Skyline Global Outsourcing Update

Belgian Grand Prix is not the only race where Indian hopes are riding high. A worsening economic crisis is forcing companies such as AXA, Dexia Bank, Belgacom, drugmaker UCB and car insurer Allianz in Belgium explore IT offshoring and back-office projects, making it almost USD6.5-billion opportunity for Indian outsourcing vendors including TCS, Infosys and Wipro apart from MNC rivals.

According to Quantum Step, an outsourcing advisory firm, customers in Belgium will spend around USD1.8 billion on infrastructure management outsourcing, almost USD2.6 billion on application development and maintenance and nearly USD2 billion on BPO this year.

We have recently started discussions with some Indian suppliers for pure offshoring of our ERP maintenance "it would be fair to assume that until last year, we were not prepared for any such initiative", said an official at one of the biggest Belgian enterprises.



Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

Arizona Public Service Co. is researching what it costs to have computer-programming work done offshore, but a company official said APS has no plans to send jobs overseas.

The move comes as utilities face increasing pressure to keep prices low, but some regulators say using offshore labor might be going too far. APS has about 400 employees who work in its information-services department, and another 400 or so contractors to augment its staff.

In June, APS asked for quotations from contractors in hopes of finding some new companies that can provide labor and to set standard prices for the work, spokesman Dan Wool said. APS asked for hourly rates, in U.S. dollars, for workers who can perform a variety of tasks, including areas such as Oracle databases, Web development and help-desk support.



Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

Facing $4 billion in debt and negotiating with creditors, Canwest Global Communications Corp. informed employees last week that it will outsource some ad-production now performed in Calgary and Regina to Affinity Express, Elgin, Ill., which has facilities in Pune, India, and Manilla, the Philippines. The number of jobs the move will eliminate at the Winnipeg-based group is not yet known. A Canwest spokeswoman said the cost-cutting measure was taken in response to the industry's and the overall economy's downturn. The move follows similar outsourcing earlier this year at Canwest's Ottawa Citizen, as well as at numerous U.S. newspapers in recent years.

Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

INNODATA ISOGEN, INC. a leading provider of knowledge process outsourcing services, as well as publishing and related information technology services, today announced that it has signed an agreement to provide e-book production services to a new client. Innodata Isogen estimates that the agreement will generate approximately $4 million in revenue over a period of about two years. The agreement with this client requires that Innodata Isogen not disclose the client`s name.

The agreement calls for Innodata Isogen to convert thousands of titles from hard copy and various electronic formats - such as PDF, InDesign and Quark - to the EPUB format. EPUB, the official standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum, is an open standard for "reflowable" content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for almost any device, and is increasingly accepted as the leading standard for e-book production and publication.


Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

Spirit AeroSystems said Wednesday that it is outsourcing some of its IT work to IBM, a move that will result in the elimination of jobs for 37 Spirit employees and 15 contractors. Debbie Gann, Spirit spokeswoman, said the company would work with the employees to find them other jobs with Spirit, with IBM or in the community. She said the move came as part of an evaluation of "what we're good at, what other people are better at.

Though Spirit is based in Wichita, it has to be able to support its operations worldwide, she said. Spirit has seven facilities in five countries. In addition to the United States, Spirit has operations in the United Kingdom, China, Russia and Malaysia. The employees affected are among 455 Spirit employees and 22 contractors in IT. Gann said. Most were on Spirit's help desk.


Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

According to InformationWeek, Northrop Grumman has admitted that it is nine months behind schedule on revamping Virginia's information technology systems. Under the ten-year, $1.9 billion outsourcing deal, Northrop Gruman was supposed to complete the transition this past June. Now the contractor says the move won't be complete until at least March 2010.


The admission is part of a corrective action plan "the contractor submitted to the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. Says Tom Shelman, VP and general manager for the Civil Systems Division at Northrop Grumman Information Systems. Controversy reached a height in June when Virginia lawmakers began an investigation into the outsourcing deal. There has been at least one casualty of the deal: State CIO Lemuel Stewart, who was axed shortly after a presentation in which he claimed Northrop Grumman was not meeting its contractual obligations.


(Post by Skyline College www.skylinecollege.com)

Skyline College is a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.

Volkswagen plans to manufacture more car parts itself rather than buying from outside suppliers as part of a bid to boost productivity, the German carmaker's head of production told a German newspaper. We are increasingly thinking about insourcing, production head Jochem Heizmann told daily Braunschweiger Zeitung in an interview provided to Reuters on Tuesday before publication on Wednesday.

It's about engineering, about jobs in production and about making prototypes. We could also intensify in-house tool making. And we will certainly make more components ourselves, he was quoted as saying.



Posted by: Skyline College a premium MBA, BBA, Mass Communication and Travel & Tourism institute in Delhi and Gurgaon.