Office Tigers: Outsourced in Chennai

rangss

Management skills and specialist abilities...yes required for moving up. Speaking like an American or British...not required. At least I never did so. Plus OfficeTiger is not a call center. But yes...speaking abilities do matter, especially when you speak across continents and cultures.

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ddevadatta

Bravo for call centers such as this that have improved standard of living for so many people. Some people will complain about poverty and how we humans are the cause of everything bad and when they see improvement they will complain about that as well. They live in lah lah land!

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rangss

OfficeTiger is NOT a call center!

crvlvr

I think that is an important pont;. The differnt kinds of outsourced industries offer differnt opportunities. IT appears to be the best, call centers that worst. BPO somewhere in the middle, but with a bright future as the opportunities for growth are tremendous.

BTW, what kind of BPO does Office Tigers offer?

icetea

Btw, there was another documentary series earlier this year on BBC, about 24/7, a call center in Bangalore. They were showing everything from office, work process, management, selection process, interviews with candidates, their parents, and so on. They were also following a guy's path from the job interview & selection stage to actual work. Quite interesting.

Nick-H

Sorry... easy for those of us who are not in the trade to get BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing?) and call centres mixed up. I guess a call centre is a kind of BPO, but BPO covers all sorts of business administration services ---- heck, I don't know, Rangss please to define it for us uninformed?

Both of Mrs N's children work in call centres. They are both at different levels of management, and voice training and monitoring is part of their work. They do not speak like Americans outside work! My wife's daughter has just taken a substantial paycut to work in a call centre for a home Indian company --- day work rather than night work. Less cash and lacking the prestige of working for an MNC, but she gets to see the sun!

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Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

whatiyam

i am currently working at law firm that is outsourcing its administrative work to williams & lea, who bought office tiger. the typing jobs will be sent to india via a store front in west virginia (i do proofreading and editing, which will be done by cheaper less qualified americans). the whole negative aspect to outsourcing here in america is that there is no protection for the american workers. they lose thier pensions now and companies no longer offer pensions in this time of huge corporate profits. some of the people losing their jobs here have been working at the firm for 20 years, some have ailments like heart conditions and are dependent on their medical insurance, which will be gone. sure they could purchase medical insurance as part of a plan but that would cost about $1,300 a month for family of three.
it is not that the law firm where i work is doing poorly, new attorney right out of school get $140,000 a year before bonus. other corporations in usa are doing quite well, but the compensation of the executives is about 400x the average worker. even the conservative commentator Lou Dobbs has written a book about the war on the middle class here in america.

things are not going well economically here in usa for the middle earner, but given the political situation, things will only get worse for the foreseeable future.

ironically, i will be going to india as soon as the job is over, but not for work, because there is still some sort of human life going on in india, unlike new york where it is like one large factory. i sure hope india doesn't become like usa, but if indians aren't keeping their hands on the steering wheel and their eyes on the road, who knows where india is heading?

icetea

Well Business Process Outsourcing includes all sorts of operations, from telemarketing & client servicing (call centres) to IT and all sorts of back-office operations, medical transcription, image & text editing, internet-based market research, statistical & financial data processing, and so on. Basically almost any process that does not involve decision-making or does not require face-to-face interaction with the client can be outsourced.

I also work in this outsourcing market, but as a freelancer, over the Internet. There are several websites mediating between buyers and service providers, and there are thousands of Indians who work this way for western clients, on various projects. The buyers can be individuals, but often smaller companies. This is the underground BPO market, and many freelancers here do it apart from their regular jobs.

Whatyiam, from my experience in the freelancing market I can very well understand how terribly frustrating it can get for western freelancers when the Indian comes and bids to do the project at for 2-3$/hour and wins it. People from developing countries (India, Pakistan, Russia, Eastern Europe) flock to bid at ridiculously low rates and sort of "spoil" the market for western freelancers, who find it difficult to win projects at decent rates.

rangss

Outsourcing:

IT Outsourcing:
IT Support
Software development

Knowledge Process Outsourcing:
Financial Analytics
Equity Research
Market Analytics
Statistical Data Analytics
Creative Services (Designing, Artwork, graphics, animationetc)
Offshore Engineering and Design
Writing and Content Development



BPO:
Documentation and desk-top publishing(or Pre-media)
Insurance process
Financial Accounting Process
Legal Process
Taxation process
Loan and credit processing
Sales processing
Banking process



Call Center:
Voice Outbound
Voice Inbound
Helpdesk

Nick-H

whatiyam, Being a Brit living in India I have to be of two minds about this one.

Unpopular and outdated though it is, I believe in each and every country looking after its own first and foremost. "Globalisation" has knocked that out of the window, possibly off the face of the planet.

So, as a Brit, I believe in British companies employing British people.

As an Indian resident, I am glad to see the growing successes here --- especially, of course, of those that are closely connected.

crvlvr

It has become very difficult to determine the "nationality" of large MNCs. Japanese and German automobile companies are now making cars in the US. US brand cars are typically made in Mexico and Canada.

So, if Dell sells a large amount of computers in India, is it fair for the to keep all the jobs in the US? Or, send some of them to India -- especially if it is more cost effective?

Nick-H

The obvious answer that springs to mind is let Dell (as our example) employ Indians to support Indians in India and Americans to support Americans in America.

But I'm sure it isn't that simple.....

edwardseco

Way living in the past. Didn't work in earlier waves of globalization which more favored the Brits..

capt_mahajan

err, wasn't that earlier wave of globalisation colonisation?

beach

Anything except the top management work can be outsourced!

Not all the works outsourced to India are BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)
Not all the BPO work coming to India are call centre jobs.
Not all the BPOs have night shifts.

Though not very small in number, the ‘late night offices’ caught the fancy of the media. There are many people who do late night jobs. For example the doctors & nurses in a hospital, power plants that work round the clock,…..

In fact the major portion of the outsourced type work is done in broad daylight!

By the way the word outsourcing itself is bit creative. Like any other thing in an open marketplace, work too is simply ‘sourced’ from the competitive seller. Here to, like in any businesses, the regular economic theories of capitalism (read as raw greed for profit) are in play.

The other day I was watching BBC World’s “Asia Today” beamed to Asia from the London studio. I would like to call it simply as news rather than ‘outsourced news’, though for many years Nick Gowing has been pronouncing Punjab wrongly with amazing consistency.

People who write the news has to write and give it to him as “PanCHAb” or at least tell him to pronounce it with a “Punch”.

But then that’s the part of occupational diseases one get in any outsourced job. The Indian “speech neutralization specialists” has a put pet name for it – MTI (mother tongue influence!)

Sorry got carried away a bit here …..