Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: Would you tell us more about the five verticals you work in?

Sandip Sen: Our biggest verticals are financial services, so these are banks. We work today for some of the largest banks, like JP Morgan Chase, American Express, Bank of America ,and Citibank. The other big verticals are telecom. We work for three of the top 10. We work for AT&T and Verizon, in the U.S. We work for Telstra in Australia. We work for Virgin Telecom, Virgin Media, and Virgin Telecom in the U.K., and we work for the major telecom players in India. India is the largest sales market by growth, and the players there are the Vodafones and the Airtels. >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sandip Sen: So, after starting to stabilize the U.S. operations, we realized another thing, which was again different for a BPO provider. We realized that there was a large domestic provider in India, and because India is an emerging economy – it was growing at a fast rate – we also acquired a couple of companies in India that were very strong in domestic business. One of the companies acquired was a company I had started and set up called Customer First. We rapidly became India’s No. 1 domestic call center also. In fact, today we have close to 20,000 people in Indian domestic operations. >>>

Outsourcing: Sandip Sen, President And CMO, Aegis (Part 1)

About Sandip Sen

Sandip Sen is president (Americas) and chief marketing officer of Aegis. He was the founder CEO and COO of Customer First Services, which was formed as a result of a management buyout in 2001. During his tenure at Customer First Services, it became one of India’s largest domestic call center companies with 1,400 seats across six locations, and employed more than 2,000 people. In January 2006, Customer First Services became a part of Aegis.

Prior to founding Customer First Services, Sen worked in senior management positions in the FMCG and telecom sectors. He was the head of marketing and later network head at Hutchison Paging. Mr Sen has an honors degree in economics from the Presidency College (Calcutta, India) and a master’s degree in business administration from the Xavier Labor Relations Institute (Jamshedpur, India). He also teaches MBA students Consumer Behavior at the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (Bangalore, India).

About Aegis

Aegis provides back office support, back office outsourcing, and global outsourcing. Several Fortune 500 clients have chosen Aegis to manage their customer interaction, back office, and other routine business processes. It serves clients in a variety of industries, including banking and financial services, travel and hospitality, auto and manufacturing, technology, and retail, among others.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Sandip, and welcome to the Outsourcing series. To set the context, would you give us some background on Aegis. When was the company founded? Where is it headquartered? Where was it founded? What is the genesis of the company? >>>

Outsourcing: Joe Lawler, Chairman, President And CEO Of ModusLink (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Got it. The question that I would like to drill down upon is the business you are discussing is the people-intensive business, right? Is that a correct statement, or is the business highly automated?

Joe Lawler: No, it is absolutely a correct statement because of the size runs that we typically do there. It typically makes more economic sense for our clients if we have people-intensive operating lines as opposed to a lot of expensive automation that changes fairly rapidly as products change. So, yes, you are correct. >>>

Outsourcing: Joe Lawler, Chairman, President And CEO Of ModusLink (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I have two questions about the market and its size: What does the rest of the market look like? Who are the players? If it is a $25 billion market, you are $1 billion.

Joe Lawler: Well, the biggest chunk is those that are doing these packaging or returns management or fulfillment services in-house. We have reported that Sony is a new customer with us, and we are one of the first outside suppliers Sony has ever used. They have always done their supply chain activities in their own operations. They began by outsourcing select packaging to us. The in-house piece would be a big part of it. We estimate that this is probably still about 70 to 75 percent of the overall market. Then there are the contract manufacturers like the ones you just mentioned. They would represent somewhere in the 10 to 12 percent range, and there are the folks who look just like us who would make up the remaining 10, 12, or 14 percent. >>>

Outsourcing: Joe Lawler, Chairman, President And CEO Of ModusLink (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I see. So, the Flextronics and the Foxconns are doing the hardware part and they are sending it to you. You are doing the software and the packaging, I suppose, the outside packaging that is localized, and then you are shipping it to the retailers or the distributors?

Joe Lawler: To be precise, Flex and Foxconn and all the others that are located over there, do do a lot of this packaging in the regions themselves. Sometimes that is absolutely economical, but the point is that forecasts are never 100% right. Oftentimes you wouldn’t postpone 100% of a particular product. You might postpone 20%, 30% or 40% of that product. The model that we take to the OEM basically says, we can do 100% of the packaging region. Often times that does make sense, but sometimes it is to take the peaks and the valleys and really try to level out your demand requirements in the region as opposed to try and anticipate months before the demand really hits. >>>

Outsourcing: Joe Lawler, Chairman, President And CEO Of ModusLink (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

About Joseph C. Lawler
Joe Lawler is ModusLink Global Solutions’ chairman, president and CEO, with executive leadership responsibility for the vision, strategic direction, and performance of ModusLink Global Solutions and its subsidiaries. As CEO, Lawler oversees cross-company operations, financial management, and strategy implementation.

Prior to joining the company in August 2004, Lawler was executive vice-president at RR Donnelley (RRD), an $8 billion global printer with 30,000 employees. At RRD, he was responsible for seven business units as well as the corporation’s government affairs and corporate marketing efforts. During his 10 years with the company, Lawler succeeded in diversifying RRD’s business portfolio and driving growth through his integrated solutions approach. He was also known for his work designing RRD’s executive talent committee, global leadership team, and officer development program. >>>

Outsourcing: Alexei Miller, Executive Vice President Of DataArt (Part 9)

Sramana Mitra: I think part of this trend is also because outsourcing as an industry has come from very low-end, commoditized work. You know, Y2K is where it all started, remember?

Alexei Miller: Of course, I remember! It is so big now, and what people talk most of the time are the two polar ends of our outsourcing work. You are correct, there has been a lot of talk about this, and a major reason outsourcing exists is because of this low-end work. It still represents a vast portion of outsourcing work. >>>