CRM and ERP News

Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex, Scott and Huggies brands, will outsource information technology work to U.S. and Indian contractors. Kimberly-Clark signed a five-year deal to outsource IT applications work to Dallas-based Cognizant Technology Solutions, the companies said Tuesday. Under the agreement, Cognizant will handle a variety of software applications covering strategic planning, product management, supply chain planning and execution, sourcing, sales and marketing, data exchange and compliance, enterprise management and customer management.

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The year 2006 depicted 365 days of excitement, innovation and heightened activity in diverse businesses and functions of the IT industry. The rise of IT education, product development, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human capital management, software services or even business integration are all a result of the evolution of IT and its use to build businesses the world over. In a growing market like Malaysia, consolidation has become prominent and many IT organizations are moving towards business consolidation.

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The village of Ethakota in India's Andhra Pradesh state hardly looks like a place that has been transformed by the Information Revolution. The village itself is a collection of simple brick houses and thatch-roof huts. Yet, in a tidy office shaded by 30-foot-tall palms, 50 young people sit at PCs connected to the Internet via a long-distance radio link, doing business process outsourcing tasks such as checking expense account receipts for Indian corporations and arranging job interviews for applicants in distant cities.

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Outsourcing in the healthcare sector has come a long way -- from low-end claims processing and medical transcription to medical analytics and clinical processing. The U.S. healthcare industry outsources to India not only its medical billing and insurance processes, but also data analysis and software development. Though, at present, only a small percentage of such work is being outsourced to India, medical services outsourcing from the United States has seen a compound annual growth rate of 150 percent in the last two years.

Auto manufacturers face stark choices over the next five to seven years, a period that is likely to see increasing bankruptcies and consolidations, according to KPMG's annual global automotive survey. Some 87 percent of executives said they think the bankruptcy rate will remain the same or slightly increase over the next few years. Slightly more than half -- 56 percent -- said that rate would increase as bankruptcy becomes a more strategic option for firms. Only 10 percent expect a decrease in bankruptcy activity.

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I read a post by Dr Catriona Wallace speaking of her experience when she visited a call center in Changi Women’s Prison, Singapore.  Having to learn of a nation called Bhutan was something to rejoice about; realizing that we expanded to other countries, but this is a first for me. It was to much my surprise that there was even one that existed.

I admit that negativity set in as soon as I finished reading.  This explains the questions that lingered in my thoughts.  How is it being managed?  What are the precautions?  What calls are they handling?  What type of recruitment or assessment does each candidate go through?  Are they being monitored like any other center?  How are they being trained?

A New Zealand 111 (ala 911) agent was reprimanded for failing to get critical information when a woman called to report her husband was threatening her life.  Her husband was shot.  Reports state that it would’ve prepared police to handle the situation.

Okay, so what does this got to do with outsourcing emergency services then?  What’s interesting to note is the last sentence in the story was “The report acknowledges there were language barriers during the calls.”  This struck a chord and for a second there, I thought it was outsourced.  I am sure it isn’t.  Knowing that New Zealand has a lot of immigrants from different countries, which might have possibly been a rational explanation for the report.

But would we ever see the day when call centers such as 911 or 111 be outsourced?  Anything is possible nowadays, but I seriously wouldn’t want it to happen.  It’s too critical.  I would expect that people on the phones handling these types of calls should have a license.

Do share if you know any center that outsource this.  I’d also like to know how it is managed and how one can be hired to be part of the staff.  I’m listening.

Though outsourcing call center services has been around for years, Australia just started to jump into the bandwagon.  The news that I’ve been reading for the past few months have always shown Australian companies being apprehensive on contracting their centers to another country.

Westpac Bank assured their shareholders that their call centers are safe and promised only staff based in their country will answer their calls.  ANZ as well has told the press that their customer records are held securely onshore and will remain as such.  It seems that these have been centered on financial institutions.

But, there are back office services that have been moved to India and the Philippines.  Most are related to IT activities.  Transactions on the back end have been successful and it is expected to expand in the next few years.

Though there are several major companies that have contracted both outbound and inbound services.  It has also proven to be successful and found that offshore agents have adapted well in their culture.

The Chinese government is to develop 10 outsourcing base cities by 2010 in an effort to build up the country's outsourcing services, said a senior official with the Ministry of Commerce. Assistant Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying said the scheme would encourage 100 multinationals to shift offshore outsourcing services to China and foster 1,000 large and medium-sized service outsourcing enterprises. The first base cities would be Shanghai, Dalian, Xi'an, Shenzhen and Chengdu.

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Azim Premji has little patience for those who argue outsourcing is stealing high-paying American tech jobs. The chairman of Wipro Technologies, one of the Indian companies that have rewritten the rules of the global software services market, says the United States should be more worried about what is taught in its classrooms -- or, rather, what isn't. "You need more emphasis on mathematics in school," the 61-year-old billionaire said during a recent visit to Silicon Valley. "It's a building block."