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BPO Industry in India – A Report
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a broad term referring to outsourcing in all fields. A BPO differentiates itself by either putting in new technology or applying existing technology in a new way to improve a process.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the delegation of one or more IT-intensive business processes to an external provider that in turn owns, administers and manages the selected process based on defined and measurable performance criteria. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is one of the fastest growing segments of the Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) industry.
Few of the motivation factors as to why BPO is gaining ground are:
Factor Cost Advantage
Changing Inequalities in the Diamond Industry
“I’m extremely optimistic about the future of this industry,” says Paul Ekon, an emerging talent and fresh voice in the newly revitalized world of the diamond business. For an industry that has been hit harder than many during the global downturn, these are encouraging words indeed. While all businesses can be portrayed as political pawns, it’s hard to imagine one more highly charged than that of the South African diamond community.
What started as frontier prospecting in the 1870′s has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry helping to form the economic and political backbone of many South African communities. Diamonds, once so concentrated and monopolized, are now host to a much more diverse network of entrepreneurs and local governments, trying, especially in the last decade, to help communities better benefit from a still tightly controlled marketplace. “Although several companies still essentially control the majority of the business, things are beginning to evolve socially, beyond just profit margins – but it takes time. Since Sierra Leone and the illegal trade and traffic of precious stones have been exposed globally, there has been a new sense of social responsibility emerging in this industry.” What Ekon is referring to is the illegal ‘blood diamond’ trade which warring guerilla factions have used to terrorize and decimate local communities for decades. But, since the Kimberley Process was established to certify fair-trade diamonds in 2003, things have been changing for the better, although many in the industry feel that much more needs to be done.
The BEE, or the Black Economic Empowerment initiative has been trying to redress the inequality issues inherent in the mining industry for the last decade. Since 2001, black representation in management positions of the industry has more than doubled, and according to Mining Weekly is close to 30%. Of course the recession has slowed the initiatives for both women and blacks down, but now things are starting to rebound. Sandra Burmeister, CEO of Landelahni, in speaking to Mining Weekly, recently suggested that “training and development should start at the graduate level” and “skills development and employment equity are both fundamental to corporate success.”
Examination of the Problems Facing the Transport Industry
The transport industry is facing up to wide spread problems all the way across the board, from same day courier services through to heavy goods haulage firms. How the industry deals with these problems is a vital question in how we can move forwards beyond the difficulties posed by rising fuel prices, environmental concerns being levied on the industry and also the potential prospect of winters as harsh as the one that the UK recently experienced.
The recent cold snap has a massive effect on the transport industry, and continues to do so, as it presented multiple problems that courier services and those in the industry had to work around and deal with. First and foremost amongst these problems was the over-abundance of ice on the roads during this period. Many local councils were woefully unprepared for a winter as harsh as the one we had last, leading to salt supplies being much too low. This in turn led to many roads simply becoming unusable, especially in smaller suburbs or urban areas. Needless to say this had the potential to strike a crippling blow to the transport industry and, for many, it did just that. The industry, and Britain as a whole, was simply caught unawares by the difficulties posed by such a nasty winter, and this led to major problems for many businesses, however the transport industry was amongst the most prominently affected. Vehicles were forced off the roads and many companies simply had to shut up shop for a number of weeks, drastically affecting income.
This is something to we simply can’t afford to happen again, especially due to the potentially catastrophic effect it can have on smaller businesses and urgent courier services, who rely on their ability to get from A to B quickly. As such we need to ensure that local councils all over the country have adequate salt supplies should we face the same issues in the future. Not only this, but salt supplies need to evenly spread around. We, as an industry, simply can’t afford another winter like the one we just experienced and knowing that supplies could have been available in places that needed them simply rubbed salt into the wounds.
