IT Outsourcing India

The doors of the world’s back office is getting ready to welcome IP service providers now. One of the first off the blocks to join the IP offshoring business is Computer Patent Annuities (CPA), the world’s leading IP service provider with 40,000 clients spread over the world and renewal of 1.1 million patents and 46,000 trademarks annually.

Soon after it set up its first state-of-the-art IP services delivery center in India, it is now planning to invest $50 million for expanding its business in India, including legal process outsourcing and developing patent and domain protection softwares.

The IP services market leader had set foot on Indian shores in 2005 when it acquired Intellevate, a company founded by US patent attorneys, SLWK. Intellevate is the market leader in outsourcing and off shoring solutions for IP professionals.

IP offshoring includes services like prior art searches, patent illustration services, docketing services and software, para-legal services and proof-reading services.

Does India have the skills and the wherewithal to provide all these services. Says Peter Sewell, CPA’s global CEO: “We are very happy what we have experienced during short stint in India so far. The quality of work is excellent and it is not cost-effectiveness that has lured us to set up operations in India, though that is also a factor. It is actually the sense of ownership among the staff members here that prompted our move. The third factor was the potential for capacity.”

He added that the Indian operations will become the engine room that enables CPA to become the global leader in outsourced legal services. Would the company also look at Indian companies too now that they are getting out of the trappings of linear growth and realising the importance of creating IP?

Not right now but CPA doesn’t rule out the possibilities. “We are a global companies and most of our clients are MNCs. And today, several Indian companies are turning multinational,” says Sewell.

It is not without reason that CPA has made this move this year. According to a Value Notes Offshoring Legal Services report, the Indian legal off-shoring industry will grow ten-fold over the next four years to revenues of $600-million of which the key growth areas will be patent search, filing among other IP-related work.

It plans to double its staff strength by end of the year. Says Bhaskar Bagchi, newly appointed country head of CPA: “We would like to deliver high value IP strategies and integrated support services to our global clients.”

In a world in which increasing court cases are proving that patent ownership could be a risky proposition because of the ambiguous definitions of patent rights how does CPA look at the work flow. “It will only go up. In the last half-a-decade patent filings have been going up by 20% every year.”

Source : www.offshoringtimes.com

“Offsourcing” is a coined word formed by merging the two words “offshore” and “outsourcing”. It refers to the sourcing of both goods and services from external entities (organizations or persons) from locations outside the country. It can either be of manufactured goods or of professional/other services. It is the restructuring of a supply chain where one company relies on its supplier for functions previously performed in-house. What makes it so powerful is that the supply chain is tightened as the functioning of the employees in the new environment improved.

Offsourcing differs from outsourcing because the service provider/supplier already has a supplier-customer relationship with the customer, and the transaction merely shifts a business function up the supply chain for increased efficiencies and economies of scale. Indeed, effectively designed, the “customer” can ensure that its capital investment in its employees can be applied to resolve problems, and create value, for the customer.

Offsourcing takes the “buy vs. build” decision to a new level and enables you to leverage external skillsets and low-cost resources for your benefit. For example, high-end cell phones perform many functions that require careful integration of different technologies. Increasingly, such sophisticated phones are being used as computers, Internet access devices, pagers, software operating systems and e-mail devices. A decision to transfer cell phone hardware engineers to a semiconductor supplier allows the cell phone maker to concentrate on software, styling and customer interaction. By concentrating the right minds in the right environment, offsourcing is believed to cut cell phone maker’s research and development costs. It also frees the customer to be closer to its customers, focusing on aligning the new product features with the customers’ emerging needs and desires. Also, it allows the cell phone maker to buy more finished components and to assemble them into a proprietary product. In making the decision to “offsource” a department, the company should carefully study the competitive impact. If its hardware engineers are difficult to replace, then the transfer could make them available to service the competitors. This risk can be managed with effective planning techniques.

The offsourced work (activity, task or process) can be either tightly integrated with or independent of other work. Obviously, the less tightly integrated work is with others, it is easier to offsource. There are two reasons to drive offsourcing: primarily lower costs and specialized skills. Companies are choosing to offsource certain activities mainly because large savings can be made as a result of lower costs. These cost savings are becoming critical to maintaining competitive advantage in today’s economic climate. Offsourcing activities additionally enable companies to focus on core business objectives, while also enhancing their bottom line. Industry sectors taking advantage of offsourcing range from large financial companies to technology services companies. Other sectors include banking, airlines, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, strategic consulting and telecommunications. Currently India is the most favored offsourcing location due to its lower operational costs, large numbers of English speakers, substantial labor pool, and high levels of quality and productivity.

Source : www.offshoringtimes.com

Tags: Outsource Medical Billing | Medical Billing Services | Medical Coding | Medical Transcription | Medical Transcription Services | CAD Drafting | CAD Design | CAD 3D Modeling | CAD Engineering | CAD Rendering | AutoCAD Drawing

When Singapore Airlines first decided to outsource some of its IT applications, it had little examples before it. Without knowing where to start and how to proceed, it invited some service providers and asked for their recommendations. Based on the recommendation of a panel of providers, it took the first step by deciding on some simple metrics and making suitable provisions in the contract to amend them when the need be. A few years later, when it was once again embarking on an IT outsourcing journey, it had got wiser with experience. It appointed outsourcing advisory firm TPI to advise it on the outsourcing deal. The objective was two-fold: To do it more effectively; and not spend time in reinventing the wheel. As a former IT executive involved in the outsourcing contract puts it, “send a message to the vendors that it was drawing on the knowledge of TPI on global best practices.”

Like Singapore Airlines, many first-time outsources have no inkling of what IT outsourcing is all about, but unlike the city-state’s most well-known services company, are not humble enough to admit it, let alone seek the advice of service providers openly. And approaching a consultant like TPI or EquaTerra, is a fairly costly proposition for many first-timers, who often start with an experimenting mode.

As more and more first-time customers try their hands at outsourcing, there are often situations where the customers either make too tough demands or are too soft in their approach. Most providers prefer the second situation; small vendors succumb to the customers’ whims in the first (many large providers just walk away). Both lead to equally disastrous outcomes. In both cases, the problem is postponed.

Many outsourcing relationships go sour because the service providers cannot deliver on the promises (a possible outcome of the first situation). Many others fail because clients complain that while the service providers meet the Service-level Agreements (SLAs), the deal has not resulted in business value.

In both the situations, the reason is the same: Customers’ ignorance at the time of outsourcing and the service providers‘ unwillingness to say so openly at the time of signing the contract.

A situation like that can arise because of many reasons.

The customer does not know what he wants. In many cases, the customer cannot articulate what he wants. So what he tells the service provider he wants and what he actually needs may be very different. It is the responsibility of the service provider to read more than what the customer says. And yes, even after a decade of outsourcing, it still happens.

The customer does not try to measure what he should, but sets into SLAs what he thinks he can measure. Many users that have not outsourced or worked with a centralized shared-services center do not know what to measure when a part of the processes are outsourced. Because in most organizations, traditionally, they have measured overall IT investment or measured it project-wise, not process-wise. So at the time of outsourcing, many IT managers play safe by setting into SLAs what they can easily measure, rather than what they should try to measure.

The customer may be doing what is most convenient to do at that point of time. Very often within the limits of contradictory pulls and pressures (cost-cutting and job losses), an IT outsourcing deal starts with what seems easier to outsource without causing too much of a disruption. That may not be the best thing to start with, as any advisory firm would tell them.

All this is not at all surprising, considering the customer, like the service provider, is only human. It is just that by virtue of his position, he has a slight edge in influencing the decision on what goes into the contract document. In such a scenario, it is clearly imperative for the service provider to let the customer know where he is unreasonable or even ignorant. It is better for the deal in the long run, and hence for both.

A customer can, and does, make mistakes. The responsible thing for a service provider to do is not to follow a take it (succumb) or leave it (walk away) approach but to work with the customer to set it right. Yes, customer is king. Respect him. But do not follow him blindly. He is not God.

Source : www.offshoringtimes.com