Tag Archives: IT outsourcing

IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen in China

Mit der raschen Entwicklung der chinesischen IT-Outsourcing-Industrie entstehen in China eine große Menge IT-outsourcing Unternehmen. Dabei besitzt China einen immer stärkeren und blühenden IT-Outsourcing-Markt, auf dem UFIDA zu den Top-10 chinesischen IT Outsourcing-Unternehmen gehört. Davon ist RayooTech GmbH ein Anbieter sowohl von globalen professionellen Softwaren als auch von IT-Dienstleistungen. Außerdem zahlt RayooTech GmbH, deren Arbeit vor allem in IT/Software-Outsourcing liegt, auch zu derTochtergesellschaft der UFIDA.

Wie wir alle wissen, dass das Outsourcing nach China den Unternehmen hilft, ihre Kosten zu sparen, nur wenn sie wissen, wie man über die große Menge Talenten in China verfügen soll , um ihre Softwareprodukte zu entwickeln. Es ist sehr nennenswert ,dass China auf der Liste der größten Länder in der ganzen Welt den 2. Platz belegt. Deshalb können   wir Schluss machen, dass in China diese IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen einen großen Potenzial in dieser Branche haben . Während die Nachfrage von Binnen- und Außenmarkt wächst, hat sich der chinesische IT-Outsourcing-Markt auch ausgedehnt. Inzwischen hat die chinesische Regierung eine Serie Politik erschlossen, um die in China gegründeten brillanten und angesehenen IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen zu belohnen und immer nach vorne anzureizen.

Wenn es um die Kosten der Entwicklung der Softwaren geht, haben die Investoren mehr Interesse an China,weil die Kosten für Entwicklung eine Software mit gleichen Funktionen und Effizienz in China billiger als die in anderen Ländern ist . Danach bezieht es sich um die Sprache. Wegen das auch in China vorkommende Globalisieungsprozess ist Englisch kein Hindernis oder Barrie. Auch mit dem chinesischen Integrationsprozess, verfügen jetzt die in China gegründeten IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen über die Spitzentechnologie und die Infrastrukturen.

in China gibt es viele IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen. Die Auswahl eines richtigen IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmens ist für Ihrem Firma von großer Bedeutung, Aber RayooTech GmbH gehört zu derjenigen, dem Sie vertrauen können. Wir bieten vielfältige  Dienstleistungen und Lösungen für den ganzen IT-Lebenszyklus der Kundenservice. Zu diesen Dienstleistungen gehören IT-Beratung, App-Entwicklung, Wartung und Prüfung sowie sogenannte “Business Process Outsourcing Service”. Außerdem hat RayooTech starke Fähigkeit für das Projektmanagement in der gesamten Geschäftsformulare , zum Beispiel wie Entwicklung, Offshore-Entwicklungszentrum und so weiter. Die reifte Fähigkeit für das Management ist nicht nur die Garantie für erfolgreiches Projekt und ODC (Offshore Development Center), sondern auch der Grund dafür, warum sich die Kunden auf uns verlassen können. Hinsichtlich auf die Gründung und Innovation des erstklassige Qualitätssicherungssystems und des Informationssicherheitsystems sowie  des Business-Management-Systems, ist RayooTech der Pionier des IT-Service-Engineering- Management auf ihrem Gebiet.

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Warum wird die iOS-App-Entwicklungsarbeit nach den chinesischen IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen ausgelagert

Seit dem ersten Tag der Strömung auf dem globalen Market haben diese Apple-Produkte einen enormen Einfluss auf die ganzen Welt. Wegen ihre “high-end retina display”und “dual core A5X system-on-a-chip” verfügt IPad, IPhone und andere Produkte über eine höhere Rechnungsstärke. Inzwischen wächst die Nachfrage nach iOS Apps Tag für Tag. Hinsichtlich des chinesischen Strebens nach iPod, iPhone, iPad and Macs ist China heute ein iOS-App-Entwicklungsmarket mit dem schnellsten Wachstumsquote.

Unter diesem Umstand vergeben sich die vielfältigen Gründe dafür, warum die ausländischen Unternehmen einen Vorzug der Beschäftigung der chinesischen IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen, um iOS Apps zu entwickeln.

1. In China gibt es viele IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen, die sich mit dem Expertensteam der  Entwickler für mobile Applications ausrüsten. Diese Facharbeiter sind erfahrend in dem iPhone, iPad Plattform.

2. Mit der Globalizierung nutzen immer mehr IT-Outsourcing-Unternehmen, die in China etablieren, die High-Technologie und die IT Infrastrukturen. Dabei können die chinesischen IT Entwickler innerhalb des Frist die Entwicklung der iOS Apps fertig machen. Trotz der effizienter und bessere Qualität des iOS Apps, die von chinesischen Entwickler anbieten, sind die Kosten in China aber im Vergleich zu den anderen Ländern viel niedriger.

3.  Dank für die chinesische Reform-und Öffnungspolitik sowie die chinesischen Anpassung zur Globalisierung haben die meisten chinesischen Apps Entwickler ein höheres Englischniveau als früher. Sie überwinden die sprachige Schwierigkeit. Deshalb sind sie fähig, mit den ausländischen Kunden, Partnern und Entwickler usw. auf Englisch oder auf anderen Sprachen zu kommunizieren, was die übergrenzende Kooperation einfacher machen kann.

In diesem Gebiet ist RayooTech GmbH sehr ausfällig. Als ein chinesische Software-Outsourcing Provider bietet RayooTech auch iOS-App-Entwicklungsservice an. Diese Service wird von der RayooTechs’ Expertengruppe angeboten, die von den Offshore-Software-Entwickler zusammengesetzt ist. Diese Experten sind high qualifiziert und haben viele Erfahrungen über iOS Apps und andere mobile Apps. Außerhalb der iOS-Apps-Service beeinschließt die Service von Rayoo Tech, die als das sogenannte ‘IT service engineering management’ auf dem Market ausfällig ist, auch eine völlige IT-Lebenszyklus-Service und die perfekte Auflösung der Probleme, zB. IT-Consulting,  Entwicklung der Apps, Wartung und Pflegung, Prüfung sowie Business Process Outsourcing Service. In der absehbare Zukunft wird Rayoo Tech mit Besonderheit auf ihre identische Service in IT-Offshore-Outsourcing bestimmt der Führer auf dem chinesischen IT-Outsourcing-Market.

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Seven Keys to Successful IT Outsourcing

These days, with technology fully integrated into your business, IT outsourcing is no longer the CIO’s challenge alone. He or she may get the boot for making a bad situation worse, but everyone in the company suffers when the outsourcing relationship goes awry. That’s why CFOs need to become more involved, earlier on. Unfortunately, when CFOs think about outsourcing, they tend to focus on the contract: SLAs, cost models, Additional Resource Charges (ARCs), Reduced Resource Charges (RRCs), gain sharing (in which a formula is devised for dividing up revenue from future improvements or innovations), and the like. All this is important, but there’s a much wider array of issues to consider when working with an outsourcer, and CFOs need to keep them in mind.

1. Out of sight is not out of mind. Some companies believe that in outsourcing, they can hand over the IT reins to their new business partner. But before you know it, the outsourcer is running the show and making decisions about service levels, purchasing, and staffing that are aligned beautifully with the outsourcer’s business, but not yours. In order to keep your business’s needs primary, you have to retain control over major IT decisions.

2. You cannot outsource a mess. If your CIO does not have a handle on the priorities, costs, structure, strategy, and competencies of her organization, you are not ready to outsource. What you have is a hot mess. Some companies make the mistake of handing that mess to the outsourcer in the hope that it will figure it out. It won’t. Your outsourcer is not at your strategy meetings; your outsourcer does not know your company’s culture or the skill sets of your people. Sort out the mess first, and then hand over the right pieces to someone else.

3. Consider culture when selecting your partner. It’s lovely that your outsourcer has a good track record on security, can flex on staff when necessary, and is giving you a good deal. But are they effective communicators? Do they get along with your people?  When an outsourcing relationship is going well, your outsourcer’s staff is integrated with your own. Accordingly, their people have to be compatible with your people.

4. Build up your vendor management chops. When CFOs think of vendor management, they focus on contract negotiation and ensuring that the right service level agreements are in place. Those are critical elements in the discipline of vendor management, but they’re only the beginning. You need a team of IT managers who have been elbow-deep delivering IT so that they know what service levels you require. But these hands-on professionals must now be comfortable with not touching the technology themselves. IT managers can be awfully controlling; for them, putting delivery in an outsourcer’s hands can be difficult. Companies often assume that outsourcing means reducing IT headcount. That may be true, but the heads that remain need different skill sets than the traditional internal IT staff. Take a look at your IT people. Will they be good at communicating, at managing relationships? Because that’s what they’re going to have to do.

5. Resist the master-slave model.  Some organizations are so focused on reducing costs that they try to squeeze their outsourcer for every penny. Then they feel good about all the pennies they’ve squeezed. But that good feeling vanishes when the outsourcer no longer values the relationship and delivers shoddy service at a bargain basement price. Go ahead and push for competitive price points, but remember that for an outsourcing partner to be invested in your company’s success, for it to staff your work with its best people, they need to know that they’re getting a fair deal.

6. Don’t make assumptions about core vs. commodity. Any good executive knows that you should hand over your company’s commodity services to an outsourcer: Why run your own help desk or payroll systems or email? There are plenty of outsourcers who can do that better than you can. But be sure to hold onto your core processes, the things that your company does better than anyone else.  At some companies, for example, supporting remote workers makes them happy, but it is not a competitive differentiator. At other companies, providing a seamless way to work at home can be exactly that in terms of productivity as well as employee recruitment and retention.  (Time will tell if Marissa Mayer mistook core for commodity when she ordered Yahoo’s remote workers back to the office.)

7. Get the buy-in. Finally, be sure that all of your company’s leaders have bought into the decision to outsource. When someone else begins to manage the work you used to do in-house, the change can be dramatic on many levels. Your leaders have to own the decision to outsource, and they have to sell that decision to the organization throughout the length of the relationship.

Your IT organization is facing a dizzying array of new demands. From mobility to Big Data to product development to ERP, that embattled team is being pulled from one project to another. Of course you should outsource some of that work and let them focus on what makes your company great. But with a huge percentage of outsourcing agreements considered failures, you must understand that outsourcing is anything but an easy fix.  A little forethought can help you avoid creating a new mess while you try to deal with the old one.

Source: http://www3.cfo.com/article/2013/3/it-value_outsourcing-failure-contracts-sla-arc-rrc-gain-sharing-cfo-role

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Do You Think Cloud Computing Is Latest IT Outsourcing Model?

Cloud is a utility model for computing capacity, business functionality and software. The organizations, service providers and the outsourcing companies are redefining the way they operate and serve their customers.

The big question: Will the cloud be the latest IT outsourcing model?

Let’s not guess the answer as yes and no but explore some facts by virtue of which cloud computing is compared to IT outsourcing.

It seems that an easy access to cloud computing is a natural evolution of the IT outsourcing services. All you have to do is to provide a credit card number to a cloud computing service provider and access the computing capacity almost immediately. A software-as-a-service provider will grant access to cloud-based capabilities such as sales and finance. Now, do you need a traditional outsourcing partner anymore?

Some kinds of services provided by the cloud are actually as easy as turning on the lights whereas others require professional help leading to different levels of services resulting in a range of providers offering various value propositions at different price points.

Complex IT models and environments

The cloud model means that enterprises have to manage complex, hybrid environment that includes, externally provided cloud services and their own internal systems. Integration points between these two need to be well managed apart from facing several challenges such as security, data integrity and service availability. The integration role played by some outsourcing providers has become all the more important. The technical knowhow and the ability to advise enterprises on the appropriate design of their business models based on multiple service providers is gradually establishing itself. This seems to be the new era of outsourcing—for cloud service providers.

Categories of Outsourcing Services and Providers:

According to a projection, this year will see a lot of companies increasingly relying on the cloud for information processing and business services. Also cloud will be responsible for the emergence of primarily three categories of outsourcing services and providers.

1) Basic business functionality providers-

The value proposition for this category will focus primarily on efficiency and cost. The essential capabilities of this category are driven by primary concerns pertaining to the availability of services. Some success factors for such providers are 99.999 percent available time, recoverability and security.

2) Niche business functionality providers-

Outsourcing companies with lot of experience and deep expertise in functions such as sales and customer support, enable them to command a premium for their services. For such functionality providers, the value proposition will be to make sure your company gets a business function configured for your needs.

3) Aggregator, Integrators and business designers-

This type of outsourcing provider acts as a business design consultants in addition to serving as an aggregator and integrator of critical services. Such a company must have the capability to integrate its own and other services and manage them seamlessly helping its clients become cloud enterprises.

Conclusion

The cloud as a utility model extends the benefits of outsourcing to a range of organizations making it accessible, affordable and quicker to provide. For smaller enterprises the cloud can deliver remarkable results since software-as-a-service applications like Hosted Exchange 2010 and Hosted Sharepoint are more expensive to own by a company than to implement and maintain in the cloud.  IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) from cloud providers (Virtual Private Server) is a huge competitor to IT outsourcing. Hence it seems that the new cloud environment is most likely to propel outsourcers and integrators into becoming a high-performance business.

Source: http://egocentrix.com/blog/2013/03/25/do-think-cloud-computing-latest-it-outsourcing-model/

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Shaking off the Bias Against Enterprise Hosting Services

At the turn of the century, that would be the 21st century, third-party hosting services that handled enterprise-class system like SAP were rare. There was a definite bias against enterprise hosting services because it seemed too risky to hand over mission critical systems to a stranger. It was also very difficult to make a rational business case in support of such a decision. Even more consequential, most people in the U.S. were afraid of the term outsourcing. There were simply too many unknowns and technical hurdles that could not be overcome at that time.

But that was then, now thirteen years later, managed hosting services are viewed in a much more favorable light. There are still trust issues and technical hurdles abound, but the economies of scale outweigh the potential problems. Further, the trust issues have been mitigated by the emergence of high quality security methods and tools that were not available 10 years ago. The term ‘outsourcing’ is even less intimidating now.

The cost advantages that third party hosting providers offer are driving much of the interest in managed hosting services. Hosting providers can spread out their fixed costs across all customers for things such as the datacenter building, HVAC, electric power consumption, the racks, the hardware and even the technical services.

This allows an enterprise hosting provider to fractionalize their fixed costs and charge only a portion of the full costs to each of their customers. This approach typically yields a lower cost to each customer than if they were to bear the entire fixed costs of supporting their own data center.

Cost savings would be irrelevant though if customers could not trust hosting providers to reliably support and maintain their enterprise systems. Trust is where the rubber meets the road. For organizations that utilize SAP outsourcing services, the mission-critical nature of SAP would certainly compromise the entire enterprise if their outsourcing partner could not meet their service level agreements.

Adding momentum to the resistance to ‘outsourcing’ back in the early 2000’s was the cultural notion that outsourcing meant sending U.S. jobs overseas, which is bad for U.S. workers. In 2004, economist Paul Samuelson (a Nobel Prize winner) wrote a paper that claimed the economic impact of outsourcing is similar to opening up the flood gates and allowing mass immigration of workers willing to work at extremely low wages. Obviously, the effect would be to drive down wages for everyone in the middle class, even if it did benefit certain employers.

Considering the incredible mixture of problems, tragedies, and uncertainty that plagued first 10 years of this century, the seed of opportunity for managed hosting and outsourcing was able to survive and grow. Today, nearing the end of 2012 and looking ahead into 2013, managed hosting is being transformed into something called cloud computing, which again puts the enterprise hosting providers at the center of a new trend.

Source: http://www.secure-24.com/shaking-off-the-bias-against-enterprise-hosting-services/

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Will IT Outsourcing Reverse?

With all the hype about the cloud and other IT outsourcing, GM’s about-face last year in regard to its IT strategy raises questions about whether the hype has taken the industry too far in one direction. Is “insourcing” the new wave, or are GM and recent declines in outsourcing growth simply bumps in the road?

Differentiating Between “Outsourcing” and “Offshoring”

Because so many people have visceral reactions to the word outsourcing, it’s important to note that outsourcing does not always mean “sending jobs overseas.” Hiring a Chinese or Indian firm to tackle an IT or other project is, for this reason, better labeled offshoring. Offshoring is a subset of outsourcing; the two are not identical.

Outsourcing Takes Hit in 2012

The rush to outsource IT showed signs of weakness in 2012—particularly in the second half. According to technology analysis company ISG, the global outsourcing market saw a drop of 11% in 4Q12 compared with the previous quarter, or a 27% decline year over year. For the full 2012, the global market fell 3% from the previous year. These numbers are for commercial outsourcing contracts whose annual contract value (ACV) is a minimum of $5 million. A set of slides from ISG shows a more granular breakdown of the outsourcing market by region and several other criteria.

According to Network World, research firm Everest Group reported that the number of new publicly reported IT and business-process outsourcing contracts fell from 472 in 3Q11 to 381 in 3Q12. Furthermore, the total annualized value of these contracts in 3Q12 declined to $1.5 billion, roughly a 44% year-over-year decrease.

Although GM’s plans to move its previously outsourced IT operations back under the company’s umbrella is not necessarily indicative of a larger market trend, it does raise the question. Forbes notes that the automaker’s planned budget shift would reverse its current 90% outsourced/10% in-house mix to 90% in house/10% outsourced. The company hopes to accomplish this goal within three to five years.

What’s Driving (No Pun Intended) the Change?

In light of 2011 being a record year according to ISG, a 3% drop in the 2012 global IT outsourcing market may not be as bad as it would otherwise seem. A breather in a fast-growing market is not necessarily surprising. Possible factors contributing to the 2012 decline include a weak economy in Europe and the U.S. The debt crisis in Europe, which is in the midst of a second recession, is troublesome owing to the obvious need for major governmental reforms. The U.S. is following the same path as the federal government puts on political theater over raising the debt limit (is there any doubt that the debt limit will be raised as often as requested by the president or Congress?). The stagnant economy may well return to recession in 2013, barring effective efforts on the part of the Federal Reserve in attempting to create faux growth by further debasing the dollar. These conditions have broad economic effects, and IT outsourcing is no exception.

ISG partly blames the recent U.S. elections and hurricane Sandy as possible contributing factors to the quarterly market decline. Furthermore, with offshoring getting a renewed lashing from politicians as they struggle to bring down a stubborn unemployment rate, many companies have hesitated to sign contracts with foreign providers. Network World cites Everest Group’s practice director for global sourcing, Salil Dani, as saying that “banks in the U.S. in particular delayed decisions relating to offshoring to locations like India and the Philippines because a number of them have taken funding from the government, and didn’t want to be seen as offshoring while the political rhetoric was at its hottest.”

GM’s decision, however, may reflect a more fundamental issue with outsourcing that is independent of the current economic and political climate.

Are All the Supposed Benefits of Outsourcing Real?

Listing many of the espoused benefits of outsourcing is simple, mostly because these benefits make logical sense. For instance, by outsourcing IT operations, a company can focus its time and energy on building its core business rather than on maintaining and developing peripheral infrastructure. In addition, outsourcing eliminates many of the capital costs, typically converting them to ongoing operational expenses—presumably yielding savings as service providers amortize capital costs across many customers. The quintessential example of IT outsourcing today is the cloud.

DatacenterDynamics’ Ambrose McNevin summarizes one of the concerns of outsourcing to the cloud: “Why tie up your capital when you can outsource to a third party who will manage the IT headache for you? Sound familiar? However what many forgot was that you can only outsource once and the savings don’t accrue, the costs do…[W]hat GM is telling us is that nothing is free and the price of savings is control.” This lack of control begets various difficulties; for one, data and services are entrusted to third parties rather than being kept in house—a deal breaker in some industries, but a questionable matter in others. Dissatisfaction with service providers can also be a headache, as such matters can be more difficult (and expensive) to handle compared with in-house issues.

Although outsourcing sounds great—and no doubt works out well in many cases—it is not a panacea for all situations and all needs. CIO.com predicts that GM’s move back toward in-house IT signals a trend in which “low-level and routine tasks will remain with third-parties while higher value positions like capacity planning, architecture, and configuration management will move back in [house].”

Industry Seeks Balance?

GM may be a manifestation of an approach to IT that has moved too far to an extreme—outsourcing—in search of cost savings and a leaner business strategy. Certainly, hype can drive an industry to overreach in one direction, leading eventually to a rebound from the extreme. On the other hand, GM may not be the best indicator of a viable business approach. The automaker, known not-so-affectionately as “Government Motors” for its recent federal bailout, has yet to prove that it can maintain a profitable business without extensive outside supports. Bailouts, far from creating an atmosphere of corporate responsibility, simply remove the risks of bad business practices. Other examples of returning to in-house IT might serve as a better, if less remarkable, indicator of market directions.

For offshoring in particular, rising standards of living in foreign countries mean that the cost of doing business with companies in these nations will increase. Such changes will reduce the benefits of offshoring in favor of dealing locally, which avoids the hassles of foreign laws, language barriers, physical distances and so on. This trend, however, would be a longer-term effect and would not necessarily stifle the overall outsourcing market.

Another important point is that GM is a large corporation and thus does not necessarily represent the IT trend for smaller businesses. Mega companies have more capital resources than small companies, so the task of moving IT in house after having already outsourced is—although still expensive—less high of a hurdle. Thus, IT outsourcing trends may differ significantly depending on business size, as well as industry.

Conclusions

IT outsourcing probably hasn’t reached a major turning point, but GM’s plans to bring most of its IT back in house offers companies a reason to pause before blindly outsourcing. The consequences of moving IT operations outside the company are certainly not all positive, but the balance sometimes tips in favor of keeping IT under the company’s roof.

Source:http://www.datacenterjournal.com/it/will-it-outsourcing-reverse/

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Windows XP upgrades and SAP testing to drive project based outsourcing this year

Windows XP upgrades and SAP upgrade testing are two areas that will stimulate the outsourcing sector this year.

Nick Mayes, research director at PAC, said in a report  that while there will continue to be a level of demand for big traditional outsourcing deals that clean "’your mess for less" he expects "clients to look for more point solutions to address specific challenges such as upgrading from Windows XP, insurance policy administration platform consolidation and SAP upgrade testing."

This echoes something Sam Kingston said in his IT outsourcing predictions for 2013. He said there would be an avalanche of Windows XP migration projects.

"With one year to go until Windows XP is officially retired for good, companies who have not moved off this ageing platform will start to feel uneasy as vendors wind down any remaining support for products sitting on this desktop OS. This D-day of the modern IT era has always felt far enough away, to some, to be brushed aside. When supporting vendors start to announce end dates for their XP based products, the realisation that the date is fast approaching will hit these companies, and a wave of migration projects will be kicked off in a bid to at least move the underlying OS forwards onto the next supported platform. Windows 8 is still too fresh, and its benefits beyond the tablet are still being debated. Windows Vista is a non-starter, so this leaves the rational choice for the next step to be Windows 7," he wrote in this blog.

Meanwhile Ovum says that "stability, capability and accessibility" will be the key words for IT buyers in 2013.

Jens Butler, principal analyst, IT Services at Ovum says: "The fact that we live in very uncertain times makes investment decision-making even more difficult. With continuing instability across the global markets and even in locations with historically robust growth such as China and India, the outlook for IT services in 2013 is unpredictable."

"Enterprises will be looking for greater reliability in their IT usage and, as a consequence, seeking stability, capability and accessibility among their external service providers." In line with recent trends, Ovum’s Bundling Index points to an increasing desire for longer term commitments and extended-scope outsourcing engagements."

In 2013, the push to fill out portfolios, especially across some of the newer technology arenas such as mobility, analytics, social and cloud, will continue to grow and a multitude of vendors will look to take advantage of this desired technology adoption, even if it means looking to a single supplier to deliver these services."

Source:http://is.gd/KBoNcV

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Outsourcing of State Services by 2013

 

Outsourcing of services provided by the Civil Service and State agencies could begin from the second quarter of next year.

A draft reform plan drawn up in accordance with the Croke Park agreement also states the Government will consider a business case for shared services to administering payroll early next year.

The draft plan envisages longer opening hours for some State services as well as further cuts to the number of court venues and other office accommodation. It says the first wave of projects that could be outsourced are to be identified this month and the process could begin by the second quarter of next year. Further projects would be considered for outsourcing later next year, and implemented, if warranted, from the third quarter.

Printing of summonses

The plan states the Courts Service is examining the case for outsourcing the printing of summonses. It also says that the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources is tendering for a range of services where savings of up to 10 per cent have been targeted.

The draft plan says the Road Safety Authority is to pilot the introduction of driving tests early in the morning and at weekends as parts of reforms dealing with staff attendance patterns.

It says the Department of Foreign Affairs is to pilot the introduction of longer opening hours and a new appointment system in the Passport Office.

“The Probation Service is to establish systems to extend the hours of service delivery where there is a need including weekend and evening working arrangements.”

The draft report also says that following the review of allowances for staff in the public service, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will look at the pay structure for service officer grades. There is also to be a review of the allowances paid to staff who act as private secretaries to ministers.

Private sector

The plan provides for a scheme next year to allow the placement of Civil Service staff in private companies and the executives of private sector firms in Government departments and offices for a 12-month period.

The draft also says departments, offices and agencies will continue to pursue organisational reconfiguration. Examples include the expansion of a programme by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service at Dublin Airport to have civilians rather than gardaí carry out certain port of entry duties on a phased basis to the end of 2014.

The draft plan also says departments and agencies will seek to reduce their office and accommodation requirements. “The Department of Social Protection will review accommodation with a view to minimising costs (for example by co-location in towns with more than one office following the transfer of services from Fás and HSE, new accommodation approaches etc).”

“The Courts Service is considering the future of a number of standalone district court offices, the programme to rationalise the number of court venues will continue.”

The document will be considered further by management and unions in the weeks ahead.

 

source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1115/1224326606567.html

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IT outsourcing earnings rise by 56 per cent

The earning from outsourcing IT jobs has increased by 56 percent in the last one year, said sources in the Bangladesh Association for Software and Information Services (BASIS). In the 2011-12 fiscal year, the earning was USD 70.6 million, while it was USD 46.35 million in the 2010-11 fiscal year, said BASIS officials, referring to the latest available data of the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB).

Experts, however, said that the earning from the world market could be multiplied by at least USD 2 billion with a little back-up from the public and private partnership ventures. The ventures can establish systematic IT outsourcing facilities and projects, available from major buyers of the US through the Internet, to facilitate the growing numbers of IT professionals in Bangladesh. According to BASIS officials, at present there are more than 500 software companies in the country. Of these, about 140 are doing outsourcing jobs. This, however, is not a satisfying amount vis-a-vis India, as the neighbouring country is earning USD 8,060 million every year. Also, about 1,50,000 IT professionals graduate each year in India, compared to a meagre 24,000 in Bangladesh.

Saimon Azim, a software entrepreneur and exporter, said IT outsourcing by the western companies has been a common practice in the SME domain for many years, owing to cheap labour cost in the South-east Asia. “Although India is controlling the USD 9.6 billion market, Bangladesh can break its monopoly by taking some systematic measures to create job opportunities,” he added.

Simon, a former employee of ‘Deloitte and Touche’, returned to his homeland, and set up Thinkcrest, an IT outsourcing company, with only three members two years ago. “Now, I’m making handsome profits. I pay bonuses to my 14-member team in US dollars,” he said.

But, the picture is not that much rosy for “Web Archive”, another IT outsourcing company, as it does not have a marketing analyst and proper connections in the US market.

Raqib Ahmed, chief system analyst of the company, said that for the last two months, the company had only got three projects. “The problem is that we can’t place the lowest bid,” he added.

There are virtual internet marketplaces, such as Elance, to invite bidding for tenders. Here a project is posted online and job-providers select companies by reviewing qualifications, ratings, portfolios and skill-based scores.

“When you place a bid on a particular project in such marketplaces, and the job-provider sees that you are from Bangladesh, you need to place the lowest bid, otherwise you don’t get the project,” Raqib stated the hard reality.

He said Indian companies have developed a strategy. “They, with the help of the non-resident Indians living in US, maintain a US address and better credentials and place a medium-price bid. So when the employer sees two bids, one from Bangladesh and the other from the US (originally from  India), they choose the latter, despite higher prices, in terms of quality assurance,” he said.

“This doesn’t mean that we can’t provide high-quality work. It’s a question of attitude which nobody can erase from their minds, while dealing with financial matters”, he added.

Individual freelancers face even worse situations. According to BASIS, there are about 4,000 freelancers in Bangladesh, with half of them dysfunctional.

When asked, Julfiqar Ali Bhuiyah, a freelancer, told The Independent, “We’ve to work hard on a project for two weeks. According to the rules of the marketplace, we get only one-third of the total money after submitting the initial framework, which is called the alpha stage. But at the gamma stage, after submitting the project, most clients reject it on grounds of inferior quality, and do not pay two-third of our money.”

Also, clients never feel safe with freelancers, as they do not belong to a licensed company.

“We can’t create enough opportunity for our young IT professionals.

Moreover, they are poorly paid by software companies for the first three or four years. It forces them to go for management courses, thus taking them away from the core professional area”, Dr

M Kaykobad, a professor of Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology, told The Independent.

“We must take this to the next level, in order to create a digital Bangladesh, rich and resourceful in the IT sector. I strongly deny the allegation that our students lack the potential to design high class software. I can give you more than 100 names of my own students in BUET, who are currently working in Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle and other big companies”, he said.

Source: http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/frontpage/129-frontpage/135013-it-outsourcing-earnings-rise-by-56-per-cent.html

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IT outsourcing enables agility in natural resources organisations

The change in dynamics in the ICT industry has resulted in different methods of delivering IT and communication services. By being flexible and innovative enough to foresee these changes means cloud computing, IT outsourcing and telephony expense management (TEM), are playing increasingly critical roles for businesses operating in the natural resources sector.
The benefits of these services enables organisations to be more agile in delivering ICT services, while driving the effectiveness and efficiency of ICT services to natural resource end-users.

The inherent geographical spread of natural resources organisations (metals and minerals, oil and gas, forestry and paper) has meant that, over time, the trend towards outsourcing or contracting non-core ICT functions to an experienced, dedicated and reliable service provider has gained in favour. Metals and minerals operations are traditionally geographically dispersed, with some located hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town. The challenge with this type of set up is that access to good skills, which understand the metals and minerals commercial and operational environments, is a continual challenge.

Remote support tends to work very well in these environments, but a lack of innovation due to ICT not understanding the nature of the organisation it is supporting, has presented a multitude of challenges, culminating in aspects like minimal access to the correct IT expertise. In these situations, there’s limited access to teams of people with relevant ICT experience. Due to this, often an individual in the organisation fulfils multiple roles at remote sites. As an example, this resource would act as the IT manager, desktop support manager, server engineer, and application engineer, functions that require deeper skillsets, but are often trusted to this single person. This leads to disparate skills and services being performed at each operation as the services are dependent on the level of expertise of the specific individual.

Becoming increasingly agile

The ability for natural resources organisations to be more agile in delivering their ICT services is a continual challenge. For these companies to be able to add value to their operational environment, they require a spread of diversified skills to operate effectively and efficiently. Due to the remote geographical locations in which they often operate, this is impossible to achieve as resourcing in these areas is difficult to come by. The trend is for more companies that operate remotely to outsource their IT and communications needs, as they simply don’t want to worry about managing people and technology.

However, even though outsourcing to a dedicated service provider is the ideal, it’s also seldom the most practised method. The key is to manage technology demands and delivery expectations of these organisations in three ways: offer a core set of centralised services; only deliver what is totally necessary at the remote site; and, where possible, standardise on services across all operating sites.

Centralised core services enables clients to access key resources, such as a central service desk, without having to purchase the service physically. Such companies would rather pay for someone to deliver a service and run it as an operational model, while outsourcing or contracting non-core services. By centralising services, natural resources organisations are able to access the correct skills and drive down their total cost of ownership (TCO). The same applies to managed services principles for all ICT technology domains.

In addition, companies operating across borders are under increasing pressure to manage their legislative, regulatory and compliance requirements governed by Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other legislative measures. In these cases, the ability to source the necessary skill in a particular geography based on the legislative need becomes easier if outsourced to a service provider. Secondly, the ability to standardise good practices globally, to ensure that legislative requirements are regulated and managed in the same consistent manner across all operations, is easier to achieve if managed as an end-to-end service through an ICT outsource partner.

Core value chain activities

Natural resources organisations’ primary focus is on their core value chain activities. These are what deliver value to shareholders. In many of these organisations, the measurement factors of the cost of production against the cost of sale, while balancing this with safety mechanisms, are core drivers to determine how the operation is performing. Organisations in natural resources are under pressure to reduce the cost of operation as safely as possible, to ensure a better return on the capital employed in the operation. Where ICT is involved, it is often seen as a cost base on the bottom line of the company. One of the primary reasons that ICT outsourcing makes sense for natural resources organisations is because it provides consistency of services and cost, and guarantees a certain level of service, which together help reduce operating costs.

One of the biggest grudges that ICT managers have within metals and minerals operations is the constant flux in the cost of technology. The result is that there is a big move by service providers to offer these organisations predictability in their cost base, which is an update on the legacy operational systems of what were once called step-down costs. New financial models that allow services and resources to be purchased on-demand allow for agility in ICT operation in the business, freeing up capex and opex to the business for reuse on important operating initiatives.

Innovation

There’s an expectation from clients in the natural resources space for ICT service providers to innovate while using technology and ideas to improve processes within the organisation continually – the mantra is to become more efficient to be able to pass on cost savings to the client. The ability to be agile when delivering ICT services is fundamental to the overall success of any outsource project, which may include networking, security, converged communications, application development and support, and other IM-based services. Being able to present clients with a broad IT service offering makes the world of difference, while offering enough flexibility to adapt to changing demands, specifically contractually as the business changes over time.

This ties in very closely with the ICT service provider’s ability to offer strong management skills as well as innovation across multiple areas of ICT and within the all-important client space. Being able to understand the business requirements of ICT systems, such as the critical nature of the exchange environment, is critical to the success of any managed service environment. Services based on this understanding can then be defined that are fit-for-purpose for the business.

Over and above this, there is a need for an outsource partner to understand the base dynamics of the organisation. These fundamentals are building blocks to enable innovation to flow between both parties, which allows for innovative thought leadership to become a reality, driving agility, effectiveness and efficiency over the long term.

Source: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/379/82780.html

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