses. One of
the most popular avenues of studies
they look into is accounting – this
is due to the qualification’s market-
ability and employability.
In comparison, an engineering
graduate may see a tougher time in
the domestic job market. Whereas,
accounting graduates are able to
work not only in financial account-
ing or management accounting
domains, but also could play a part
in the marketing side of a business.
So it’s this flexibility that spurs many
to take accounting studies in Sri
Lanka.
So much so that, students who
there’s are going to varsity for their courses
guaranteed of choice are also doing accounting
cost savings as a parallel course of study.
when it comes I must say that there is a huge UK
influence in this matter. We have
to outsourcing,
numerous UK accounting institutes
be it during the running in Sri Lanka such as CIMA,
gloomy times ACCA and others that help churn
or otherwise, out quality talent pool in good
says Dushan. quantity.
Today, Sri Lanka is a viable place
for UK-based outsourcing buyers as
they could easily see a parity between
a UK accountant and Sri Lanka
accountant.
In your opinion, to what extend
the recent defeat of Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will
impact the outsourcing industry
in Sri Lanka?
We surely see that much of the
negative perceptions are changing
for the better. We are also seeing
many travel advisories for the British
nationals being lifted due to the
defeat of LTTE. Previously there were
many advisory against travel to
the north of the country. Traveling
around the country is surely safer
now – thus making sure there’s a

20 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

 conversation | Outsourcing

free and easy connectivity between

the east and the north.
At the same time, I would like to
stress that during the course of our
five year operations – there have
never been a terrorism incident that
affected or delayed our operations in
Colombo. The capital has always
been insulated from the terrorism
which plagued the North. So it has
been business as usual for us in
Colombo.
Perhaps with the defeat, hopefully
the international community will
change its perception of the country.
For the Sri Lankans, the terrorism
issue is completely out of scope in
the country right now.

What is your opinion on Malay-

sia’s emergence as an outsourcing
hub?
Malaysia has a good case to project
itself as a viable outsourcing location.
Especially so with many incentives
handed out by the government
through its MSC Malaysia initia-
tives. Most importantly, the country
has a great socio-political stability,
excellent infrastructure and a good
business environment for companies
to thrive.
It is also heartening to see many
corporations such as IBM, HSBC,
DHL, Shell and a host of others blue
chip organisations setting up their
global hubs in Malaysia. Perhaps
the country could find more ways
to leverage on these brand names in
order to further market the location.
I must say that in Sri Lanka, we do
not have this advantage to leverage
as yet.

What is your opinion on the future

survival of small FAO players in
the region. What should be the
right strategy to market their
services?
In my opinion, the smaller players
are holding up quite well in the FAO
space.
A smaller operation enables them
to really focus and ensure remark-
able service for their clients.
Some may feel that only the big
provider will survive in the long run
as they tend to consolidate and buy
over the smaller players, however I
feel that it’s not necessarily so.
Small players will have much
room to survive, as not all FAO
deals are huge. In fact, in some cases
customers favour smaller players
due to the exclusive attention as
big players tend to have multiple
customers in the same vertical.
This sense of exclusivity is some-
times very important in a outsourc-
ing buyer’s decision making.

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 21

Outsourcing | Capability Development
Wan peng … “through close collaboration with iaSa, we are
steadily raising both the number and professional calibre of it
architects in malaysia.”
Driving greater alignment
MSC MalaySia is dedicated toward
enabling the country’s transfor-
mation into a knowledge-based
economy through the use of iCT
in various industries, says Ng Wan
Peng – the recently appointed COO
of Malaysia’s Multimedia Develop-
ment Corporation (MDeC).
Wan Peng said MSC Malaysia
has always supported the adoption
and implementation of industry
best practices among Malaysian iCT
companies and iT T professionals.
“For example, as part of our effort
to assist Malaysian companies, both
those with MSC Malaysia Status
and those without, achieve global
standards certification, MDeC has
been continuously promoting the
MSC Malaysia Capability Develop-
ment Programme (CDP),” Wan Peng
said at the sidelines of the recent 5th
iT architect Regional Conference
(iTa
T RC) in Kuala lumpur, which
Ta
was co-hosted by The international
association of Software architects
(iaSa) and MSC Malaysia.
MDeC’s head of capability de-
22 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
Karl ng … “CDp’s main goal is to raise internal competencies
among local companies to ensure their continuing
competitiveness in global it markets.”
velopment department Dr Karl Ng number and professional calibre
said CDP’s main goal is to raise of iT architects in Malaysia. This
internal competencies among local
An IT event is an invaluable platform for
companies to ensure their continu- architect knowledge sharing and information
ing competitiveness in global iT brings an dissemination about the current
markets. under- global best practices, latest meth-
“CDP also works with several standing odology and emerging trends in iT
partners to improve the capabilities of and architecture.”
of Malaysian companies and to as- She said the target of iT archi-
sist them in achieving certifications
appreciation tecture is to address and resolve
more easily and cost-effectively. Our for business this issue of alignment between iT
partners include SEi, PMi, CiMa, or orga- investment and business require-
MNCC, CiM, C M, itSMF Malaysia, nisational ments. “Through iT T architecture,
PiKOM, CyberSecurity Malaysia needs, companies will be able to start iT
and many relevant government goals and projects with a complete understand-
agencies. objectives, ing of their business and use this
“CDP further assists MSC Malay- understanding as the basis upon
sia Status companies and Malaysian and can which to map the deployment and
iT professionals by providing them assess the use of iT resources.”
with financial reimbursement of value of IT She added that business owners
some of the cost incurred by pursu- investments could make better-informed decisions
ing certification,” Ng said. in terms of about purchasing, integrating and
Wan Peng stressed: “it is for this
reason that MSC Malaysia is proud
the returns finally deploying their iT resources.
and, equally important, they can
to be a co-host of the 5th iTa T RC
Ta
they bring lay the right foundation for the
Malaysia 2009 together with iaSa. and the future growth of their business, as
Through our close collaboration, opportunities a cost-effective evolution of their iT
we are steadily raising both the they enable. infrastructure.

Hasan … “the purpose of it architecture is to give structure
to the process of planning, acquiring, building, modifying and
deploying it resources across an organisation.”
of iCt
t and business strategy
Themed “Enterprise innovation through
architecture Resilience”, the 5th iTa T RC
Ta
Malaysia 2009 attracted more than 400
delegates including iT professionals from
Hong Kong, indonesia, Singapore, Thailand
and Vietnam.
iaSa a Malaysia Chapter President Hasan
Ganny said the purpose of iT architecture is
to give structure to the process of planning,
acquiring, building, modifying and deploy-
ing iT resources across an organisation.
“it is a new area in the world of iT – and
in my opinion the awareness level is still
low. The iaSa a Conference is one way for us
to create an impact in the industry and help
them understand that iT needs to be further
aligned to business in order to create more
value to an organisation,” Hasan said.
an iT architect is a professional who
understands much more than merely the
technical, development and implementa-
tion perspectives of iT.
Hasan, who is also the Head (Marketing)
of Time Engineering Berhad, added: “a
sound iT architecture ensures that an iT
project delivers the functionality and benefits
that it was designed to, reduces maintenance
and support requirements, and plans a
Capability Development | Outsourcing
t Dani … “our malaysian chapter was a key player in
tan
developing CITA certification.”
migration path to new technologies.”
He said: “We understand that through
proper application iT can help an organisa-
tion meet its goals, improve productivity or
profitability and help the company work
more effectively. an iT architect brings
an understanding of and appreciation for
business or organisational needs, goals
and objectives, and can assess the value of
iT investments in terms of the returns they
bring and the opportunities they enable.”
iaSa asia Pacific Chairman aaron Tan
Dani said iT T professionals must embrace
an architectural mentality and become iT
architects “rather than just act as technical
people.”
likening the task of an iT architect to that
of a building architect who envisions the
entire design of a building prior to construc-
tion, Tan Dani said good iT architects must
think in terms of technology strategy but
speak in terms of business value.
Tan Dani said: “The function of iT archi-
tects is not just about knowing technology
but also about understanding market share,
effectiveness, segmentation, business goals
and revenue growth. at the end of the day,
an iT architect is one who brings business
value to his organisation, as he always
ensures an iT project is not a liability but a
way of generating new revenue or reducing
overall expenditure.”
During the event, iaSa a also launched the
Certified iT architect (CiTa T ) – Foundation
Ta
professional certification. “The CiTa Ta certi-
Ta
fication has been developed over four years
through close collaboration between iaSa,
academia and industry. Our Malaysian
chapter was a key player in developing
CiTa
T ,” said Tan Dani.
Ta
“CiiT
“C Ta
a is the world’s first vendor-indepen-
dent global iT architecture certification and
is based on iaSa’s
a iT architect Skills library,
a’s
the largest comprehensive collection of
resources for practicing iT architects.”
interested iT professionals will be able to
enroll for the CiTa
T -Foundation certification
Ta
from October 2009 onwards, through two or
four-day courses to complete iT architecture
Foundation 101 and 102. “We will be also
introducing the CiTa T -associate and CiTa
Ta T -
Ta
Professional certifications early in 2010.
and for those professionals with ten or
more years of relevant industry experience
we will be introducing the CiTa T -Master
Ta
certification,” added Tan Dani.
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 23
Outsourcing | perspective
Real option:
Call centre outsourcing
By CK Mah
Front line employees are the first
and primary avenues for potential
customers to experience the nature
of your service. The interaction
customers have with front line
employees in call centres directly
influences customer satisfaction and
their desire for purchase.
It is essential for companies to
encourage a conducive place to
work for front line employees, so
that they in turn, create compelling
24 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
buying experience for customers.
Since call centres have such sig-
nificant impact towards the survival
and performance of a company,
some management may consider
call centre outsourcing to be of high
risk.
However, the upkeep of a sat-
isfactory call centre based on ever
evolving customer expectation and
requirements, including shorter
products life cycle, creates a huge
cost burden.
That is why most companies view
“Outsourcing call centres as a cost centre with little
a call centre or negative return-on-investment.
can help to Another key cost element is the peri-
avoid the steep odic training and resources required
learning curve an to maintain a high service level in
organisation has a fast changing environment of
to go through.” new product knowledge and higher
customer expectation. Establishing
a call centre outsourcing partner-
ship with a reputable and proven
vendor can significantly reduce such
risk by ensuring continuous service
improvement over a period of time
while keeping cost controlled at an

agreed level.
Continuous Improvement
Outsourcing of call centres are often
established to ensure continuous
service level improvement over a
contractual tenure. Continuous
improvement of service level can be
established to meet your customer
expectations by improving first call
resolution while encouraging the
value proposition of longer selling
time to your customer. Continu-
ous service level improvement can
be implemented through effective
Operational Process Management
and Performance Management.
Operational Process Manage-
ment is the establishment of:
• proper functions or processes,
• structured and documented work
flow,
• well defined policies, and
• structured (relevant) work infor-
mation.
Performance Management can
be achieved through:
• setting clear and definitive
Establishing a call objective,
centre outsourcing • constant coaching by a trained
partnership with supervisor,
a reputable and • individual specific key perfor-
proven vendor mance indicator to constantly
can significantly appraise employees’ perfor-
reduce risks. mance (call resolution rate, sales
target etc), and
• appropriate reward system to
encourage the spirit of continu-
ous improvement.
Lower Cost Proposition
Through proper operational and
performance governance, call centre
productivity may be maintained by
improving call agents effectiveness.
Call agents may be more effective
and productive by:
(1) providing training with e-
learning modules which help to
reduce cost;
(2) reducing call handling time with
readily available information to
all call agents; and
(3) improving sale targets with ef-
fective coaching and sales based
reward system.
By re-positioning call centres as
perspective | Outsourcing
a profit instead of cost centres, a
company can maximise their roles
in the customer value chain as part
of the organisation’s go-to market
strategy in addition to managing an
ever increasing operating cost.
Customer Centric, Profit
Focused Call Centre
For most companies, an internally
driven transformation of a cost-
based call centre to a profit gen-
erating and customer focused one
requires significant investment and
opportunity cost. Existing staff has
to be retrained, new sales-enabled
training models have to be devel-
oped and appropriate supporting
structures have to be in place.
Outsourcing a call centre can
help to avoid the steep learning
curve an organisation has to go
through and allow re-branding it as
an integral part of the front line sales
arm while creating an additional
profit avenue for the company as
a whole. The normal stigma and
costly marketing effort to re-brand
or transform negative perceptions
of a call centre internally may be
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 25
Outsourcing | perspective

For most companies, an internally

driven transformation of a cost-based
call centre to a profit generating and
customer focused one requires significant
investment and opportunity cost.

Since call centres

have such significant
impact towards
the survival and
performance of a
company, certain
management may
consider call centre
outsourcing to be of
high risk.

avoided by transferring the operational and
performance management of call centres
to an established and proven outsourcing
vendor.
At the same time it allows control through
contracted service levels, performance
management and sales target measurement
of the call agents performance. Further
more, this approach removes the additional
marketing burden to promote the image of
the call centre and monitoring the perfor-
mance of the call centre and its call agents.
Some of the key benefits from outsourcing
call centres are:
Service Level Improvement
• Call agents are empowered to make deci-
sions at the point of need by giving them
discretional power based on clear service
level target and performance targets.
• Clear sales target with associated sup-
port requirements to encourage customer
ownership.
Benchmarked Performance
• Call agents are benchmarked against
similar call centres in the region and against
their respective counterparts through trend
setting and threat monitoring.
• Call agents are rewarded for generating
ideas to improve the business thus creating
a compelling environment for sharing of
ideas and concepts.
Economies of Scale
• Call agents or supporting functions within
call centres may offer their services to sev-
eral companies with similar requirements.
Most outsourcing vendors have multiple
call centre customers and have proper
operational management processes in place
to provide call centres shared services. This
can help to mitigate escalating cost while
ensuring that call agents play a front line
role in engaging the customers with specific
sales targets.
Effective and Proven Management
•Established call centre outsourcing vendors
have a wealth of experience in managing
call agents by communicating clear business
directions and providing the appropriate
working environment for the call centre to
function at all levels.
• Outsourcing vendors actively support
and implement good ideas and concepts to
improve quality of service by incorporating
input from all levels of staff through effective
employees communication channels
Skilled Resources
• Turnover rate of call agents are reduced
as their services are valued.
• Proper and relevant training resources are
available within the outsourcing vendor
organisation structure. A well documented
career progression within call centres helps
to retain the workforce
• Performance incentives and reward sys-
tems are in place to improve service quality
and encourage work dedication
In summary, call centres may be easily
transformed from a traditional business
support function which is regarded as a
cost centre to become a profit generating
sales organisation that is market driven,
customer friendly and service oriented. One
traditional approach would be to transform
such call centres internally using existing
infrastructure and through engaging the
services of costly call centre consultants.
In today’s cost-pressured economic en-
vironment and service-oriented consumer
society, outsourcing call centre is a cheaper,
less risky yet proven and effective option
to ensure the success of transforming call
centre to a sales- driven organisation that is
focused towards customer satisfaction.
CK Mah specialises in the area of infrastructure
outsourcing, application outsourcing and
business process outsourcing. He is a member
of the International Association of Outsourcing
Professionals (IAOP).

26 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

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Outsourcing | Insights
Cloud Sourcing
The rise of on-demand business process outsourcing
By Atul Vashistha
It’s been over a decade since
corporations started leveraging
outsourcing to better manage
capacity, costs, quality, risk and
speed to market. From offshor-
ing to managed services, there
has been a dramatic evolution
in corporations’ thinking about
outsourcing.
Corporations are challenging
existing business models as they
seek ways to speed innovation,
focus on their core competencies,
and scale to capitalise on op-
portunities and outpace competi-
tors. Today, many corporations
are looking beyond back-office,
labour-intensive tasks to out-
source more complex business
28 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
processes – from investment and pric-
ing analytics to inventory manage-
ment to aircraft engine maintenance
forecasting.
It is no longer a debate as to
whether to outsource but rather
what functions can be outsourced.
As a business consultant, I hear often
about companies’ abilities to achieve
cost and/or capacity advantages,
and yet, many are still not satisfied.
For some, it has not given them
much advantage from a competitive
standpoint and for others it is just
moving the cost around. This is what
I hear often from businesses – “when
will I see significant value?”.
It is not hard to understand why
the question of value is still raised
when you consider that today’s
outsourcing models have some
inherent limitations that reduce
the overall gains companies can
achieve: low worker retention, lack of
control and visibility for clients, and
long, inflexible agreements to cover
execution and investment risks for
both parties.
These issues are more pronounced
due to recent trends in internet and
social networking capabilities that
have us rethinking outsourcing from
a geography game (i.e. “cheap labour
force”) to a game of skill and exper-
tise (i.e. recruiting a team of all-star
experts). Few business “futurist” or
industry pundits would argue that
the popularity of social networking,
collaboration tools and the pervasive-
ness of Web-based applications from
email to CRM have given corpora-
tions greater visibility, control, and

speed than ever before.
We have become accustomed to
“always on” services and give little
thought to the backend processes
that deliver those applications to our
laptop – it just happens. It is what
many people today refer to as “cloud
computing”.
I believe there is a lot of value in
an outsourcing model that borrows
a page from cloud computing – on-
demand, pay-as-you-go, unbound by
geographic constraints, and where
tasks are assigned to a team of dis-
tributed workers. Seriously, what’s
not to like? I call this next phase in
outsourcing, “cloudsourcing.”
Cloudsourcing combines on-
demand business process outsourcing
(BPO) with crowdsourcing technolo-
gies to enable companies to purchase
Katrina aftermath quality BPO services on-demand
… LiveOps, a through a pay-per-use model.
Silicon Valley tech Cloudsourcing allows corporations
firm specialised to launch new business process
in cloudsourcing, work types, scale and innovate
launched a call in Internet time and maintain
centre within three real-time visibility and control to
hours with over minimise risk. Further, it enables
300 independent, corporations to have immediate
home-based access to the right worker, with the
agents ready right skill, at the appropriate price
to help reunite point, regardless of location.
victims of For those in the consulting
Hurricane Katrina world, there is no doubt that the
with their family world is truly flat as Thomas Fried-
members. man presented so vividly in his
book. With cloudsourcing, “The
Flat World” becomes more visible
and the creation of on-demand
workforce can be realised. Imagine
Cloud- being able to hire what skills you
want, when you want and for
sourcing how long you want! This not only
allows converts your fixed costs to a vari-
able structure but also enables
corpora- you to launch new programmes
tions to in internet speed – broadband, of
course! Cloudsourcing also enables
launch BPOs and individuals who have
new particular skills or expertise new
avenues to offer their services on-
business demand.
process So when will cloudsourcing be a
work reality? Interestingly, there are ex-
amples of work being deployed in
types, this model today. Take for instance,
scale and LiveOps, a Silicon Valley technology
company run by Maynard Webb,
innovate the former Chief Operating Officer
in of eBay. It has been cloudsourcing
through a virtual workforce of more
Internet than 20,000 independent contrac-
time and tors, and recently launched a new
work marketplace, LiveWork, as a
maintain platform for on-demand business
real-time process outsourcing. While the
company provides on-demand
visibility contact centre services to a wide
and range of businesses, the impact
of cloudsourcing is best illustrated
control to with the services they provide with
minimise natural disaster emergency relief
efforts where fast response to the
risk. “unpredictable” is the norm:
Insights | Outsourcing
“When Hurricane Katrina
hit the Gulf Coast of the US in
2005, a toll-free communications
centre was urgently needed to
put victims in touch with their
families. Every other outsourcer
that was approached to provide
communications services declined
to take on the project, because
they couldn’t mobilise agents
fast enough. Within three hours,
LiveOps launched a call centre
with over 300 independent, home-
based agents ready to help reunite
victims of Hurricane Katrina with
their family members. The virtual
call centre, with no fixed invest-
ment in buildings or technology
infrastructure, was established with
skill workers in hours and then
subsequently wound down when
work was done.”
Consider what all of this
may mean for your business or
industry – a retailer during its high
season being able to scale to meet
call volumes, a technology com-
pany needing to rapidly staff up
its email customer support team in
response to a new product release,
or a gaming company needing
an on-demand workforce to aug-
ment their existing team to help
moderate their online chatrooms.
The possibilities are huge and will
lead to more work types being
outsourced.
I believe with this new trend,
companies now may be able to
achieve significant gains by taking
advantage of on-demand BPO
model that increases velocity and
agility and thus creates sustainable
competitive advantage.
Atul Vashistha is Chairman of neoIT,
a leading global services and sourcing
management consultancy. He is also
CEO of NeoGroup, a firm focused on
outsourced programme monitoring
and reporting services for governance,
regulatory and compliance initia-
tives.
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 29
Outsourcing | Insights

Interestingly, in cloud-
services engagements,
buyers just need to
care about the service
without worrying about
its implementation.

“With the
growing
adoption of
cloud services,
the expected
growth
potential of
this segment is
huge.”

Cloud Computing
By Imrana Khan
Cloud computing is going
mainstream with many technol-

set to go
ogy vendors moving in to make it a
reality in enterprises. Many global
service providers such as Accenture,
Atos Origin, Dell, EDS, TCS, and

mainstream
In 2009, worldwide cloud-services revenue is expected to
cross $56.3 billion, a 21.3% increase from 2008 revenue
of US$46.4 billion, according to Gartner. At that rate, it is
likely to reach US$150.1 billion in 2013. Business processes
delivered as cloud services are the largest segment of the
overall cloud-services market, accounting for 83% of the
overall market in 2008
Wipro have established and/or
strengthened their cloud profiles
with myriad of cloud offerings. Some
of them are the very recent entrants
such as Capgemini, and Unisys.
Many service providers, such as
Cognizant, still seem to follow the
traditional enterprise outsourcing
services models. And the rest such as
Genpact do not want to experiment
and would wait till all the kinks are
straightened.
With the growing adoption of
cloud services, the expected growth
potential of this segment is huge.
In 2009, worldwide cloud-services
revenue is expected to cross US$56.3

30 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009


billion, a 21.3% increase from 2008
revenue of US$46.4 billion, according
to Gartner. At that rate, it is likely to
reach $150.1 billion in 2013. Busi-
ness processes delivered as cloud
services are the largest segment of
the overall cloud-services market,
accounting for 83% of the overall
market in 2008.
In the cloud-services model, the
service provider is free to optimise the
back-end environment as a whole
to drive down the cost. And the
buyer doesn’t own, control, specify,
manage or interface with any en-
abling technologies or related best
practices and methodologies used by
the service provider to build, deliver
and run the cloud services.
Interestingly, in cloud-services
engagements, buyers just need to
care about the service without worry-
ing about its implementation.
Also, in the cloud-services model,
everything can be converted into “a
service”. Here are some of the most
offered forms of cloud services:
•  Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
– it includes both full infrastruc-
ture on which customers can
deploy cloud applications and
separate infrastructure such as
virtualised hosting and utility
storage
•  Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – it
is an external hosted services
providing complete platform to
create, run and operate applica-
tions
•  Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
– it has a complete application
that can be customised by the
customer and delivered over the
Internet,
•  Web-as-a-service (WaaS) – these
are rich Internet applications,
which are delivered via the
Web.
It is logical to define everything
as per customers’ needs instead of
having layers of service offerings,
“It’s feels Russ Daniel, Chief Technology
important Officer, HP. “It’s important to think
to think about the changing world, and the
fact is that computational resources
about the are being delivered as service. HP
changing has a long history of service-centric
world, and IT. We have been offering SaaS and
the fact is IaaS, for example, for years. In
addition, there are range of Web as a
that compu- service available such as MagCloud
tational – the cloud-based Web service for the
resources customers from the publishing sector
are being – which helps customers to publish
magazines.” 
delivered as According to Gartner, while much
service.” of the publicity for cloud computing
currently centres on systems infra-
structure delivered as a service, it is
Insights | Outsourcing
still an early-stage market. In 2008,
such services accounted for only 5.5%
of the overall cloud-services market
and are expected to account for 6%
of the market in 2009. Infrastructure
services revenue was US$2.5 billion
in 2008, and is estimated to reach
US$3.2 billion in 2009.
The cloud-based infrastructure
services are in the early stages of
development and in the next five
years, such services will count for
less than 10% of the overall cloud-
services market, and the impact of
cloud revolution will be more at
the application, information and
business-process level through the
creation of new service business
models, forecasts Gartner.
Of the cloud services, SaaS is the
most commonly offered service by
the IT service providers. However, the
new in the SaaS space is that many
IT providers are offering industry-
specific cloud services.
In addition, PaaS is not the major
area of interest. But IT-services pro-
viders continue to provide consulting
and development support to help the
customers of platforms providers.
IBM is a big exception, and Wipro is
moving fast in this space, according
to Paul Roehrig, Senior Analyst, IT
Services, Forrester Research. – Global
Services
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 31
Outsourcing | InsIghts
Using tech
transformation
as enabler of
business change
By Deepak Bharathan
Today, large global organisations
face many challenges. In addition to
the challenging economic environ-
ment, the competitive landscape
has been radically altered by small
but agile players. For instance,
pharmaceutical companies have
been hit by slowing pipelines, while
smaller biotech firms have disrupted
the market with innovative prod-
ucts, forcing expensive acquisitions.
organisational transformation to
meet these challenges is paramount
for large organisations. The abil-
32 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
ity of sourcing programmes within enaBLIng
technology units to be a vehicle transFOrMatIOn
for change to drive organisational Businesses leaders associate technol-
transformation is overlooked by ogy with speed and efficiency. This
executives. perception must be leveraged to en-
Forrester estimates that global able IT units to lead organisational
purchases of IT goods and services transformation. IT managers some-
will be US$1.9 trillion in 2009 – times see organisational transforma-
equivalent to about 3% of the world tion as a threat; rather this should be
GdP. But effectiveness of technology embraced as an opportunity for not
investment is measured in terms of just organisational change, but also
operating metrics. This is a missed to increase the profile of the IT unit
opportunity as the IT unit can, and Business within the organisation.
should, act as the driver of trans- leaders
formation. There exists a common associate Mandate & Vision
framework for transformation – and
to achieve the best results from the
technology The first step in enabling change is
to create the “Mandate & Vision”.
sourcing initiative there is pre-work with This entails:
that organisations should complete speed and • Creating the Mission Statement
successfully. efficiency. • Defining the business objectives
for operations
This • Defining success parameters
perception The outcome from this quick
must be phase should be an actionable vision
leveraged statement. all stakeholders, not
just IT leaders, need to be involved
to enable in building and communicating
IT units to this vision. organisational buy-in
lead organi- is essential for success. Since busi-
sational ness conditions change – sometimes
dramatically as in the past year – the
transfor- vision needs to undergo periodic
ds mation. validation against with latest operat-
goo ing environment. So, it is important
“It andces” to adopt a flexible framework.
vi
ser It strategy
IT Strategy is an often-misused term.
Put simply, IT Strategy lays out,
in discrete terms, the technology
roadmap for achieving the busi-
ness vision. An IT Strategy exercise
should typically lead to the following
deliverables:
• Technology Roadmap: Lays out
organisational technology landscape
and how it will change over the next
three/five years
• Projects & Staffing: Defines indi-
Forrester estimates that vidual projects and resources
global purchases of It t • Business Case for Change: Dem-
goods and services will be onstrates value from the change,
Us$1.9
$1.9 trillion in 2009 – in each workstream, against the
equivalent to about 3% of investment.
the world gDp. p
p. IT strategy can be successfully

communicated via simple visu-
als that chart out key elements of
organisational ambition. The “Case
for Change” will be the action plan
for the IT unit. The roadmap lays
out various workstreams which are
used to qualify future projects and
quantify investment and benefits.
While building the project port-
folio, “quick win” projects – which
generate cost savings – should be
carefully examined. Best change pro-
grammes become “self-sustaining”
by delivering significant savings
within 12-36 months.
IMPLEMENTING THE
TRANSFORMATION
Even the best-laid strategy can
amount to nothing if effective
implementation does not “make it
happen”.
Governance
Governance is not just about hiring
Governance is not
just about hiring the
right managers, but
also creating the right
model.
the right managers, but also creating
Road to success … the right model. There are two key
Most businesses elements to effective governance:
have evolved by • Organisational Design: Maps
a combination working relationships between
of organic and different teams and ties them to
inorganic growth, transformation roadmap.
which has led to • Business Relationship Model:
a complex mesh Models the chain of operations
of IT systems. The between technology and business
intent of systems units. Another key component
rationalisation is the framework for managing
exercise is to first business expectations.
generate the Organisations use different types
“true value” of of management templates to mea-
the IT systems in sure success. According to market
the organisation research, over 49% of the North
and use this American companies use custom
metric to drive in-house frameworks for managing
rationalisation. IT initiatives. Custom templates,
Insights | Outsourcing
tailored to the exact needs of the
organisation, might be a good idea.
But unfortunately many organisa-
tions do not tie success measures of
the governance back to enabling
business change. This dilutes the
impact of the change initiative and
leads to it being seen as a drain on
resources.
Once the governance model is
set up, it needs to be continuously
monitored and empowered to make
decisions.
Systems Rationalisation
Most businesses have evolved by
a combination of organic and
inorganic growth, which has led
to a complex mesh of IT systems.
The intent of systems rationalisa-
tion exercise is to first generate the
“true value” of the IT systems in the
organisation and use this metric to
drive rationalisation.
A systems rationalisation exer-
cise should not be an afterthought
to a sourcing initiative; rather it
should be thought of as the first step
towards a low-risk sourcing model.
According to market research,
an estimated 59% of outsourcing
contracts fail. A complex IT environ-
ment increases the risks of failure
substantially. To minimise the risk,
systems rationalisation before sourc-
ing is required.
The key elements of a systems
rationalisation exercise are:
• Generate the value proposition
from technology consolidation
• Systems Roadmap: Details retire-
ment, retention and sourcing of
systems
A good systems rationalisation
exercise will ensure that the there
is a clear mapping between the
business objectives, needs and the
IT systems used to achieve these.
Research on causes of system down-
time reaffirms this belief. Over 55%
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 33
Outsourcing | Insights
of the total system downtime is
either due to application error or due
to the service provider’s inability to
cope with the complex application
environment.
Bundling the systems ratio-
nalisation as the first step in the
sourcing programme has inherent
advantages – IT vendors, eager to
demonstrate value in the “honey-
moon” period of the deal, can be
encouraged to discount this exercise
heavily.
This exercise should be conducted
in a phased manner with over-
communication to the organisation.
A simpler IT landscape increases
the probability of success for the
vendor that makes the exercise a
“win-win” for all.
em eal ls
c a
“Piercing de rarily
sou tempo sier
may e life ea rs by
mak anage uicker
for m ing a q ut
allowl cycle, besults
dea ately r spend
ultimcreased ent,
in inrocuremnt and ”
in p ageme ctions.
manport fun
sup
34 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
TRANSFORMATIONAL ers by allowing a quicker deal cycle,
SOURCING but ultimately results in increased
In the last two decades, sourcing In the spend in procurement, management
has emerged as a centerpiece in
business strategy. “Transformational
last two and support functions.
The overall intent from sourcing is
Sourcing” refers to examine this decades, established by tracking the initiatives
facet of business through the lens sourcing on the Transformation Roadmap.
of business transformation. has Capability analysis of the organi-
Sourcing emerged sation gives a clear picture of the
strengths and weaknesses within the
Business managers have striven to as a organisation to complete identified
forge successful supplier relation- centerpiece initiatives. The most effective way
ships. But, a key aspect of sourcing in business to manage sourcing is to track it on
programme – change management
– which can drive organisational
strategy. the roadmap and link outcomes of
the each individual sourcing project
change is still not capitalised. ‘Transfor- to the overall success measures of
Sourcing, especially in the IT mational transformation.
space, needs to be directly linked Sourcing’
to the transformational objective.
refers to Transformational Projects
Piecemeal sourcing deals may tem- Other transformation projects, be-
porarily make life easier for manag- examine yond sourcing, should be tracked in
this facet
of business
through
the lens of
business
transfor-
mation.
 Insights | Outsourcing

the transformation project portfolio.

It is important to scope these efforts
early to optimise the workload on
managers. There should be also a
clear filter, based on business needs,
to determine if a project is a trans-
formational project. Although it is
hard to dictate the optimal number
of transformational projects for an
organisation, usually a threshold
of effectiveness is reached at 2-5
simultaneous transformational
projects.
The sourcing programme should
never be just a cost-cutting initiative.
Rather savings should be consid-
ered as an auxiliary result of the
programme that transforms the
organisation. Since majority of the
“hard dollar” savings are realised
in this stage, sourcing makes key
contributions to make the transfor-
mation programme “self funding”.
Timely investments in a Service
Management Organisation will help
preserve the benefits on a continuous
basis.

TIEING IT ALL TOGETHER

The most important aspect of success-
ful change is the concept of owner-
ship. The change workstream ties all
efforts on the roadmap together and
presents clear and understandable
messaging to the organisation.

Change Workstream &

Communications
The change workstream should be
depicted on the project roadmap
with roles and responsibilities clearly
articulated. The success of the overall
change effort should be duly tracked
on corporate balance scorecards or
other quantifiable measurement
tools.
There exists a vast untapped
potential to enable technology units
in large organisations to be key
change agents. Change in any form
– business process, methodology or
even physical locations are painful
and come with a risk of mismanage-
ment. Finding the right partners, be
it the sourcing supplier or advisors,
is as important as implementing the
change.

Deepak Bharathan is a Principal at PA

Consulting Group – a global strategy,
management & technology consulting
firm.

The sourcing programme should

never be just a cost-cutting
initiative. Rather savings should be
considered as an auxiliary result of
the programme that transforms the
organisation.

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 35

Outsourcing | BASIS BAY

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beginning of the end
Summary for Reliable Third Party Maintenance
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36 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

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Outsourcing | survey
Global IT contracts plunge
22% in first half of 2009
Outsourcing activity contin- On the bright side, demand for IT The banking
ues to be constrained by difficult outsourcing (ITO) remained stable sector,
macroeconomic conditions, despite both sequentially and year-over- traditionally a
its potential to soften the impact of year in the Americas and Asia heavy adopter
the recession through cost savings Pacific. In addition, several industry of outsourcing
and efficiency gains, according to verticals, including Diversified Fi- services, has
TPI, a sourcing data and advisory nancials, Transportation, Retail and slowed its activity
firm. Telecom, increased their adoption significantly in
The TPI Index, which measures of outsourcing during the first half the wake of last
commercial outsourcing contracts of 2009. year’s financial
valued at US$25 million or more, The second quarter also re- crisis.
found that the total number of vealed some telling industry sec-
contract awards fell 7.5% from the tor and geographical trends. Not
first quarter to the second quarter, surprisingly, the banking sector,
to 135. While total contract value traditionally a heavy adopter of
(TCV) rose about 5% sequentially outsourcing services, has slowed its
to US$20.5 billion, Annualised Con- activity significantly in the wake
tract Value (ACV) – TCV divided by of last year’s financial crisis. Oil &
the duration of the contracts – fell Gas, Food & Drink and Consumer
5% from the previous quarter to Durables, to name a few, have also
US$3.6 billion. slumped in 2009.
Compared with the first six But at the same time, the Diversi-
months of 2008, which saw record fied Financials, Transportation,
levels of sourcing activity, the mar- Retailing and Telecom sectors have
ket in the first half of 2009 awarded been increasing their adoption of
11% fewer contracts with 22% lower sourcing strategies. For instance, the
TCV and 28% lower ACV. Driving 26 contracts awarded by Transpor-
the declines were a reduction in tation companies in the first half of
mega-deals in Europe as well as 2009, with buyers in Europe, Middle
lower spending globally on business East and Africa (EMEA) leading
process outsourcing (BPO).  the way, represented 44% year-
38 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
over-year growth. In Telecom, the
number of contracts did not change
substantially, but TCV and ACV each
doubled year-over-year. Those four
sectors together account about 37%
of the number of contracts and 47%
of TCV awarded this year.
The Q2 TPI Index revealed signifi-
cant differences among regions. Out-
sourcing markets in EMEA dragged
down the global market, with just
53 contracts with a TCV of US$8.8
billion. Both figures were among the
lowest the region recorded over the
last ten quarters.
Weakness in EMEA was offset by
strong performance in Asia Pacific,
which had its second best quarter
ever with TCV up 200% over a year
ago. Uncharacteristically, two of
eight mega deals and six of 15 mega
relationships have been awarded in
the region thus far this year. 
 
In the
Americas, the TCV performance has
been more evenly distributed during
recent quarters than in Europe.
However, in the second quarter, the
Americas witnessed a sequential loss
of 35% by TCV, and only one mega
deal has been signed in the region
since 2009 began.

Gartner points to positive
software spending in 2010
Although organisations are
continuing to drive down their total
IT budgets in 2009 from 2008, in
2010 worldwide software budgets
will increase, according to a survey
by Gartner, Inc. The survey showed
that organisations plan to increase
their software budgets on average
1.53% in 2010.
Gartner surveyed approximately
1,000 IT professionals worldwide
during April and May 2009. Re-
spondents were asked whether they
expected their 2010 IT budget to be
below, be the same as or exceed the
IT budget for 2009. Thirty per cent of
companies in Asia/Pacific, 28% in
North America, and 25% in Europe,
Middle East and Africa (EMEA) said
New technology improves
productivity: Survey
A study by Kelly Services, a work-
force management services and
human resources company, revealed
that
 achieving a good balance be-
tween work and personal life was still
a major 
priority for more than 68%
of Malaysian respondents.  

 


More than 90% of Malaysian
respondents also told the Kelly
Global Workforce Index that mobile
communications technology, such
as smartphones 
and laptops, have
improved their personal productivity
and, for many, have 
transformed
their work-life balance.
Additionally, 80% of respondents

said the ability to work outside the of-
fice, yet remain in constant contact,
had been a positive development,
even though almost half were work-
ing longer 
hours. 

 

The Kelly Global Workforce Index
obtained the views of nearly 100,000
people
 in 34 countries including
almost 2,000 in Malaysia.
Much of the 
transformation
in workforce behaviour is being
driven by the younger
 generation of
workers - Generation Y (age 18 - 29
years) and Generation X
(age 30 - 47
years).

 
Kelly Services (Malaysia) Sdn
Bhd Vice President Country Gen-
eral 
Manager Melissa Norman,
said that the explosion of mobile
they expected their 2010 IT budget
to increase.
With regard to spending expecta-
tions for software by region, North
America is still expected to decline
2.06%, and EMEA is only slightly
positive at 0.45% for 2010 compared
with 2009.
Software budgets in Latin
America will rise 2.54%, and in
Asia/Pacific, software budgets will
increase 4.34%, showing a very
positive trend in increasing their
software spending in 2010. Gartner
analysts said this is a reflection of the
relative maturity of the markets.
Generally, the survey found
software spending to be holding
ground, and consequently, Gartner
Many
employees
now have
the capacity
to work
from home
or away
from the

office, at
any hour
of the day,
and this and digital
 devices was helping to
is proving create a much more flexible and
positive adaptable workforce, and one that
for 
produc- was more productive.
tivity and Embracing the power of com-
puters and 
wireless technology,
work-life employers can look at providing
balance. flexibility both in 
terms of working
hours and allowing employees to
work from home.
survey | Outsourcing
recommends that vendors work
toward helping clients know where
they can cut costs and better utilise
resources to allow new budgeted
dollars to go further.
“Software vendors should
continue to build, fund and invest
in software sales and marketing
programmes, even during tight
market conditions to maintain
customers and expand revenue
opportunities,” said Joanne Correia,
Managing Vice President at Gartner.
“A market downturn is a disrupter
that creates great marketing and
sales opportunities for organisations
prepared to take advantage of the
right products, marketing programs
and funding.”
“Many employees now have
the capacity to work from home or
away from the
 office, at any hour
of the day, and this is proving posi-
tive for 
productivity and work-life
balance. Even though some are
working longer
 hours, this is largely
offset by the greater freedom and
flexibility of the 
virtual workplace,”
Norman explained.
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 39
Outsourcing | management
Inevitability of change
By
Dr ArLyne Diamond
In this rapidly developing world
change is inevitable. No longer
are we small villages, tiny towns,
or even isolated cities. Indeed in
the business world, one country
merges into another daily. Can
the unique cultures of Singapore
and Malaysia remain untarnished
with the influx of new people, new
ideas, new values, and new ways
of addressing those in authority? I
think not.
Look, for example at Thailand.
Where are all the women in their
beautiful native dress? They are now
wearing western jeans, and listening
to MTV. In China McDonald’s arches
can be seen everywhere. The cities of
India have become so Americanised
that other than the cadence of the
voice answering the call centre
phone, the man who calls himself
John, might be living in Iowa.
Business has become interna-
tional. What was once extraordinary
and called “outsourcing” is now
common and is called globalisation.
Just look around you. Who is work-
ing beside you? Is he or she someone
from your village?
Where is the Corporate head-
quarters? Where are you in – an-
other country altogether?
Since we are now mixing with so
many other people from so many
other areas of the world, we must
learn to adapt and incorporate
some of their values, styles, ways of
40 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
talking, walking and doing business
into our own – just as they need to
adapt to us.
Those of us helping cultural
adaptation know all too well some
of the problems associated with
change. The formal terms are to
unfreeze, change and refreeze.
This means that the first step
in making change is to convince
the organisation that the present
way of doing business needs to be
modified – unfrozen.
For people living in cultures that
have been somewhat isolated where
“the right way” has been fixed for
so long, this is the hardest part.
How do you, as a global manager
convince your people who have
acted a certain way perhaps for
generations that they must modify
their behaviour?
Once this is accomplished, people
need to be helped to incorporate the
changes into their daily routines.
For Americans coming to Asia,
learning to bow, to be courteous
and respectful demands new be-
haviours.
Standards of timeliness need to
be modified so that we can work
amicably together without getting
upset about the other person’s con-
cept of timeliness. Quality means
different things to different people
and so managers need to detail the
exact requirements for completion
of a task or product.
Assuming successful changes,
doesn’t guarantee that these will
now be the common pattern. There
is always the tendency people have
to go back to the behaviours with
which they are familiar – particularly
if they are under stress. This concept
is called “regression to the mean”.
Agents and champions of change
need to be mindful of this natural
tendency and find strategies to main-
tain the new changes. This concept
is called “refreezing”.
The change process can be evolu-
tionary in that it happens slowly, or
revolutionary as happens when there
is a hostile takeover in a country, or
a war. Whether evolutionary or
revolutionary, each of us subjected
to that change requires us to learn
and adapt to new ways.
Too many companies try to force
change rather than go through a
carefully designed and implemented
All walks of life change process. Some of the most
… Since we are common errors made:
now mixing with • Not convincing people of the
so many other importance and urgency of the
people from need to change.
so many other • Not creating a well-respected team
areas of the of champions and change agents
world, we must to guide the change.
learn to adapt • Not creating a solid, exciting and
and incorporate understandable vision.
some of their • Not removing obstacles to the new
values, styles, vision.
ways of talking, • Not creating a series of short-term
walking and doing wins (successive approximations)
business into our with rewards and celebrations
own – just as they along the way.
need to adapt to • Not recognising that change
us. didn’t happen just because you
mandated it – not declaring vic-
tory too soon.
• Not anchoring changes in the
corporate culture – it’s not perma-
nent until it refreezes and people
think and say, “this is the way we
do things around here”.
Those consultants (like me)
managing change have developed
a workable process. Although not
absolute, the manner in which
change is managed really helps.
These stages are:
Creating the need for change.
• Establishing the sense of ur-
gency.
• Getting people to examine seri-
ously the competitive realities.
• Identifying crisis, potential crises,
or major opportunities
Creating the Teams
• Creating the guiding coalition
– the team of champions and
agents

• Putting together a group with
enough power to lead the
change.
• Getting the group to work together
like a team.
Creating the Vision
• Developing a transformational
vision and strategy.
• Making sure the vision helps to
direct the change effort.
• Developing strategie s for achiev-
ing that vision.
Communication
• Communicating the change vi-
sion
• Using every vehicle possible to
constantly communicate
• Role modeling the needed behav-
iours
Action
• Empowering a broad base of
people to take action
management | Outsourcing
Too many companies
try to force change rather
than go through a carefully
designed and implemented
change process.
Diversity … • Get rid of the blockers – obstacles • Create better performance
Business to action through customer-oriented be-
has become • Change systems, structures, haviour
international. processes, procedures that un- • Articulate the connections be-
What was once dermine the change tween new behaviours and firm
extraordinary • Encourage risk-taking and non- success.
and called traditional ideas, actions, and • Develop means to ensure leader-
“outsourcing” activities. ship development and succes-
is now common sion.
and is called Rewards
globalisation. • Create short-term wins Anchor New Change
Just look around • Plan for some visible performance into Culture
you. improvements • Management must work to make
• Visibly recognise and reward it part of the culture
people who make wins possible. • Must be reinforced by policies,
rewards, hiring practices, evalu-
Consolidate Gains and ation and training.
Produce More changes
• Use increased credibility
• Hire, promote, develop the right
people Dr ArLyne Diamond is an Organi-
• Create new processes, change sational Development and Human
agents, and themes Resource Consultant with over 30 years
• Institutionalise new approaches experience. She can be contacted at
to culture arlyne@diamondassociates.net
July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 41
Outsourcing | happenings
A panel discussion during the conference.
EMC strengthens
position in
Malaysia
EMC Corporation, a
information infrastructure
solutions company, recently
announced that its Malaysian
business entity, EMC
Computer Systems Sdn.
Bhd., grew and strengthened
its leadership position in the
FC SAN and iSCSI external
storage markets in the
country, as well as expanded
its market share in the total
external storage for the year
ending 2008, according to
the IDC Asia Pacific Quarterly
Disk Storage Systems Tracker
Q4 2008, March 2009.
EMC also extended its
2008 share to lead in the
Malaysia storage software
market according the IDC
Asia Pacific Semi-Annual
Software Tracker, April 2009.
In 2008, Malaysian
companies continued to
look to EMC for technology
innovations aligned to
CIO priorities such as
tiered storage, information
protection, virtualisation and
content management.
Peter Goh, EMC’s Country
Manager for Malaysia, said:
“EMC’s broad portfolio of
information infrastructure
solutions is meeting
customers’ needs and this
has translated into real growth
opportunities for EMC in
2008 in both external storage
hardware and storage
software markets.”
42 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009
‘Businesses must
continue to invest’
Finance directors were told that
businesses must not only continue to
deliver against short-term demands
but also invest for the long-term in
order to gain an edge over the com-
petition when the world economy
starts to recover.
“Now, more than ever, we must
really listen to our customers and
strive to be first for them. But to
be able to deliver for customers,
you need to get the basics right:
manage cash and costs carefully.
Businesses which can deliver against
these short-term demands whilst
continuing to invest for the future
will be in a commanding position to
benefit when the economy starts to
recover,” Andrew Higginson, CEO of
Tesco Retailing Services, said at the
recent CIMA World Conference, in
Kuala Lumpur. Higginson … to success. Companies expect their
Nearly 600 delegates from 30 ‘Manage cash and finance professionals to be one step
countries attended the conference, costs carefully.’ ahead of the game and that’s where
which was themed “The Global Vil- CIMA members excel – thanks to
lage – No Boundaries, No limits”. the skills and competencies they are
Addressing delegates in his open- equipped with.’’
ing speech, Aubrey Joachim, CIMA The international panel of speak-
President, said: ‘’From our origins ers at th event include Robbie Brozin
of just a handful of members in (CEO of Nando’s, South Africa)
1919, we now have over 171,000 Anthony Mitchell (Management
members and students operating in Consultant, Qantrex Consulting,
165 countries.” Australia) Dushan Soza (MD of
Joachim added: “In times of un- WNS Global Services Sri Lanka)
certainty where both the private and Carolyn Wincer (Head of Astronaut
public sectors face financial opera- Sales, Virgin Galactic) and Professor
tional challenges, it’s the expertise Michael Bromwich (CIMA Profes-
of CIMA qualified professionals sor of Accounting and Financial
that businesses turn to in order to Management, London School of
help them overcome the obstacles Economics).
 happenings | Outsourcing

HP and
MIMOS: Match
made in Clouds
HP Malaysia and Mimos have established
a joint venture to set up a Malaysian chapter
of the Open Cirrus cloud-computing research
and open-source test bed.

Intel to power
“We believe this collaboration with Mimos
will go a long way toward creating locally
inspired dynamic cloud services in the fu-
ture,” said T.F. Chong, managing director of
HP Malaysia, at a recent press conference to

human capital
announce the deal.
Open Cirrus is a cloud-computing R&D ini-
tiative started in July
2008 by hardware

development
Intel Corporation has signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with
Multimedia Development Corporation
(MDeC) – the custodian of MSC Malaysia
initiative – to enhance hu-
man capital development in
the country’s ICT industry.

 are committed to help local
Intel Malaysia’s Man-
aging Director Atul Bhar-
gava said the purpose of
the MoU was to incorporate
an industry-academia col-
laboration and work out a
curriculum on engineering for Malaysian
universities.

 gramme has six modules, with two
“We also aim to enhance the technical
skills and knowledge of local graduates
so that they are able to meet the industry
requirements,” he said after exchanging
documents with MDeC’s Chief Operating
Officer Ng Wan Peng recently.
giant HP, Internet
search leader Yahoo!
Inc and chipmaker
Intel Corp, with cen-
tres in six countries
including Singapore,
Bhargava said the collaboration, Germany, Russia and
which involved Intel providing training South Korea.
facilities and MDeC looking after univer- President and
sity training, has a good recipe to spur CE O o f M i m o s ,
knowledge-based workforce. Datuk Abdul Wa-
“Through this MoU, we hab Abdullah, said”
“Cloud computing is
graduates acquire industry- the next logical step
relevant technical knowledge in information and
so that they can contribute communications technology.”
effectively to the country’s He added: “With a headstart in our in-
knowledge economy,” he volvement in its research, we will be on par
said.

 with other countries in cloud computing and
Wan Peng said the training pro- Malaysia will be able to reap the benefits as
an early adopter.”
of them already started last month. The test bed stimulates a real-life, global,
“She added that 15 lecturers from local internet-scale environment and gives re-
universities had gone through the first searchers an unprecedented ability to test
module and were now ready to share applications and measure the performance
their industry-acquired knowledge with of infrastructure and services built to run on
students. large-scale cloud systems

Badlisham … signed the MOU
on behalf of MDeC.
Keiretsu Forum to
establish Malaysia Chapter
The Multimedia Development Corporation
(MDeC) has entered into a Memorandum of
Understanding with the Keiretsu Forum to set
up Keiretsu Forum: Malaysia Chapter.
Keiretsu Forum is a worldwide network of
accredited private equity investors, venture
capitalists and corporate and institutional
investors, whose members invest in high-
quality, diverse investment opportunities.
The forum has similar chapters mainly
in cities in the United States as well Beijing,
Barcelona, Paris and London.
MDeC’s chief executive officer Datuk
Badlisham Ghazali, who signed the MOU for
MDeC, said: “Of the total (1,500 companies),
300 were MSC-status companies needing
roughly from RM250,000 to RM5 million
funding each.”
Minister of Science, Technology and
Innovation Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, who
witnessed the MOU recently, said the setting
up of the Malaysia Chapter was a move in the
right direction in strengthening relationships
with an international network of private equity
investors, venture capitalists and corporate
investors.

July-August 2009 | Outsourcing | 43

Outsourcing | light takes

A tipple
too many
“When I read about
the evils of drinking,
I gave up reading.”
~ Henny Youngman
(British comedian)

“If you drink, don’t drive.

Don’t even putt.”
~ Dean Martin

Vaticanomics:
Pope’s remark “Alcohol may be man’s

trigger debate in India

worst enemy, but the
bible says love your
enemy.”
~ Frank Sinatra

“I feel sorry for people

The recent encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI has created some who don’t drink. When
amount fear in the Indian outsourcing industry sector, it seems. they wake up in the
The Pope writes in the encyclical: “The so-called outsourcing of morning, that’s as good
production can weaken the company’s sense of responsibility towards as they’re going to feel all
the stakeholders — namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, day.”
the natural environment and broader society — in favour of the The so-called ~ Sinatra again
shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and outsourcing
who, therefore, enjoy extraordinary mobility.” of production The trouble with jogging
Indian media reported that the people who are engaged in can is that the ice falls out of
outsourcing in India fear that with the Pope stepping into the already weaken the your glass.
company’s ~ Martin Mull (American actor)
a heated debate in the Western World, the outsourcing issue now will
become all the more contentious. sense of “I’m going to be around
“India’s outsourcing sector, which counts top global corporations responsibility until the Atomic Energy
as its customers and is up against rising protectionist clamour in the towards the Commission finds a safe
US, was quick to react, citing the inevitability of outsourcing in the stakeholders place to bury my liver.”
era of globalisation and the importance of seeing business as what — namely the ~ Phil Harris (American actor,
it is: business,” said The Economic Times, a leading national daily in workers, the musician)
India. 
 suppliers, the
The daily quoted Raman Roy, a pioneer in offshore services in consumers, “I have taken more out of
India, as saying: “Historically, trade is about outsourcing and the the natural alcohol than alcohol has
competitive advantage. Services and IT outsourcing is a little piece environment taken out of me.”
in the global trade continuum. Commerce will stop if outsourcing is and broader ~ Winston Churchill
curbed.” 

 society — in
The newspaper said that sections of the industry were taking the favour of the “Work is the curse of the
Pope’s message as a call against moving business from the developed shareholders, drinking classes.”
West to developing countries in Asia and Latin America by a new who are ~ Oscar Wilde
“cosmopolitan class of managers who are answerable only to not tied to
shareholders”. 

 a specific “I spent a lot
However, Delhi’s Archbishop, Vincent M Concessao, told The geographical of my money
Economic Times that the Church was in favour of outsourcing area and
on booze,
who,
birds and
provided it took care of the interests of all concerned. “The Church fast cars -
will not speak in the interest of one country or another,” he clarified.

 therefore, the rest I just
The daily also said that for large global companies like HP, IBM, enjoy squandered.”
P&G, GlaxoSmithKline and Michelin, more than 50% of revenue was extraordinary ~ George Best
earned outside their home countries. “Large companies can’t depend mobility.” (Soccer superstar)
on just their local markets today.” 
 – Pope

44 | Outsourcing | July-August 2009

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