Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: While Indian ITeS companies may be looking at Europe as a big market waiting to be tapped, are European firms as bullish about outsourcing work to India? May be not. While they may be interested in sending work to India, but are not confident to do so, says a new report by Forrester, Research, an independent technology and market research company.

Their latest report ‘Offshoring Strategies For Continental European Firms’, tracks the outlook of European firms to outsourcing work. It says, Indian offshore providers looking at expanding business in Europe must first change their risk-averse attitude and invest in building a sizable local capability to win deals there.

“Most pan-European firms are still not fully convinced about the offshore model’s suitability or benefits for their business, while offshore providers are yet to have enough capability in the continent,” says Sudin Apte, senior analyst at Forrest. In fact, several European firms did send large teams to India in the last six months to test the offshore waters here, “However, these initiatives lacked a solid vision and strategy for the type of work to be sent and at what pace,” Apte explains.

However, the good thing is these firms are becoming more interested in sending work as some Indian service providers are working furiously to improve their European capabilities. The report reveals that both Indian and European offshore providers have problems helping their European clients go offshore. While Indian providers still struggle to build up meaningful local presence, their risk-averse approach means that they won’t make even smaller local staff acquisitions unless they see a direct and immediate increase in their European sales books. “Clients we spoke to complain that the Indian firms they’ve worked with often fail to demonstrate commitment to the service levels promised,” Apte says.

European firms on the other hand followed stringent and demanding procurement approach to offshoring and made unreasonable language fluency expectations from vendors.

Source: www.financialexpress.com

Hyderabad, Satyam BPO, an integrated subsidiary of Satyam Computer Services, is bullish on high growth energy and utility sectors. Joining the bandwagon of Vertex Corporation and Wipro BPO, the company is scouting for collaborations in the vertical and to organically expand its client base in the near future.

“We are working out on strategies to foster collaborations with Companies which would be complimentary to our services in the energy and utility sector. We are currently in talks with three to four Companies in this segment for collaborations,” Venkatesh Roddam, chief executive officer, said. There is a huge potential from this niche segment, he added.

The outsourcing services to the energy and utility sector are estimated about $350 million for 2006-07 globally. As per available statistics, the services to the energy and utility sectors are estimated to touch $655 million in 2008, with a growth rate of 7.7% CAGR until 2012.

The factors fuelling this growth are consolidation of enterprise wise systems, system integration projects of SAP, etc. Moreover, global procurement function is also undergoing consolidation and energy and utility clients now need intelligent indirect and direct procurement support and analytics, he opined.

The focus towards this vertical in increasing as the demand is coming in the form of e-procurement support, procure-to-pay life cycle support, tactical sourcing, contract management, procurement and spend analytics, engineering services, IT and application multi-level support.

“The sector is not undergoing a phase of cost rationalisation owning to increase in input costs of their core businesses. The energy sector is now showcasing increased appetite in IT and BPO offshore models,” Roddam adds.

On the general trend in outsourcing, he said that the company is looking at a revenue mix from both the US and European Markets. “Though the US market is still large, we will be reducing our dependency on the US Markets with focus on other geographies as well,” Roddam said. The other geographies include Australia, Eastern Europe, Egypt and Latin America.

In the next three years, the company would be maximising on the platform which it has created a seamless environment, he said.