Matador Legal » IT outsourcing

CSC bags outsourcing contract from Noble Biocare

Matador Legal — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:48:18 +0000

Computer Science corporation(CSC) has bagged another deal, this time with Noble Biocare, a dental implant manufacturer with headquarters in Switzerland. We had earlier reported of the deal CSC had bagged for British Nuclear Group.

The deal includes desktop and helpdesk services and data center operations for Noble Biocare’s 38 locations worldwide.

IT Outsourcing Giant TCS records 35% revenue growth in Asia Pacific

Matador Legal — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:25:07 +0000

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s biggest IT outsourcing company has recorded a growth of 35% in revenues from the Asia Pacific (APAC) market, compared to a 20% annual growth overall for the year ending March 2009.

Nevertheless, the annual growth of 40% which TCS had maintained for the last five years could not be repeated for this fiscal year. This year TCS expects the growth rate to further reduce as other than China and India, the rest of the Asian economies are have recorded negative growth.

For a long time, the growth in the Indian Outsourcing space was due to IT outsourcing, but now business process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) have also started contributing in the outsourcing space. The IT story remains the bellwether of growth, with future growth expected from legal, education and HR outsourcing, to name a few.

Infosys bags outsourcing contract from Microsoft

Matador Legal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:38:25 +0000

Microsoft has awarded a $10 million outsourcing contract to Infosys. This contract would run for three years and involves data processing, according to Economic Times. Microsoft had outsourced other IT related work to HCL and MidTree before.

It is reported that Infosys BPO is on the verge of bagging another outsourcing contract from Alcatel-Lucent.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Infosys-bags-10-mn-Microsoft-deal-/articleshow/4669031.cms

UBS may divest BPO and KPO units in India and Poland

Matador Legal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:55:50 +0000

According to an article in Economic Times, UBS, a Swiss banking major is in talks to divest its BPO and KPO operations in India.UBS is in talks with major IT players in India like Infosys and Wipro.

UBS has two captives, one in Hyderabad, India and another in Poland. These centers are together rumored to be valued at around $200 million. About a couple of months back, the analytics unit at Hyderabad was part of a management led buyout. Now the top management and UBS each have a 50% stake in the analytics unit. This unit, know as Verity Knowledge Solutions is not part of this deal.

Sometime back, Basab Pradhan had commented as to why outsourcing captives do not work. Basab’s articles can be found here and here. (One was written in May 2007 and another in May 2008)

Basab argues that these captives did not make financial sense in the first place and if Indian companies go ahead and buy these, it does not appear to be a sensible thing for them to do as well.

CSC signs IT outsourcing deal for British Nuclear Group

Matador Legal — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:59:08 +0000

Computer Science corporation has signed an IT outsourcing agreement with British Nuclear Group. The agreement is valued at$135 million. CSC will manage and support IT operations in UK, involving help-desk and desktop services; software application support; networks; midrange computing ; telecommunications and managed security. This contract supercede a previous contract also with CSC signed in 2000.

http://www.yourcommunicationnews.com/csc+signs+new+$135+million+it+outsourcing+agreement+with+british+nuclear+group_33963.html

Australian Telecommunications major signs IT outsourcing deal

Matador Legal — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:33:19 +0000

Telstra,an Australian telecommunications major has signed outsourcing deals with Infosys, EDS and IBM. Various estimates have put the size of this deal from USD 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion.

Infosys and EDS have bagged the application development and maintenance contract, while IBM got the IT infrastructure management contract.

Which function do UK law firms want to outsource ?

Matador Legal — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:15:13 +0000

A recent survey by Prince OMC, a strategy consulting firm which offers sourcing advice to service firms, has found that 45 % of Law firms in UK are contemplating outsourcing the finance function. Like any other industry, the law firm has a core function, legal advice and other functions which support this core function. The support function includes, IT infrastructure, Finance , HR and admin.

The survey has found out that 36% of those polled would consider outsourcing the IT function, while 50% of in house lawyers believe that law firms should offshore to cut costs.

Sources:

http://www.princeomc.com/pressreleases/press_release010209.html

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=186096&d=340&h=341&f=342

http://theorangerag.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/8/4179005.html

Legal Spending in a downturn

Matador Legal — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:49:44 +0000

In a recent article , in Businessweek , Controlling Legal Spending in 2009 , BW discusses the strategies the law firms need to employ in the current economy. It claims that research has found that contract lawyers cost twice than in house lawyers, “ Companies with fewer in-house lawyers tend to spend twice as much as their peers with more lawyers. ” BW goes on to offer other important suggestions like diversifying the portfolio of work and investing in knowledge management.

At a fundamental level the law firms need to understand the cyclical nature of economies and the fact that nobody is capable of timing the boom and bust phase with great accuracy. The intelligent thing then is to make the most of being in the current economy and investing appropriately so that the firm is ready for change and has a competitive edge over its competitors when the economy turns. Usually one tends to falter in executing this plan when one is right in the middle of the recession, which some claim to be the the most dangerous since the great depression of ’30s. In the recent past there have been various recessions of all kinds in ‘89, ‘96, 01 and now 08-09 which were caused by russian currency crisis, difficulties in south asian economies and the IT bubble. This time the cause seems to be credit crisis in th US financial syatem, which has had systemic risks for decades now. Since the financial services industry in interwined with all other sectors of the economy, this crisis has effected other sectors also. Meanwhile the auto industry has its own troubles for long which have come to fore now.

In essence the current depression is like a series of coincincidences which just happen one after the other. Gladwell talks about these in his latest book, Outliers.

Here we will discuss the case of some IT companies which have proactively taken aggressive decisions in this economy and those which have merely reacted ot it and done what is normal.

In India the financial year closes in March and in an effort to appear strong , many of these IT companies have slashed workforce precisely in this quarter. This is merely a short term knee jerk reaction, which might satisfy the shareholders and analysts at the annual gathering but presents the grim picture of companies which merely react to the changing economies and whose decisions are a function of the times they are in . These companies will do well in a boom phase and bad in a bust phase of a business life cycle.

The intelligent companies will do better than these companies in all phases of economy because they are always preparing for the future. They have actually strengthened their sales teams in this difficult time when other companies are doing exactly the opposite.

The market leaders always prepare for the future and take decisions proactively and are prepared for the changing times , before they actually change. Unfortunatelythere are only a couple of IT firms in India doing this now.

We will discuss the case of US amlaw firms in these times in a subsequent post.

Sources :

http://www.businessweek.com/

http://www.executiveboard.com/