LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: Swedish Call Center Operators in the Philippines

Just now, I read about a Swedish contact center who located its offshore facility in Cagayan de Oro, a province located in the south of the Philippines. Since the company handles accounts in Sweden and there are hardly Swedish speaking Filipinos in that part of the world, the company brought in Swedish call center agents to operate the call center.

The move may come as a surprise to most people. The main reason why people outsource is the need to lower costs. Bringing the contact center agents offshore should be more expensive than simply maintaining them onshore.

The reason given by the company is that like most call center companies everywhere, they are experiencing a huge rate of employee turnovers. Since call center agents are very much in demand, their employees move from one company to another, to take advantage of better pay among other reasons. In addition, they are also having trouble recruiting and training newly hired agents.

One idea that came into their mind is the relocation of their call center facilities offshore in order to lure more employees into staying in the company for a long time. They established an office in Spain but it was not found to be successful due to the close proximity of Spain to Sweden and the high cost of living in la Espana. The company then decided to start an office in the Philippines and advertised the location using the country's warm weather, beaches, low cost of living and friendly people. Interviews with the Swedish employees seem to indicate that they are liking the Philippine office for the same reason.

Good Idea!


By the way, I found a Philippine advertisement looking for Finnish and Swedish speaking call center agents. It seems that the Cagayan experiment is successful. The ads are for a different operation. It will be in Manila, the capital of region of the Philippines.

NEW DOMAIN NAME = NO PAGE RANK

This site used to have the domain name http://bpo-asia.com. I was quite happy with the site because this blog started being quoted by blogs with high pageranks. Eventually, I decided to change its doamin name and bought http://ww.youroutsourcing.info. Indeed, my posts get indexed by the search engines faster.

One problem, though... This site doesn't have a pagerank anymore and the old name is now back to PR#2. I lost a bit of appetite to update this site but anyway, C'est la vie.

I'm Back!!!

LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: THE ADVANTAGE OF USING MICROSOFT WORD IN TRANSCRIPTION

Based on experience, there is not much that a transcription company can do when it comes to the choice of software that will be used in typing the transcribed dictations. If the customer uses Microsoft Word, then the transcriber will have to use MS Word. If the client uses open sourced software, then it is recommended that the outsourcing firm use the same program when submitting reports.

There are newcomers who wholeheartedly proclaim tremendous savings through their use of free (open source) software. In my opinion, they either have customers who use linux or most probably, they do not have any client. I kid you not.

In medical transcription especially, the finished document makes extensive use of formating. Every clinic and clinic has its own logos, headers and document format. They also have their own way of presenting their patient reports. If a client (clinic or hospital) uses MS Word, a transcriber cannot simply use any open source software, save it as a "*.doc" file and expect that it will be delivered and used seamlessly at the client's end. Based in the experience of a number of transcribers, a ".doc" file saved using an open source program can be opened using Microsoft Word. However, there will most probably be some formatting problems in the new file. Among the problems that may be encountered includes normal letters that appear "italicized", funny characters that were never typed such as "$%^&)9" suddenly appears in the middle of a sentence and letters that were typed in "Bold" appearing as normal. My I repeat.. Based on the experience of a number of transcription companies, a document formatted and saved using MS Word are easily opened and edited using other programs. However, the edited document, even when saved as a "Microsoft word file", will look funny when opened using MS Word. "Backward integration doesn't work", says one operator of a transcription company

The reason why clients outsource transcription, or any service for that matter, is that they want to lessen their workload in order to give more focus on their main concerns. Doctors will want to heal more patients, lawyers will want to be able to give more attention to their clients and businessmen will want to devout more time to making more money. Those clients are making use of outsourcing because they do not want to spend so much time writing reports and other things that are not their primary concerns.

Therefore, an outsourcing company's job is to help its clients and not make them spend so much time erasing those "special characters" (that are now present in the transcribed document) and arranging the formatting of their reports. I am sure, that any outsourcing company that commits this kind of error will end losing their clients.

I do not know why these errors occur. In my limited knowledge, a "*.doc" document is nothing more or less than a "*.doc" file. The fact that the extension is ".doc" should mean that any software capable of opening a ".doc" document should not cause any error in the formatting of the opened file. I have consulted a number of users and they all agree with me -A word file created using an open source document will not be the exact document when opened using Microsoft Word. Most probably, there will be some discrepancies that will have to be taken care of.

If you are a transcription company or any BPO firm for that matter, you wouldn't want this errors occurring simply because you tried to save in software costs. No provider will want to piss of any of its clients.

DO WHAT YOU DO BEST AND OUTSOURCE THE REST

This article explains when is the best time and what processes to outsource..

Check the article in this link.

EYE ON VIETNAM: Hanoi to become the next top BPO destination

Is it because it have just invested in the country and is trying to create noise for their investors? Or is it really the truth?

Contrary to most speculations that claim China as the next top BPO hub, Harvey Nash, a British recruitment company that recently acquired Ho Chi Minh-based recruitment business SilkRoad, claims that Vietnam is poised to become the next big thing.

According to a report, Vietnam has 80,000 IT graduates with an additional 9,000 graduating every year. In addition, almost half of its 84 million workforce are below 24 years old. Well, there Vietnam is indeed a good place to do start a business, I am not just that sure that it can surpass China in the near future. Please read the complete report here. Be the judge.

LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: OUTSOURCING BECOMES HOTTER IN EUROPE

Well, as it is, outsourcing is already hot. However, European firms seems to be becoming keener and keener to the idea. The latest figures indicate that the amount of newly outsourced processes increased by 78% compared to last year.

HERE IS THE FULL STORY: European firms jump on outsourcing bandwagon

OPPORTUNITIES AND FREEBIES PAGE

We will be posting fresh updates and articles, as needed. However, to be able to group together all the related posts, we created another blog (the latest outsourced jobs and home based business opportunities) to serve as a repository of opportunities and freebies.

Kindly check the latest opportunities in this page. I have just posted another link to a freely downloadable 3D CAD software. Those in the industry knows how expensive professional CAD software is. This one is FREE.

Search the other site (as well as this one) using the search toolbar at the top of the page. May we also request for linkbacks to your own blogs. Comments are also very much appreciated.

Thanks and regards!

LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: China to overtake India as the world's top outsourcing destination

The Bangkok Post reported China is learning from the Indian model and is quickly adapting its ways. A recently conducted study shows that come 2011. China will probably lead the outsourcing pack and India will be trailing in the 2nd place.

The current ranking is reportedly as follows: Bangalore, Manila, New Delhi, Mumbai, Dalian, Shanghai, Beijing, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland.

Come 2011, the ranking is projected to be: Shanghai, Bangalore, Dalian, New Delhi, Beijing, Mumbai, Manila, Hyderabad, Kuala Lumpur and Brisbane.

Let the race begin!

If you will pay with peanuts, expect monkeys to work for you!

This article is not being published to malign the lovely monkeys. The reference to them was made simply to illustrate the point that humans ought to be paid and employed with a dignified level of wages.

Going through Craigslist, oDesk and a few other outsourcing bulletin boards, you'd most probably encounter people looking for skilled workers at dirt cheap rates. The internet has allowed people to find workers from the inexpensive sides of the planet who will come out with excellent output.

However, just because there are people in some countries who survive with less than $1/day doesn't mean that you can also find "Techies" who can write a new version of Microsoft office at a below poverty line wages.

Let's take the Philippines, for example. There are street people in the poorest parts of the capital who probably survive on an income of $2/day. However, do you honestly believe that you can find a top class web applications programmer in that country at that rate? Geesh, you'd have to couch up much more than that. IT experts there didn't earn their college degrees and accumulated work experiences on that daily budget, call center agents didn't master their American twangs while being fed with garbage and of course, no PC in this world can ever be purchased by anybody living at a couple of bucks a day. The last time I checked, the well, meaning techies at MIT are yet to start mass producing their $175 3rd world laptops that runs on open source software.

To people looking for a good outsourcing remedy, let me tell you... If It costs you $10/hour paying a data encoder in L.A., why not remunerate your outsourced labor with $5/hour? Other than wages, you were also able to save on office space, utilities, benefits, taxes, insurance, etc.. Don't push it too much by offering $1/hour.

With so many starving people in the world, there will always be takers at any wage level. But let me ask you.. Are you willing to risk it? You'll never know, it might be a greasy street scavenger behind a PC, at the other end of the line.

Related Reading:
Thank you for calling. Can you tell I'm undervalued?

New Template

Will write about this process tomorrow. This one is compliments of http://www.isnaini.com/.

Thanks so much!

THE LATEST IN OUTSOURCING: VARIOUS HEADLINES

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IndustryWeek - USA
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Personnel continuity key to outsourcing success
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A company embarking on an outsourcing project will often identify cost reduction and value for money as key drivers for the outsourcing. ...

Top Indian Outsourcing Group Challenges Claims of H1-B Abuse
Wired News - USA
By Luke O'Brien June 29, 2007 | 11:04:43 AMCategories: Politics India's main outsourcing association this week challenged the contention that flaws in the ...

Ukraine IT outsourcing tops in Eastern Europe
Kyiv Post - Kyiv,Ukraine
by Lena Plekhanova, Kyiv Post Staff Writer Ukraine has become the most attractive destination for IT outsourcing in Eastern Europe, according to a study ...

New report highlights outsourcing benefits
ICFA Online - London,London,UK
by Jason Conway 25-06-2007 Lipper Fitzrovia's latest report shows that outsourcing administration results in lower average fees than for equity funds ...