The hunters and the hunted: Indian BPOs readying for a rebound (August 2010)
Published in Horses for Sources; by Reetka Joshi
As the world recovers from recession, the major Indian BPO providers eagerly await a return to the BPO boom, which has paused in the past 18 months as companies coped with riding out the tough-times. While the bounce-back has hardly been resurgent, BPO is clearly firmly on the corporate agenda and many of the leading Indian service providers are expanding staff, acquiring competitors, and making new marketing plans to...

From global to local: Increasing reach of learning
Published in The Outsourcing Magazine; by Deepali Sathe
Global trends indicate that acceptance of e-learning is growing at a faster rate than ever before. The strange paradox is that while the demand is growing, implementation is lagging. Learning has evolved significantly over the last decade. Globalisation has influenced the way it is understood and delivered. Another primary reason for the evolution is technology. The learning industry has been one of the front-runners when it comes...

Bridging the divide: Demand for ESO and shortage of talent (August 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Deepali Sathe
The last few years have seen many changes in the engineering outsourcing market. From basic services such as CAD, CAM and recreating digital images of documents, the industry has moved to providing end-to-end services. The fast growth augurs well for the industry that has been able to chart out a fast move up the value chain. Only a small number of companies with the right resources have been able to tap this opportunity...

Legal Process Outsourcing – Gaining in challenging times (July 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Jui Narendran
The global outsourcing industry (estimated to be more than $950 billion), much like other industries, witnessed a slowdown in growth in the last year as a result of the global economic downturn. The recession brought on budget and cost cuts across all departments in companies across the globe. But there was a silver lining. Some sectors like the legal process outsourcing (LPO) appear to be benefitting from the recession and subsequent...

Significant traction from UK legal market (June 2010)
Published in The Outsourcing Magazine; by Neeraja Kandala
Offshore service providers earn a large share of their revenues from the US market. About 75% of the current Indian offshore business is generated from customers based in the US, while 20% of the business comes from the UK. The UK market is gradually opening up with law firms such as Eversheds and Osborne Clarke exploring the offshore option. Several service providers are now taking a keen interest in other markets with...

Training Outsourcing: Strategic Learning (June 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Deepali Sathe
Companies that staggered out of recession are prioritizing their training plans going forward. Globalization, scalability and sustainability have made it essential for training programmes to be designed so that they can cater to the constantly changing business needs. Training outsourcing is not a new concept, yet post recession acceptance is higher as the value proposition that it offers is more widely discussed and understood now.

Will Trade Publishers Increase Outsourcing? (May 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Aradhana Kolhatkar
The trade publishing industry is set to experience a new wave of outsourcing. It is the most commercially focused category among all publishing industry segments. While it is difficult to estimate the exact contribution of trade publishing to the overall publishing industry, we estimate that the size of trade publishing industry (English language) could be anywhere between USD 30 to USD 45 billion in 2008.

Research and Analytics Outsourcing - Slowed by the global financial crisis? (April 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Neeraja Kandala
The research and analytics (R&A) outsourcing segment, largely driven by the banking and financial services industry, also experienced a slowdown due to the global financial crisis. The crisis triggered widespread losses across businesses, which adversely affected many R&A outsourcing service providers, with some even shutting shop.

Exam technology outsourcing: The Indian higher education context (March 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Reetika Joshi
Universities and exam boards in developed countries are all trying to leverage the use of technology, leading the way for innovations in education. The growth of technology-enabled learning globally has resulted in hundreds of service providers mushrooming in India in the last 10 years.

Engineering Services Outsourcing (ESO) - What lies ahead? (February 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Harish Baliga
Despite the grim scenario during 2008-09, the engineering industry is moving ahead. Some major outsourcing deals signed by leading industry players indicate a gradual return to business as usual. Such deals are indicators of a strong growth potential for the engineering services outsourcing (ESO) industry in the years ahead.

Outsourcing of knowledge services: 2010 and beyond (January 2010)
Published in Global Services; by Neeraja Kandala
The knowledge services offshoring (KPO) industry has been the fortunate beneficiary of the success of the Indian BPO industry. Over the last decade, the KPO industry in India has grown at a frenetic pace. Revenues from the KPO industry were estimated to be $7.5 billion for the year 2008.

Market Research: Shift from Reactive to Proactive (December 2009)
Published in Global Services; by Suheil Patel
Given the current recessionary crisis, although the market research (MR) industry’s overall growth has been slightly sluggish, it has shown better revenue figures when compared to other sectors. Global MR companies have resorted to budget cuts as one of the precautionary measures to deal with cost pressures caused by the recession.

Changing global legal marketplace impacts LPO industry (November 2009)
Published in Global Services; by Neeraja Kandala and Suheil Patel
The offshore legal services industry that was growing at a CAGR of 40+ % over the last four years till 2007, experienced a sluggish growth of 28% for 2007-08, and further tapered off to 16% for 2008-09. Manpower growth also slowed over the last one year - there were close to 12,500 employees working in the offshore legal services segment in India (including third-party vendors as well as captives) as of December 2008.

Are captive arms of corporations fading away? (October 2009)
Published in The Outsourcing Magazine; by Neeraja Kandala
With the global recessionary environment resulting in heightened pressure to cut costs and maintain profitability, most businesses have been facing troubled times. As the world is coming to terms with the widespread impact of the financial crisis, companies across industries are trimming their non-core and discretionary costs. Large corporations such as Citigroup, UBS and Dell are increasingly becoming cost-conscious, and have sold off their captive arms.

Productization and SaaS as a Strategy for e-learning (October 2009)
Published in Global Services; by Reetika Joshi
Keeping up with the trends in the international e-learning space, Indian companies are also beginning to adapt their traditional software applications into software-as-a-service (SaaS) options. Much like the IT industry, it is predicted that SaaS will drive growth for the e-learning industry in coming years. 

Magazines: The New Frontier for Outsourcing? (September 2009)
Published in Global Services; by Vivek Shenoy
A look at the changing outsourcing dynamics in the global magazine publishing segment... The magazine segment represents a major chunk of the global print publishing market. The current economic conditions have certainly exposed the fragility of this industry.

US newspaper industry crisis triggers greater offshoring (June 2009)
Published in The Outsourcing Magazine; by Aradhana Kolhatkar
Globally, the print newspaper industry has shown varying growth trends across geographies over the last few years. While the Asian economies are registering a growth in consumption, thanks to rising literacy levels, the US and European markets are witnessing a secular downward trend in newspaper circulation. The pressures on newspaper companies in the developed economies have intensified to a point that their fundamental positioning is under a severe threat.

Offshoring: Integral part of market research value chain (March 2009)
Published in The Outsourcing Magazine; by Pranav Dixit
The need to conduct market research has changed over the years - driven primarily by globalisation and a rise in competition. The marketing function, which was earlier restricted to creating awareness and building differentiators among products, has expanded and become central to the creation of these new products. Large corporates are now spending anywhere from US$5 million to US$100 million on market research. Research agencies too...

eDiscovery Goes Offshore (January 2009)
Published in Global Services; by Neeraja Kandala and Disha Bheda
eDiscovery process involves obtaining electronic information for attorneys in response to litigation or regulatory action. Offshoring of electronic discovery process is growing fast. And countries such as India, South Africa and the Philippines are becoming the hot offshore destinations for legal services including electronic document review.

Global Legal-Services Market: Crisis Creates New Opportunities (November 2008)
Published in Global Services; by Neeraja Kandala
The offshore legal services industry has been reporting over 40% annually, we can expect an even higher than average growth over the next two years. An uncertain economic climate coupled with structural changes in the global marketplace ­ these are challenging times for most businesses. And law firms are no exception. Several law firms such as Clifford Chance, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft announced layoffs while some like Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner have shut shop. U.K. conveyancers as well as U.S. attorneys are facing an extremely difficult time with the collapse of the US housing market.

Publishing Offshoring The New Indian Niche (December 2007)
Published in the Global Services magazine; by Aradhana Kolhatkar
The publishing offshoring industry as a whole is demonstrating an increasing level of automation, provider maturity and ability to offer higher value services.

Business Process Outsourcing 2008: The Year Ahead (December 2007)
Our annual prediction feature; by Arpita Bedekar, Deepali Sathe and Arun Jethmalani
Despite worries on the margin front, outsourcing growth expectations stand tall. In our interaction with vendors across the outsourcing spectrum (IT, BPO and KPO), optimism is the prevailing mood, especially as concerns top-line growth.

Insurance and Global Sourcing: The New Paradigm
Published in the annual magazine of Equinox; by Arun Jethmalani and Arpita Bedekar
The insurance industry is moving towards an “industrialized” model - where labor arbitrage is not the only reason services are getting cheaper, but because companies are innovating and evolving to find newer ways of doing business.

Evolving Buyer Expectations and their impact on SLAs (June 2006)
Published on Outsourcing.com; by Arun Jethmalani and Arpita Bedekar
ValueNotes looks at the dynamics of changing SLAs, but with a difference – by soliciting the views of BPO and KPO vendors. Some of the key trends and issues are discussed in the article.

Bean Counters to the World
Originally published on OSWMag.com; by Neeraja Kandala and Arun Jethmalani
Offshore captives handle a greater portion of finance and accounting processes today. But that is about to change as third party providers build skills and F&A expertise.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing: The Big Game
Published on Sourcingmag.com; by Deepali Sathe and Aradhana Kolhatkar
Touted as the Next Great Thing to happen to the outsourcing industry in India, knowledge services or KPO, could outpace business process outsourcing. While the latter draws upon the process expertise of the vendor, the former utilizes specialized knowledge skills. The article explains what KPO consists of, what countries dominate, who the major players are category by category, what billing rates you can expect to pay, and what the challenges are for both clients and service providers.

BPO Trends 2006  (June 2006)
Published on Outsourcing.com; by Arun Jethmalani
Despite resistance from political and labor lobbies, the offshoring juggernaut rolls on. During 2005 it became evident that the long-term trend towards outsourcing and offshoring is more robust than many thought. This article highlights some of these trends, and how they're likely to play out over 2006 and beyond.