Near-shoring And U.S. Policy

Last month, I had breakfast with Scott Case, CEO of Startup America, and we then started working with the organization.

Here is my recent guest column for Startup America. One thought that has come to me frequently is that the U.S. is simply not doing enough to take advantage of the nearshore outsourcing trend that has been developing for natural, organic reasons. >>>

Outsourcing: Lalit Dhingra, President Of NIIT Technologies (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: So, fifteen to 20% of the new hires every year for NIIT come out of this GNIIT program?

Lalit Dhingra: The GNIIT, or wherever we do training for NIIT.

SM: How many graduates does NIIT’s GNIIT program produce every year?

LD: There are 2,000 training centers in India, franchise training centers from NIIT, so 15,000 to 20,000 people may come out every year. We don’t take all of them, but I think that is the number to date. >>>

Outsourcing: Lalit Dhingra, President Of NIIT Technologies (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

About NIIT Ltd and NIIT Technologies
NIIT began an education company in the area of IT and was early proponent of IT and IT-enabled services in India. Later, it moved ahead in the outsourcing field with a backward integrated setup. Over two and a half decades, the company has expanded to multiple locations. NIIT Technologies became an independent organization in 2004.

About Lalit Dhingra
Lalit Dhingra is the president of NIIT Technologies. He began with NIIT in 1991 and is responsible for building the North American operations for NIIT Technologies. He heads the North American balance sheet and aims to build innovative business models in the technology outsourcing space such that NIIT Technologies can continue to enjoy the consistent double-digit growth it has had in the past five years.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, and welcome to the Outsourcing series. Let’s start with giving readers some perspective about NIIT Technologies, your business, how the business is from a revenue the point of view, an employee point of view, a geography point of view, a business point of view, and so on. How is the business set up? >>>

Outsourcing: Chris Coles, President And CEO Of HyperQuality (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana: It yours still largely a service business?

Chris: Yes, it is.

Sramana: What do you see happening? Given the trends you’re seeing and given your division or the product map you are operating with, how do you see the business evolving? Are you seeing more of a technology business? Do you see the technology business growing substantially, and is that by design? >>>

Trend: SaaS-enabled BPO

Otherwise known as technology-enabled service, the practice of offering not only software as a service, but also the people who can execute on those services with specialized skills and training, is becoming increasingly prevalent.

This gives rise to a new breed of outsourcing: highly specialized, high value, and differentiated outsourcing with interesting technology nuances. The best-known examples of truly large companies built on this model are ADP and Paychex. Now, however, I see a new trend developing along these lines.
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Outsourcing: Chris Coles, President And CEO Of HyperQuality (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana: What is the employee split between the technology and the services organizations? What is the total head count? How many employees are in services and how many are in products?

Chris: The total number of employees is a bit more than 600 right now. I would say on the technology side there are probably about 70. So, [that includes] the software and the delivery infrastructure. >>>

Outsourcing: Chris Coles, President And CEO Of HyperQuality (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana: Would you give me a use case to illustrate what you are talking about?

Chris: There are two. One could be a product person and the other could be a call center operations person within a single enterprise. We are looking at a network of contact centers around the globe. The centers can be in the U.S., nearshore, in Europe, in South Asia such as India or the Philippines … [or in a Latin American country such as] Costa Rica. You’ve got a variety of vendor partners doing that. You have your own agents. If you are looking to conduct form creation, which is basically the evaluation score card, you calibrate against that. >>>

Outsourcing: Chris Coles, President And CEO Of HyperQuality (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana: So, let me see if I’ve got this right. You audit the objectives, then you edit the process as it pertains to those objectives, then you audit the tools and mechanisms of implementing those, and finally you audit the calls?

Chris: We audit the calls, then we take a look at the duty analysis and share with the client organization the observations, areas of improvement, and areas that are doing well, so that they’ve got that information. Based on their work with us and their own understanding, we can take action to adjust what is actually occurring in those interactions. >>>