Hub You - Business

Business Cards Your First Step to Success
Business Cards are one of the most overlooked marketing areas that we have today. My wife and I went to a Mastermind Entrepreneurial Summit this last weekend in Anaheim, California and I was amazed at how many people who attended, who didn’t have a business card. Not only that, I was surprised by how many people didn’t go and talk to the speakers afterwards. If you are paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars to see someone, at least go and talk to them and give them your business card. Why didn’t they do that? What would you do?A business card is much more than just a card with your name and phone number on it. It is a mini advertisement; it is your store front, your foot inside the door, your way of possibly making a lasting impression. With imagination, you can make it actively SELL you.I will use the example of a photography business, you can put your own sp

previous experience in the areas of customer care, human resources, employee and payroll services." Requirements for IT skills are stated farther down on the page, giving the appearance of being an afterthought.

On the call center side, Convergys is promoting services like billing and employee care (payroll, benefits and other human resource services). Sykes says it delivers "total solutions" to "complement" its CRM services. The large call center StarTek is probably the most bold. It comes right out and calls itself a "Business Process Outsourcing" company.

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly

Marketing and Selling in or to Europe
These are the most industrialized countries, however, it will still take some years to form out of them a 'real' community with an easy exchange of people and goods.The total number of inhabitants reaches today about 500 million inhabitants - an economical factor which can not/should not be disregarded.Of course the 'old' members, like Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, UK and Germany are the driving forces with regard to the further economical development, however, the new members are an additional basis for investment and the general future development of companies from here. This will - in the long run - strengthen as well the 'old' as the new members.In order for foreign companies not to miss the chances to partizipate in the growing wealth of this region it is imp

Chairman

Chalr? Recruitment Outsourcing

A couple of months ago, IBM announced that it was purchasing a 9,000-person call center named Daksh with operations in India and the Philippines. The acquisition is interesting for two reasons. First, IBM previously had no significant call center capacity and with this one purchase has become a major player in the booming offshore industry. Second, the price IBM paid was considered by most people to be irrationally exuberant. According to investment banking firm Avendus, the price was roughly 15 times last year's earnings (or three times annual revenues). Clearly, IBM felt that owning (rather than just leasing) call center capacity was an absolute necessity for its long-term business strategy.

Earlier in the year, Accenture hired a senior call center executive away from the contact center company ICT Group. When I spoke to this executive about his new job, he said he was hired to be "responsible for the world's single largest call center offshore initiative," which involves 6,000 call center seats. Apparently, Accenture is moving into the call center business in a big way as well.

Traveling in the opposite direction, the large call centers are moving into the IT services business, although in a somewhat less grandiose manner. Sykes is a worldwide contact center organization with many service lines including managing tech support for clients like Microsoft and Intel. It has done such good IT support work that it has moved into full-blown IT outsourcing. In the Philippines, Sykes is hiring software developers by the hundreds to do software programming work for its blue-chip clients.

Convergys, another large contact center organization, has hired ICT heavyweights to oversee the company's Information Management Group. Its objective is to focus on developing the company's "higher-value service offerings" in the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) spheres.

Meeting in the Middle

Another area of budding togetherness for IT and contact center services, BPO is considered the mother lode of outsourcing because it encompasses everything that can be imagined as being outsourced. It is a very big field.

A quick look at the Accenture Web site makes that company's direction clear. It now provides 18 categories of services. Some of the new BPO subsidiaries that have been incorporated over just the past few years are Accenture Finance Solutions, Accenture HR Services, Accenture Learning, Accenture Procurement Solutions, Accenture Business Services for Utilities, Accenture eDemocracy Services and Navitaire -- a bewildering number of extensions to the core Accenture brand.

IBM's approach is to keep all BPO work under a single company umbrella, but its BPO focus in the booming Asia-Pacific region is obvious by its hiring practices. As one example, recent full-page employment advertisements in the Philippines are being used to hire boatloads of people required for IBM's outsourcing operations. The advertisements emphasize the need for "previous experience in the areas of customer care, human resources, employee and payroll services." Requirements for IT skills are stated farther down on the page, giving the appearance of being an afterthought.

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly

How Does Business Achieve High Performance?
Want a High Performance Organization?For a while now we have been hearing a great deal about High Performance Organizations and High Performance Management and how achieving high performance will improve your business. In fact in today’s technologically advanced, global economy high performance is not an alternative it is a requirement for all businesses that want to prosper in the years to come. The terminology of high performance sounds pretty straightforward; if performance is at a peak then the business processes should follow suit and so then should productivity, profits, and competitiveness. Let’s investigate how it works.How does business achieve high performance?The standard methodology for achieving high performance within the workplace has been to breakaway from the traditional and highly structured model of business organization to one that is mo

Meeting in the Middle

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly

Travel Advertising Tracking Makes Money and Saves You Lots of Pain
FACTMost tourism destinations and companies spend lots of hard earned money on advertising and promotion to get clients to visit or take their trips, but rarely know what was effective. Or worse, what was a total loss.This can be frustrating and potentially fatal if you don't get the results you need."The most important measure is financial return," stated Eric Grothwoll, former marketing director for successful multi-sport adventure company OARS. Eric generally receives better than 3 to 1 return on their promotional investment. "All promotions work in conjunction with each other. I am always looking at what's working and what's not."John Willard, president of Wilderness Expeditions agrees, "Tracking advertising saves money." John found that by monitoring their advertising and promotions monthly and making changes as necessary; his advertising a

IT outsourcing. In the Philippines, Sykes is hiring software developers by the hundreds to do software programming work for its blue-chip clients.

Meeting in the Middle

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly

Interviewing & Becoming President
Interviewing is often perceived as being about the candidate. Makes sense – the candidate is the person being interviewed after all… True, but the interviewer is the person making the decision. Who are the most important persons in an electoral debate? Is it the two presidential candidates that are debating each other? Wrong! Why are those candidates on television? To convince each member of the electorate that will eventually cast a vote on Election Day.“The person making the decision is the most important person. It’s that simple.”Although this comparison is imperfect, it shows a nuance too often missed by candidates attending job interviews, who tend to put too much focus on themselves. What does that mean? It means that answering questions correctly is not sufficient. To “win a job”, a candidate has to do more than answering questions correctly. He or

. It now provides 18 categories of services. Some of the new BPO subsidiaries that have been incorporated over just the past few years are Accenture Finance Solutions, Accenture HR Services, Accenture Learning, Accenture Procurement Solutions, Accenture Business Services for Utilities, Accenture eDemocracy Services and Navitaire -- a bewildering number of extensions to the core Accenture brand.

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly

Are Your Employees Safe?
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines for Housekeeping (. 29 CFR 1910.22 (a) (2) 1910.22) sets down specific rules and regulations for the maintenance of facilities in relation to floor safety and the rules of compliance."The floor of every workroom shall be maintained in a clean and, so far as possible a dry condition. Where wet processes are used, drainage shall be maintained, and false floors, platforms, mats, or other dry standing places should be provided where practicable" directs that floors in your workplace should be "maintained in a clean and, so far as possible, a dry condition."This regulation from OSHA is one of easiest area of compliance that companies must implement. However, slips and falls occur regularly in certain industrial facilities. The obvious reason is that plant maintenance procedures are inadequate or not be

So what is going on? Why does everyone want to be in each other's business?

There seem to be two main reasons these companies are broadening their product lines into areas that are clearly outside their core expertise. The first has to do with customer requirements. Large blue-chip clients no longer want to buy bits and pieces of service offerings from a jumble of separate suppliers. It's just too complicated and expensive to manage it all. They want to buy a broad range of outsourcing services from a few suppliers (or even just one).

This trend has been happening in the IT sector for some time now. According to Gartner Inc. and most of the major IT analysts, large outsourcing deals have been the "main engine of growth" over the past couple of years, and this trend is expected to continue.

Escaping commodisation is another reason companies are expanding to new frontiers. The most successful IT companies have become so large and their project management procedures so reliable that, to a large and sophisticated client, their service offerings can be difficult to distinguish from those of competitors. In other words, they have become commodity providers -- not that much different from farmers selling pork bellies. This situation has been apparent in the call center industry for some time. The IT companies, on the other hand, aren't used to thinking of themselves in such a manner and probably don't like it very much. But what unique selling feature could there possibly be among high-quality companies like Accenture, EDS, HP, CSC or IBM, other than price?

In order to escape this dead end, everyone wants to move aggressively into new businesses. BPO seems exciting because it's new to everybody and industry standards for service levels and pricing are not yet well developed. As a result, the sales process is more consultative in nature (rather than just a discussion of price) and there is much more value to add. In such an environment, the opportunities for higher margins are greatly enhanced -- as any salesman would appreciate.

Where Will It All Lead?

It is very evident that both the large contact center companies and the IT services organizations will continue to expand their product lines into BPO and each other's businesses. However, it's the IT companies and not the call centers that sign the big outsourcing deals -- anyone who reads the business journals knows this. Announcements for billion-dollar outsourcing contracts are becoming almost a biweekly occurrence for the IT professional services companies.

As well, my information indicates that throughout the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, it is almost always the IT companies that are looking to acquire call center capacity (i.e., buy call center companies) and seldom the other way around. If the past is an indicator of the future, then a lot of people from the call center industry might soon be calling themselves geeks.

Offshore Recruitment Outsourcing:

Chalr? Recruitment Outsourcing allow companies to improve the performance and income of their senior recruiting professionals by directing low value recruiting activities offshore at lower cost. Call or email for

Tags

Links

Hub You - Big IT Wants Call Center Capacity

Related Articles: