The recession proving to be helpful for BPO folks

The BPO industry will beat the odds despite the recession, say observers. In fact, they feel  the meltdown will prove advantageous for BPOs.

Most BPO in India, feels more companies in the US and Europe will now opt for outsourcing to cut costs.

In 24 to 36 months, many companies which were hesitant to outsource, may do so now. Only firing people will not help, there needs to be a structural change. Such companies will then look towards outsourcing which will bring more business to the BPOs in India.

The politicians who were objecting to outsourcing too will have to change their stand.

The downtrend in jobs was arrested to a certain extent in January. However, it may be a while before we see a recovery.

The job index for ITES and BPO industry moved up by 28 per cent in January.

Its seen that the industry has started hiring again.

Recruitment is taking place depending on the need. We now see many engineers among the applicants for BPO jobs. Perhaps, this is because the IT industry is faring badly.

The only catch is that BPO salaries are not as fancy as before.

The Overall Job Index for the country inched up from 697 in December 2008 to 738 in January 2009, an increase of 5% in new jobs.

Unemployed? Not to worry, here is some news which I’d like to share, surprisingly stressing on the optimism of the IT sector.

Placement agency says Indians will fill the demand of global IT infrastructure management services, which will be outsourced to India.

For those who think the IT industry is fast loosing its sheen as a prospective employer, there’s some good news. Experts say that offshore IT infrastructure management services will turn the present gloom to boom.

“The recent trend in the knowledge services sector has given India the epithet of the ‘back office’ of the world.
Now, a new thrust by the Indian software services players in the IT infrastructure management space could see India becoming the nerve centre of the world’s networks. But to support the same, it needs the right talent pool,” said Dr Uma Ganesh, CEO, Global Talent Track.

More jobs

The potential in the infrastructure management outsourcing space is close to the total IT space addressed by the India payers. Said Sudin Apte, country manager, Forrester Research, said, “The total IT services space that Indian players have addressed is close to $138 billion. Mainframe-related outsourcing is a $29 billion market. Network-related outsourcing is a $7 billion market, while the desktop outsourcing market is an $18 billion market. Add to this the distributed environment related outsourcing market, estimated to be close to $57 billion. If you sum up the numbers, you would see that it comes to $111 billion, close to the same market size Indian players have been addressing over the years with falling margins.”

This opportunity will translate into creating various jobs across functions like data centre managers and technical support executives, informed Dr Ganesh.

She said that due to increasing incidences that threatened the security of various applications, security professionals are in great demand. “After recent attempts to hack various online applications, there is a heightened sense of security. Adding to it is the complexity of applications that is increasing day by day, as large numbers of users are using the same applications, which were once created for a limited number of users.

This has resulted in pressure on the database, which is stored in one system,” she said.

Dr Ganesh added, “Professionals in public sector banking, insurance and e-governance specialists are also in demand.”