Surfing the net a couple of days ago to stay on top of industry news as it happens, four articles caught my eye and took me off auto-pilot long enough to read every word.
The article in Gulf Times, a Qatar newspaper, began with this statement made by Azim Premji, the renowned Indian entrepreneur and chairman of Wipro:
“India is far from where it needs to be …. Country after country is stepping ahead.”
It seems to me that for a long time the media has treated the words “India” and “outsourcing” almost as though they were synonymous. That perspective is clearly changing. As Premji pointed out:
“India had 70% market share of the BPO business five years ago, it has shrunk to 35% now. Countries like Philippines and Poland are coming up real quick in the BPO arena, China is emerging strongly in engineering software, the world is very competitive.”
The rise of nearshore competitors in Latin and South America, attrition and wage inflation in India, and Americans balking at (and even Australian and New Zealand banks) sending jobs offshore are among the reasons behind the dramatic shift in market share.
Some in India are of the opinion that the fault is due in part to India not lobbying hard enough in Washington, D.C. A Hindustan Times article warns:
“New Delhi should worry. The new lobby powerhouse in Washington is China, which has tripled its lobbying spending, leveraged US companies with whom it trades and is among the most proactive Asian embassies. … The Indian effort isn’t in the same ballpark as China’s.”
Then I spotted an article in India Times that carried the “wounded” picture a little further, describing how India’s tech service providers are now pampering and wooing potential new customers with:
“… a full-fledged India experience, ranging from authentic desi cuisine, culture show, sight seeing, shopping jaunts to exotic ayurvedic spa sessions and Kerala house boat cruises. Well, all these come after a traditional welcome ceremony, headed by a decorated tusker, accompanied by flower arrangements, drum beats, art shows and a welcome thaali by pretty damsels.”
But, when I read the fourth article, I knew I’d stumbled upon insight and not just “news.” It refers to a study by Law Without Borders and describes a “mental illness” that comes upon people who outsource their legal processes to India. It lists 10 symptoms of the illness. My favorite is #3 –
“You simultaneously will suffer from a superiority complex, otherwise known as narcissistic personality disorder. This will happen as your small law firm starts running circles around big law firms, or your relatively small legal department (such as you and a secretary or paralegal) outshines the legal departments of large corporations. You will develop delusions of grandeur, when you beat these people in court, out-master them in deal negotiations, or otherwise become able to handle disproportionately huge amounts of legal work at affordable costs.”
That picture fits exactly with what I’ve learned about some of the most outstanding outsourcing deals.
Bharti Airtel and IBM India, for instance, rolled out one of the most comprehensive integrated platforms for any telecommunications company in the world. As Bharti’s Director of IT and Innovation described it in 2008 an interview for Outsourcing Center’s annual Outsourcing Excellence Awards, “A single-instance IT platform for such a large volume is nothing short of a global benchmark.”
Another example: Bank of India and its outsourcing partner, HP India, had an objective to replace the core banking system with a new solution for 750 branches – and they managed to bring up all the branches on the new solution one year ahead of schedule.
Executives at Bharti Airtel and Bank of India attribute their companies’ outsourcing successes to teamwork and working hard together. That’s the same prescription for success that Wipro’s Azim Premji mentioned the other day in Qatar:
“We have to win our success through hard work. ,,,ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things and the key to this is creating highly charged teams.”
I’m betting that’s a strategy that will increase India’s market share faster than lobbying and wining and dining. What do you think? – Click to post your response.
Since 1998, freelance writer Kathleen Goolsby has studied outsourcing relationships’ successes, failures, trends, and best practices. She has interviewed more than 860 executives at buyer and service provider companies and is the author of “Critical Requirements for Building and Sustaining a Successful Outsourcing Relationship,” a chapter in Global Outsourcing Strategies: An International Reference on Effective Outsourcing Relationships (December 2006, Gower Publishing). As a freelancer, she also currently serves as the Senior Writer for Outsourcing Center (whose parent company is sourcing advisory firm, Alsbridge) and has authored dozens of articles as well as white papers. In a past role, she was editor of Outsourcing Venture (a former print publication). You can contact Kathleen at ksgoolsby@gmail.com.
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