30,000 people a year cannot be wrong - With Thanks to Elvis - Why do services providers not use their massive recruitment as a client discussion piece?

I met with another leading global IT Services provider on Friday who did not consider the massive hiring, training and retention efforts that they have engaged in (10,000 to 12,000 per year) for their global delivery centers as of real redeemable value to clients. This firm is not alone, most vendors are failing to properly communicate their success. In bare terms the ability to recruit up to 30,000 people per year, and have them "start on Monday" with a notebook, I-D card, training program and buddy system all in place is an absolutely brilliant supply chain undertaking. It is seen as an internal issue with little attraction to clients. But I beg to disagree. It shows the ability to change and provides similar ideas to a resources firm such as BHP who is looking for their supply chain to remove as much resources from the earth as possible, a Chinese insurer trying to sign up growth of policyholders in as quick a time frame as is possible, or an Indian Telco with the burgeoning rate of mobile customer uptake. All issues are about the ability to scale a business and manage change from a people, process and supply chain perspective. Whilst it is people in the case of IT, not coal, or insurance policies, the focus is the ability to scale so dramatically is something that needs to be used as an advantage. Dell uses it’s supply chain and logistics as a discussion point with clients from a hardware point of view, likewise services vendors need to use their ability to grow (and evolve in terms of process and location) global delivery as a key discussion metric with clients.
22. October 2007 12:06 by Phil | Comments (0) | Permalink

Offshoring at the end of the Earth - Christchurch as a location

I am currently in Christchurch being hosted by HP at their offshore Applications Modernisation center located here. Christchurch is the home town of my grandfather so was of note for me, it is also the home base for most things in Antartica, which explains the cold spring I guess. It is an interesting location, a city of 400,000 or so people, two strong universities and a captive market in the sense of limited attrition or movement out of the city, the NZ South Island likes to be a little removed from the north Island and Auckland in particular.

It is very much a niche market, there are other companies aside from HP here, and it is clear that along with HP, some of the Indian based providers are using it as a base for broader work in more expensive NZ markets such as Auckland and Wellington and Australia. Any capabilities further afield than ANZ will have to be using best practices and in niche markets, such as Public Sector or in the case of HP Apps Modernisation.

With a high Asian student population, and transient tourist aspect to the economy there is perhaps the opportunity for developing a broader level of non-English capabilities here but this will not be significant

5. October 2007 05:29 by Phil | Comments (0) | Permalink

Vietnam as an offshore hub

Last week I was fortunate enough to visit . Like virtually every country in Asia it is being touted as an alternative global delivery location. It has a lot to go for it, ie costs about 30-40% lower than , two options in terms of location ( Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon). In addition as a key emerging country it has a lot of foreign investment that is increasing. (10B in 2006, 7B in the first half of 2007).

It has touted itself as an alternative for French speaking offshore requirements, and IBM have several clients for this market. However it is unfortunate that this is likely to be a short term outcome. It seems that speaking French is no longer really encouraged in the education system (it ranks 4th, behind Vietnamese, English and Japanese). This will naturally lead to a shortage of available resources hence the relatively short term time frame. Using it as an English location will still take sometime, from what I listened to, and heard, English quality in terms of speech is still behind the competitive locations.

4. September 2007 06:08 by Phil | Comments (0) | Permalink

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