The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Destination India for Australian BPOs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 18, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Destination India for Australian BPOs

Staff Reporter

Inadequate staff, cost escalation reasons

CHENNAI: A shortage of skilled manpower is making Australian companies look towards India for outsourcing a variety of operations, according to the Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce.

Last year, over a dozen Australian firms established outsourcing operations in India. It includes Optus, which moved 150 jobs to Bangalore, a tie-up between Australia's largest call centre-Sales Force and Hero group's call centre Heroites and a contract between IPP Technologies and Logica CMG for processing electoral data for the New South Wales Government.

Small and medium enterprises are also in the fray. Robertson and Marks of New South Wales is setting up a facility here for Computer Aided Design related work.

Though Australia has the largest call centre concentration - 4,000 call centres and two lakh employees - many of the facilities were battered by inadequate staff and cost escalation.

One per cent target

The Chamber, with Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Employer's Federation in Melbourne, is drawing up plans to attract call centres and business process outsourcing (BPO) operations to India. "Our objective is to bring one per cent of Australia's call centres to India this year," said C. Sarat Chandran, Director, Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce.

To create awareness on the opportunities for Indian call centres and BPO vendors, the Chamber will organise a workshop here on June 23. Several Australian and Indian companies would make presentations. For details , call: 28213231/28225603 or E-mail: indaust@vsnl.net.

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