Source: www.Hindu.com

Some of the hospitals in the UK are planning to outsource medical secretarial work to India, a media report said today.

Among them is Southport and Ormskirk Hospital, which is battling to reduce 15 million pounds deficit and is considering outsourcing its doctors’ digital dictations to India, according to Champion, a tabloid published from Newport.

It said the state-aided National Health Service is looking at a range of options, including outsourcing doctors’ digital dictations, a move stiffly opposed by the local MP and the union representing medical secretaries.

“It sounds like this idea came from the deranged brains of management consultants,” Southport MP John Pugh said.

“I sincerely hope that they retain the service locally because there will be all sorts of communication problems both for clinicians and patients. The only merit is cost-saving, which is probably not going to be associated with increased efficiency. It sounds like false economy and bad for staff morale,” he added.

Kathy Perkins, Chairman, British Society of Medical Secretaries warned that moving medical secretaries’ services abroad could lead to patient deaths.

“Inevitably, there will in due course, be the death of a patient directly attributable to the wrongful interpretation of crucial word or drug dosage by an outsourced worker unfamiliar with the language or terminology,” she claimed.

“By then the damage will be done. The majority of medical secretaries will either have been made redundant or will have left the service through low morale, no job satisfaction or retirement,” Perkins said.

Clare Vattev, Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust business manager, said “The Trust is currently reviewing its secretarial functions with a view to improving both the efficiency and timeliness of its communications.

“As part of this work we will be looking at a number of options and the use of digital dictation and outsourced transcribing may be considered.

“A project group has been formed to consider all aspects of the process and the group will consider the effect of any proposals on the roles of staff currently involved in the production of clinical letters.”

She said, “The project is still at a very early stage and no decisions have been made. Staff will be kept fully informed of any developments.”

Source:www.Signonsandiego.com

India’s Infosys Technologies Ltd. said quarterly net profit jumped 70.4 percent from a year ago on sustained momentum in outsourcing and predicted on Friday that revenue would grow as much as 30 percent this year.

Bangalore-based Infosys said net profit rose to $259 million in the January-March quarter compared with $152 million in the same period a year ago. Profit for the latest quarter included a tax refund of about $29 million, it said.

Revenues rose 46 percent to $863 million during the quarter, taking annual revenues in the financial year ended March to $3.1 billion. Infosys’ financial year runs from April through March.
The earnings numbers, which conform to U.S. accounting standards, beat analysts’ expectations and lifted Infosys shares by 2.2 percent to 2,088 rupees ($49.1) in Friday’s trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Chief Executive Nandan Nilekani said the company expects its revenues to reach $4 billion in the current financial year.

“It’s a firm outlook. We are seeing robust growth. We are not seeing any slowdown (in outsourcing orders),” Nilekani said.

Scores of Western companies routinely hire Indian firms to handle software development, back-office operations and other work such as managing their information technology infrastructure. Outsourcing these tasks helps them save on costs as wages are low in India and skilled workers are easily available.

Infosys’ forecast of 28-30 percent growth in the 2007-08 financial year came despite concerns of an economic slowdown in the United States, where most of its clients are located, and an appreciation in the value of the Indian currency, the rupee, which rose to an 8-year record high of 42.51 per dollar.

The company, which works for firms like Goldman Sachs and J.C. Penney Co., said it added 34 new clients and 2,809 employees during the quarter.

Chief Operating Officer S. Gopalakrishnan said the forecast for the current year was based on a poll of its top clients. “We see momentum (in outsourcing). But we are careful,” he said.

Infosys’ guidance for the year ahead boosted sentiments in the stock market.

The Bombay Stock Exchange’s 30-share Sensex rose 2.1 percent to 13,384 as investors bought technology shares taking cue from Infosys, which was the first to report quarterly earnings.

Rivals Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. – scheduled to release their earnings next week – climbed 5.1 percent each.

Infosys, however, lowered its earnings per share guidance during 2007-08 to 25.7 percent to 27.7 percent from last year’s 45 percent. The company said each of its shares listed on the Nasdaq is expected to earn between $1.86 and $1.89 this year, compared with $1.48 last year.

Nilekani said the company sees a lower growth for EPS largely because a large number of employees have recently exercised their stock options, resulting in a bigger pool of floating shares.

Most brokerage firms recommended that investors buy the stock, saying it will likely do better than the guidance. JP Morgan and UBS gave it a price target of 2,650 rupees.

Despite wage increases, India’s improvements in talent supply and business environment were enough to keep it positioned well ahead of other markets, according to A.T. Kearney’s latest Global Services Location Index. The same goes for China.

Most on-shore or near-shore locations in developed countries, on the other hand, didn’t fare as well. Although they improved their scores in absolute terms, almost all fell in the rankings as emerging markets improved their staff expertise and environment scores at a faster clip.

The industry as a whole is getting more sophisticated, and quality differences between sites at home and offshore seem to be thinning.

Who else fared well? According to the index, South East Asian countries are still the primary alternatives to India and China, with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam now ranked among the top 20 spots.

Latin America-Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay-also moved up the popularity roster, reflecting new policy initiatives to promote service exports.

The Middle East and Africa for their part have improved their ranking and have some newcomers among them: Mauritius, Morocco, and Senegal. Meanwhile, contenders in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Baltic States, are outshining more established spots such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.

There are clearly more qualified locations entering the offshore arena, with many markets making huge strides in skill levels, industry knowledge, and business environment.

There is a cost to this as some companies are finding out, but those who take advantage of the increased sophistication will likely be looking forward to continued revenue gains.

Courtesy :

By Nadine Kjellberg
Web Editor, FS Outsourcing 

Source:www.Times of India
After many years of adopting a wait-and-watch attitude driven by internal resistance and client scepticism, a large number of French IT service providers are beginning to warm to the off-shore strategy, including the creation of delivery centres overseas, mainly in India, even while the bulk of them remain cautious as ever about acquiring off-shore services firms.

A veritable slew of French firms, including Altran, Atos Origin, Bull, CapGemini, GFI Informatique, Silicomp, Sopra Group, SQLI, Unilog (Logica CMG) and Valtech have all opted to create their own offshore subsidiaries, many of which are based in India. However, just a handful of them, including Bull, CapGemini, CS Communications, Sopra Group and Valtech have made acquisitions overseas.

A Forrester Research report points out that apart from CapGemini’s deal with Kanbay, most companies chasing inorganic strategy have ended up acquiring smaller firms i.e. those with a maximum of 200-employees only. In addition, French services firms do not view long distance partnerships as a ‘viable option’, Forrester adds. Though, these IT firms are using off-shore locations for services, such as, application coding, integration, including maintenance and testing, amongst other functions.

Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM affirms: “As global competition in the IT services space intensifies, French vendors will feel a compelling need to set-up and scale-up operations in India, to strengthen their off-shore appeal over the next 2-3 years. We feel that many of these companies, like their global counterparts, may choose a hybrid route i.e. a captive along with third party relationships.”

While, Bull bought Polish firm AMG.net in 2006, CapGemini acquired Indigo in 2006 and Kanbay in 2007 in a $1.25-billion deal. Other takeovers include, Valtech acquiring Indian off-shore company Majoris; CS Communications acquiring Romanian and Croatian firms; and the buy out of UK’s Newell & Budge by the Sopra Group.

India’s IT industry continues to hold a fatal attraction for those wishing to streamline, expand and make a killing in the world of information technology. Even the fastidiously finicky French are beginning to believe that, perhaps, they need help from Indian techies to retain some of the ‘sheen’ and ‘gloss’ of their famous ‘edge’!

Source: www.msn.com
The Indian subsidiary of the US-based Automatic Data Processing Inc., ADP Private Limited has just recently inaugurated its second centre in Pune.

Highly ambitious, ADP India has announced that it plans to grow to a 1,000-people operations, within the next two years. Currently, ADP has just over 100-associates on its Pune payroll.

ADP India’s Pune centre will focus on R&D functions, including providing business process outsourcing (BPO) services, besides serving as the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (DRCP) centre for ADP India’s operations in Hyderabad.

A staff count of 2,100-employees in Hyderabad, according to Gary Butler, President and CEO – ADP, his firm has made a $100-million investment in India, since its 1999 inception on the sub-continent.

With a global staff count of 460,000-employees, of which 30,000 are based in the US, the company’s policy today is: “We will be freezing our recruitment in the US and growing them internationally.”

Undoubtedly, a large part of that will come to India, Butler says, while sharing that the $10-billion company was growing annually at 10-12% in revenues, with a headcount growth of 5% per annum.

As well, ADP has an annual commitment of 7% of its overall revenues dedicated to R&D, with India accounting for 20-25% of its global R&D workforce. And, Butler confirms saying: “A large part of our global R&D spend would come to India,” while stressing on the high quality of skills and abundant talent pool available in India.