Re: PLEASE FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO THE VP-CUSTOMER SERVICE
Why are these lists suddenly getting a lot of crap mail?
just curious...
On Sun, Jul 16, 2000 at 07:33:40PM +0800, info@1-ring.com wrote:
>
> Please forward this e-mail to the person responsible for overseeing
> customer service, technical support or your call center. Please
> consider FirstRing, Inc. as you explore ways to maintain your high
> standards of customer service in the face of rapidly increasing
> growth.
>
>
>
> FirstRing has established a call center in India to provide general
> customer care and technical Help Desk solutions for companies in North
> America. FirstRing's India call center agents have the capacity to
> handle voice communication to and from North America, process e-mails,
> engage in interactive chat, process faxes and mail, and provide data
> entry services. Because of the large pool of technical talent
> available in India, we can deliver very high quality technical support
> as well. In fact, our Vice President for Call Center Operations in
> India managed a 500 person technical support center for Dell Computer
> Corporation before relocating to India to head our operations there.
>
>
>
> By using state of the art technology and access to a highly educated
> English speaking work force in Bangalore, India, FirstRing is able to
> deliver higher quality service at SIGNIFICANTLY lower costs. Savings
> of up to 40-50% over internal call centers or major domestic
> outsourcers can be achieved. Moreover,employee turnover rates are a
> fraction of what call centers in the U.S. experience, leading to
> better retention and consequently, enhanced service quality levels.
> Here is a recent article from Voice and Data Communications Magazine
> which discusses the growing use of Indian work force to service North
> America.It mentions HealthScribe, the medical transcription company we
> started prior to establishing FirstRing, and discusses the expected
> growth of call centers in India.
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Sat Want S. Khalsa
> Vice President
> FirstRing, Inc.
> Suite 200
> 22570 Markey Court
> Sterling, VA 20166
>
>
>
> 703-480-8000 main
> 703-480-8013 direct
> 703-480-8113 fax
> [1]www.firstring.com
>
>
>
> +
>
>
>
> REMOTE PROCESSING: Enter India
> ----------------------------------------
>
>
>
> A host of new business and employment opportunities await as India
> becomes the hotbed for offshore remote processing.With distance being
> almost dead and geography all set to become a history, India is poised
> to develop into the largest offshore remote processing centre in the
> world. The global trend among companies is towards outsourcing
> non-core areas.This has spawned a whole range of outsourcing of remote
> processing services to India. Services include medical and legal
> transcription, data processing, HR, remote customer interaction (call
> centre), data digitization and GIS, back-office operation, revenue
> accounting, insurance processing, and animation. This has opened a
> huge employment opportunity in India besides the valuable foreign
> exchange that will accrue to the national exchequer.
>
>
>
> Why India?
>
>
>
> The unbundling of the largely labour-intensive activities is driven by
> cost advantages, making India the hottest outsourcing destination
> world-wide. Setting an offshore remote processing centre in India and
> executing the project involve a cost savings of about 40 percent.
> India has the additional advantage of being the second largest
> English-speaking IT manpower in the world.The improved satellite-based
> telecommunication network, which has enabled almost instantaneous
> high-speed transfer of voice and data, has been one of the
> contributory factors. In most of the centres, the operations are being
> run on a round-the-clock basis. The time zone difference is also in
> India's favour. Above all, the removal of trade barriers has added the
> needed impetus to the offshore outsourcing services.
>
>
>
> What Future Holds for India?
>
>
>
> According to a recent Nasscom-McKinsey report, over the next eight
> years, India could corner about 12 percent of the projected $142
> billion global market for IT-enabled services. The study projects that
> India could be making as much as $9 billion from these services by
> 2004 and by 2008, it could be earning $17 billion a year. Addressing
> the recently concluded IT Asia conference in Delhi, Prof. Dertouzos of
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the total manpower
> that can deliver quality back-office work or information services in
> India is around 50 million. He has taken into consideration the
> emerging new services in the field of education, native medicine, and
> counseling.
>
>
>
> The Players
>
>
>
> Some players were quick to realize the potential and took a plunge at
> the right time. These include Innodata Corporation, GE Capital
> Services, Healthscribe, Techbooks, and Bechtel. The late entrants
> include some Indian players as well-Usha (ITIL) and LNJ Bhilwara
> group, apart from MTC International, iDLX, NY-Dox, and Air Infotech.
> As these remote processing services were new to India, getting
> experienced manpower was not easy. Initially, most companies started
> off by providing the training themselves. As more and more companies
> started setting up their operations the need for trained manpower was
> felt. This has resulted in the mushrooming of training centres
> catering to the specific requirements.
>
>
>
> Medical Transcription
>
>
>
> Medical transcription services were one of the firsts to take root in
> India. Unlike in India, physicians in the US, Canada, and other
> European countries, are required by the law to maintain a
> computerized records of patient information. Physicians dictate the
> patient information, which is converted into a voice file and is
> transmitted to offshore centres via satellite links. It is transcribed
> and the document is conveyed back to the hospital. In the US alone,
> the medical transcription industry is worth about $6 billion and is
> growing at the rate of 20 percent annually. As there is a shortage of
> medical transcriptionists (professionals who listen and transcribe the
> document), companies are setting up their facilities in different
> parts of India. The pioneer in this segment is Healthscribe India, a
> 100 percent subsidiary of US-based Healthscribe Inc., which set up its
> facility at Bangalore in 1992. Currently, it employs about 1,000
> people. Ohio-based Heartland Information Service (HIS) is another
> important player in this field. >From one centre, the company, in
> association with Indian partners has expanded to five centres across
> the subcontinent employing about 3,000 people. Says Jacques
> Bourgeoise, vice president, HIS, "We are determined to make Indian
> subcontinent the largest transcription centre in the world." The
> company has also set up a centre in Kathmandu. MTC(India) expects an
> additional revenue of $10 million in the next five years from its data
> division. It also plans to offer other services like turnkey IT
> solutions and business processes re-engineering.
>
>
>
> Call Centre
>
>
>
> Currently the most happening segment, which has taken India by storm,
> is call centre. Call centre is a customer interaction service center
> where the agent answers customer queries from all over the world.
> India is set to compete with Ireland and Brazil, where a majority of
> these call centres is located. As there is no need of a physical
> interface between the customer and the agent these centres can be set
> up anywhere in the world. GE Capital Services was the first to realize
> the huge potential and set up the most-talked about centre in India
> today. The Gurgaon centre also manages payroll accounting for many of
> GE's units besides processing mortgage loans and insurance claims. It
> employs around 1,000 persons and has also opened a centre in
> Hyderabad. iDLX, also based in Gurgaon, has about 200 people and plans
> to expand it to 1,000 by the end of the year. The latest entrants are
> Air Infotech and Netlink who have a tie up with Cincom. The managing
> director of Air Infotech, Rakesh Gupta, says, "We have 300-seat
> capacity and plan to expand to 1,200 by the end of year which will
> make our centre the largest in the south east asian region." Jaydev
> Raja, erstwhile chief of Coca-Cola and Iridium India, is back in the
> news with his company, Commence Concept. Com. He has tied up with DCT
> Systems of the US for a call centre project in India.
>
>
>
> Data Processing
>
>
>
> Data processing is also making its presence felt in India. This
> involves the electronic conversion of source documents (newspapers,
> magazines, journals, etc). This is done through physical data entry or
> through computer assisted data capture using Optical Character
> Recognition (OCR) or Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)
> technique. After conversion and quality analysis, data is transmitted
> back to the client's computer overseas. NASDAQ-listed and US-based
> Innodata Corp. with a turnover of $30 million is a pioneer in this
> field. It provides Internet and online data conversion and content
> management services. It also has an internal software development
> cell, which caters to corporate needs. The Noida centre employs around
> 1,200 people. According to Ranjit Basu, general manager (human
> resources) Innodata Corp., "Ours is the largest facility in India and
> we are planning to employ about 4,000 people in the coming months."
> Techbooks and Apex Information Services are the other major players in
> this field.
>
>
>
> GIS
>
>
>
> India has also become a centre for data digitization and Geographic
> Information Systems (GIS) services which is a computer-based
> technology that captures, stores, analyzes, and displays information
> about places on earth's surface. Hyderabad-based Indian Resources
> Information and Management Technologies (IN-RIMT) generates
> information on natural resources and provide management solutions
> using advanced technologies such as Remote Sensing GIS. It has tie
> ups with several overseas agencies including Geospace
> Satellitenbilddaten GmbH of Germany, Jodian System & Software, Inc. of
> US. According to P Subba Rao, managing director, "We provide total
> solution to our clients. In this process we extensively use remote
> sensing and GIS as important tools to deal with spatial data sets.
> Thus, our solutions encompass areas such as natural resources
> management, infrastructure development, and environmental
> engineering." IN-RIMT, with a turnover of Rs 600 lakh, plans to build
> up clients in Africa and South East Asia. Delhi-based Ridings
> Consulting Engineers headed by Sain-Ditta Baveja, does ground survey
> and digital mapping capabilities through adoption of latest digital
> cartographic techniques. His clientele includes British Government,
> Infoways (US) besides several Indian agencies. The company did a
> business of about Rs 90 lakh last year.
>
>
>
> The Other Side of the Story
>
>
>
> The going was not so smooth for many companies in the beginning as the
> kind of jobs that were offered was new to India and job seekers were
> reluctant to embark on a career that had no precedence in India.
> Recruitment thus became a difficult task for most of employers and
> finally when they did manage to recruit, training became a major
> bottleneck. Some of the companies had to close their shop after
> massive investments on recruitment and training. Los Angeles-based
> Informatix Inc., which was one of the first players in medical
> transcription and had set up its swank facility at Noida Export
> Processing Zone, had to close down after spending crores of rupees for
> three years. BLS Infotech's similar project ran into rough weather
> before actually taking off. MTC India, which had planned for 300-seat
> transcription centre has managed to recruit only 30 persons in the
> last couple of months. ITIL managed to hire about 100 persons. The
> "rumour" that there is huge money involved in remote processing has
> led to the mushrooming companies-big and small. Medical transcription
> is the most glaring example. From about three to four players in
> 1992, the number today is somewhere between 200 to 300, most of them
> being concentrated in southern India. Only time can tell, how many
> will survive over the long haul India becoming a major offshore centre
> for corporate around the world for its remote processing or backoffice
> work, has a social angle to it which cannot be ignored. The
> remuneration given to the personnel manning these transcription
> centres, call centres, and data processing and other units is far from
> satisfactory when compared to their counterparts in the other parts of
> the world. They are paid a starting salary of as low as Rs 3000 to Rs
> 5000 depending upon the nature of work. The data entry personnel are
> lowest paid of the entire lot. Call centre agents and trained medical
> transcriptionists are paid in the vicinity of Rs 7,000 to 8,000. (In
> the US, these personnel get paid somewhere between $15,000 to 20,000 a
> month). Ranjit Basu of Innodata, however, feels that the fact that
> people are carrying on in the profession for the last three years is
> an indication that they are professionally satisfied. The salary, he
> feels, is in keeping with the work that these professionals are doing.
> Virginia-based Apex Information Services, had to close down its Delhi
> centre, employing about 200 people due to labour problems. However, if
> these companies who are cashing in on the new opportunity provided by
> India have a long-term strategy, they will have to create assured
> career paths and continuing education for the employees. According to
> the Nasscom-McKinsey report"If India aims to become an IT-enabled
> services hub and compete with Ireland, Singapore, etc., it has to
> bridge skill gaps and further improve infrastructure". This the report
> says require action on two important frontsenhancing location
> attractiveness by improving infrastructure and increasing people
> strength by building the skills.
>
>
>
> - Sudesh Prasad
>
>
>
> +
>
>
>
> Please visit our website at [2]www.firstring.com and either e-mail
> [3]info@1-ring.com or call me with any questions
>
>
>
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>
> References
>
> 1. http://www.firstring.com/
> 2. http://www.firstring.com/
> 3. mailto:info@1-ring.com
> 4. mailto:remove@1-ring.com
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