Outsourcing: Less money-saving, more time-saving
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Suresh Vaswani, the joint CEO of IT business at Wipro, told silicon.com, saving money through better business processes is a high priority for enterprises.
"In yesterday's world, customers were happy if you gave them a 20 percent cost take-out. In today's world, if a customer wants a 20 percent cost take-out he can always reduce the salary of his people and people will be happy just to hold onto their jobs."
"What the customer wants you to do today is to take the business process and collapse it," he said, "whether it is procure-to-pay or billing efficiency, [the customer wants] anything that changes the game and results in a lot more cash flow or increase in customer satisfaction."
According to Vaswani, one example of such process-polishing is streamlining a company's collection process--cutting the time taken to bill clients from 67 days to 50.
"To do that you also need to look at the IT, you cannot change the process unless it is adequately IT-enabled," he said."That 17 days reduction completely changes the game so far as the cash situation of the customer is concerned, and cash is king today."
Wipro recently struck a deal to build an Oracle-based ERP platform for supermarket giant Morrisons, said it is being handed greater control of its clients' businesses in return for the outsourcer delivering faster cash flows and better customer service.
Vaswani said its customers are increasingly demanding similar tie-ups, where large scale IT overhauls such as systems integration are combined with a retooling of business processes.Alongside Morrisons, Wipro has won a number of what he called "fully fledged retail process implementation" contracts in Europe, he said, adding that its U.K. business is growing fastest in the retail and energy and utilities sectors.
While efficiency is outsourcing's new watchword, businesses haven't lost interest in cost-cutting: Wipro's users are demanding cheaper deals and often scaling back on more expensive 24/7 service arrangements, according to Vaswani.
Talkback Most Recent of 3 Talkback(s)
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Outsourcing = more money and problems
Outsourcing is not cost effective when customers cannot understand them...
Christian_<><30th Jan 2009 -
Outsourcing creates a mess
The attention to details and loss of knowledge on systems creates unhappy customers. Unhappy customers in this climate means you lose your job.
FireThorn30th Jan 2009 -
Tell our idiot CEOs this!!
Whatever buffoon believes they're saving money with outsourcing is probably also a believer in this new "stimulus" package creating jobs. Outsourcing only creates resentment and shoddy work. I dont want to hear ANYONE complain that the outsourced work is better quality because it is NOT. Ask programmer leftover at Bank of America if those Indians do good work and the answer is almost always NO. Rarely is the answer is "the same".
We need to educate our so-called leadership in these corporations that money savings is not going to come at the hands of outsourcing. Look at these stupid banks. They all outsourced programmers from other nations at lower costs AND THEY STILL FAILED!!!! They not only laid you people off, they took your tax dollars, your childrens tax dollars too, and they gave it to themselves in the form of bonuses as well!!
So... until this group of ******** CEOs gets fired, we can expect the same linear thinking which has ZERO logic to it. Trust me, they only care about their own retirements and their own wallets - thats IT.
People in the USA are beginning to boycot outsourcing-friendly companies. People HATE speaking to outsourced customer service reps with Indian accents named "Bob" and we're just not going to put up with this crap anymore. 2009. Change. Here it comes!
VoiceOfLogic2nd Feb 2009
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