Expertise

In India Application development, maintenance, financial processing. Experts see India becoming a hotbed for more critical analytical jobs. In Philippines Accounting, finance, animation, human resources. In Russia Web design, complex software development, aerospace engineering. In China Transaction processing, low-end software development and maintenance. In Canada Software development and maintenance, tech support. In Mexico Spanish-language call centers, software development, data center outsourcing.

In Ireland European shared-services centers, software development. India also gets advantage in terms of cost advantage and more and more companies are turning to India for offshoring KPO work as quality work gets done at cheaper rates. For instance, drafting and filing of patent applications in the US is very expensive. A typical application costs about $10,000 to $15,000 to draft and file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Companies can save up to 50 per cent of the cost by offshoring the work to India.

"It’s good news for Indian knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) firms. India is the most attractive destination for KPO activities, says a study by independent research company Asset Management in collaboration with Kelly Services. The study shows India will have a higher growth rate in KPO segment of 45% compared with 25% in the BPO segment. The latter will, however, remain the lead revenue earner and job creator due to the volume nature of this industry." In many cases offshore efforts require that the outsourcing supplier develop an entire "community" within a country.

These sites typically employ thousands of resources (people), thereby requiring large scale recruiting and training efforts (and sometimes even housing). The facilities must also be operationally robust, often requiring redundant power systems, satellite up-links for data transmission, and large-scale computer systems. Over time outsourcing suppliers are developing the ability to move work between different offshore sites. The potential for short-term disruptions or longer-term changes in the labor market necessitate that work become "portable" across sites. This places another burden of scale on suppliers and their ability to quickly and cost-effectively rebalance work across different geographic regions.