Source: www.mediainfo.com

NEW YORK The Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader plans to offshore its advertising production work to Affinity Express. The move will affect the entire advertising design department.

“Competitive pressures and technological changes affecting our production methods are growing in everything we do — print, online, and advertising,” Publisher Tim Kelly told Tom Martin*, who reported the story for the Business Lexington. “Therefore we must continuously look for ways to be more efficient and improve customer service with high-quality products for both our readers and advertisers, while keeping our focus on our core business.”

The publisher said the Herald-Leader is going to try and place those employees affected by the change in other open jobs in the advertising division. “Nobody is being laid off today,” Kelly told Martin. “That won’t be determined for several months.”

The Herald-Leader is joining many of its sister papers in the McClatchy chain, including The State in Columbia, S.C., and the Sacramento Bee, which are also offshoring ad production work.

In general, a metro paper could save roughly $500,000 annually when it outsources advertising production over seas. The Sun-Times Media Group, which announced it was outsourcing its work with Affinity for 95 of its papers, expects to save about $3 million annually.

Affinity Express is based in Elgin, Ill., but its operations are based in Pune, India and Manila, Philippines.

Source: www.tradingmarkets.com

HCL Technologies Ltd., India’s leading global IT Services Provider, has been ranked as the #1 Infrastructure Service Provider in the world in the Global Services 100 Survey conducted by Global Services magazine in association with Neo IT, a leading global outsourcing advisory firm. HCL Technologies took the top spot in this survey ahead of global majors, a trend which it has consistently followed. The company recently ranked #1 in another globally respected survey of 276 qualified global vendors the Brown-Wilson Group (Black Book of Outsourcing).

The Global Services 100 survey ascribed HCL’s leadership in the Infrastructure services space to it being one of the early providers of RIM as a service offering. “Having started off with offering a co-sourcing type of engagement years back, HCL continues its leadership position in RIM with a bevy of customers that include Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies,” the report reads.

The survey enlists the Top 100 global IT and BPO service providers covering a range of services including IT application services, infrastructure, FAO, HRO and contact centers. The top 100 list and the ranking in 10 categories are based on scientific methodology, starting with the responses arranged under four broad areas: size (revenue, employee strength, geographies covered, etc.); customers (customer base, testimonials and references, average contract size, etc.); skills (depth and breadth of offerings, delivery capability, quality initiatives, verticals covered, etc.) and other (attrition, training, etc.). A weighted scoring scheme, designed by a panel of practice experts from Global Services and neoIT, was used to rate each question.

Commenting on the company’s top ranking in the survey, Anant Gupta, President, HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division (HCLT ISD), stated, “HCL’s unique delivery model and expertise in the IT Infrastructure Management Services space has provided Transformational benefits to many global companies in the form of assessable savings and returns on their IT investment. We have constantly innovated and pioneered new propositions and delivery frameworks like Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM); Business Ready Infrastructure (BRI)/SaaS from Offshore; Enterprise Management Tools through a utility model; Integrated Operations and Management Services (IOMS) and the Global model of Service Delivery, based on the ‘Think Global and Act Local’ approach with an ecosystem of local and global partners. Needless to say, these are delivered with a sharp focus on value and customer satisfaction and have consistently provided returns beyond mere cost savings. It is this guarantee of innovation and value lifecycle blended with ‘risk-free transitions’ that has generated confidence among many Fortune/Global 1000 enterprises to make us their preferred IT Infrastructure vendor and edged us to the top spot in our space.”

Gupta added, “Our No. 1 position in this survey is an endorsement of HCL’s continued focus on differentiating with new paradigms for delivery of IT Infrastructure Services. Our distinct focus on transformation is witnessing great traction among customers, which is also reflected in the sheer size and scope of the recent engagements we’ve won and the many industry accolades we have received.”

HCL pioneered the concept of Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) with a co-sourcing model of engagement, which has added substantial value to customers including more than 70 Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises. HCL created a new uncontested market space which today has become a leading trend. HCL is widely acknowledged as a pioneer and a leader in global delivery of infrastructure management. The company was cited as a leader in Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing in an independent vendor evaluation study by Forrester Wave(TM) (Q2, 2007).