sourcingfocus.com News
Vodafone set to slash 375 jobs
Vodafone has revealed plans to make hundreds of employees jobless as it seeks to ‘remove layers’ between the company and its customers.
The majority of the job losses will be back-office roles, however Vodafone has also admitted some would also be lost within its call centres as reported by Call cEntre Focus.
It too has been reported that in addition to these cuts, the firm will also create 170 customer facing roles, 50 of which will be taken from its graduate programme, over the next few weeks and months.
The decision surrounding cuts seems to have caused some confusion among staff and union leaders alike,
“We’d like to see greater clarity from the company on how this decision will affect staff, a willingness to explore redeployment opportunities and greater assurances about a voluntary approach to redundancies,” said Andy Kerr, Communications Workers Union deputy general secretary.
read more ...
Ericsson signs ITO contract with TCS
Ericsson has signed a 5 year global contract with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to deliver application maintenance and development services for the internal IT operations, it has been reported.
TCS is one of the two strategic partners to deliver services to Ericsson.
This contract signifies the trend of increased acceptance of Indian headquartered IT companies delivering complex projects in the Nordic region.
Nils Molin, managing director Sweden at the analyst firm IDC, told the Offshoring Times that they expect Nordic companies to continue to add deliveries from off and nearshore centres to their sourcing strategies for IT Services.
read more ...
Infosys: outsourcing deals are on the up
Infosys Technologies is seeing its outsourcing deals pick up as major countries leave the economic downturn behind, it has been reported.
In the last two quarters the markets have improved and deals are coming back, CEO and managing director, S Gopalakrishnan, told reporters at an event in Mumbai, according to Rediff.com Business.
“The recovery is led by the United States and other emerging markets such as India and China,” said Gopalakrishnan.
“The US contributes 60 per cent of the total business. Clearly this is having more impact on the Indian IT services. Proactively we are investing more on diversifying our business,” he added.
Currently, the company’s revenue distribution is 60 per cent from North America, 25 per cent from Europe and the balance from other parts of the world.
read more ...
Intelenet acquires service arm of UK transport company
Intelenet, controlled by the US private equity group Blackstone, has announced today that it has acquired the back office operations of the UK transport company FirstGroup.
The Indian BPO firm acquired the service arm, FirstInfo, for £45m. Intelenet will now be responsible for customer management, ticket issuing and back-office processing across rail franchises including FirstCapitalConnect, First ScotRail and First Great Western.
The deal, which was formally concluded on the 10th January 2010, sees Intelenet take over FirstInfo’s two UK contact centres in Fort William and Plymouth. It also supports the company’s expansion in the UK and the aim to increase FirstInfo’s UK employees from 300 up to 2,000 in two years.
Belen Martinez, First’s rail division business development director, commented: “It will be business as usual and the new contract with Intelenet will enable First to improve services to customers.
“Intelenet specialises in the delivery of contact centre services and there will be investments in new technology and processes at the centres. We will work closely with Intelenet over the coming months to improve service.”
read more ...
Offloading internal contact centres drives significant benefits, says report
Contact centre business transformation is a viable option to generate immediate and significant cost savings, according a Datamonitor whitepaper.
The transformation practice involves an enterprise-outsourcer partnership with the express purpose of improving CRM-related business performance whilst reducing risk and costs.
According to Datamonitor and Teleperformance, who commissioned the report, transformation can be achieved by re-engineering processes and transferring contact centre facilities to the outsourcer.
Peter Ryan, lead analyst for call centres and BPO at Datamonitor, comments, “In light of escalating costs and service demands we are seeing a focus on new and innovative contact centre operating models. Business Transformation has emerged as a viable option to generate large and immediate cost savings.”
read more ...