India's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services today announced the global implementation of an integrated financial management system for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The company has helped IOM roll-out its financial management system to first six locations - Geneva, Manila, Moscow, Skopje, Sarajevo and Budapest as per the project schedule and budget.

The system would help in providing transparency to member states of IOM, donors and other stakeholders across the globe. It would also improve reporting times and support the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) in IOM.

TCS has also been awarded the contract for rolling out the financial management system across 140locations of IOM.

"This go-live of the first six missions and our subsequent appointment for IOMs full global roll out, comprehensively demonstrates TCS capacity to deliver highly customised solutions to global organisations," TCS Europe Director Girish Ramachandran said.

The implementation of such a complex financial management system within deadline and within ascribed funding provides a testament to a strategic IOM and TCS partnership, including TCS's global presence and the commitment to succeed, said IMO Director of Resource Management Ovais Sarmad.

IOM is an inter-governmental organization managing migration by addressing the multi-faceted challenges of migration in partnership with governments and other public and private sector entities. It is headquartered in Geneva and has 125 member states.

Information technology is still the top choice for future employment at engineering colleges in India for the Class of 2009, according to an AC Nielsen Campus Track T-schools study.

The study included 140 top engineering schools and surveyed students’ attitudes toward recruiting companies and prospective employers.

The top three companies among the students are Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Google and Accenture.

Asked about the top five industry sectors of the future, students listed IT products and services, nanotechnology, management consultancy, energy, oil and gas and finance.

Vatsala Pant, Associate Director, Client Solutions at The Nielsen Company, said:

“Though IT continues to be the favourite among engineering students, we can expect to see them face the heat from unexpected quarters in the years ahead through the resurgence of energy, oil and gas, financial services and banking firms, and an upsurge of nanotechnology.”

IT consulting firm and India’s biggest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been named as one of the top 100 companies chosen by The Sunday Times for the list of "Companies that Count in 2008" for helping people globally through various corporate responsibility programs. 

TCS is a global leader in information technology consulting, services, business process outsourcing and engineering services, says the report. The company has reshaped the IT services industry when it introduced the “Global Network Delivery Model” and perfected a unique method of global deployment and delivery for high quality products and services in IT consulting and business process outsourcing.

Consulting and accounting giant Accenture is at the top of the list, followed by the British Airport Authority (BAA) in the second.

Last year, Tata Consultancy Services took the top position among the “Top 10 Best Performing IT Services Providers” on the Global Services 100 list.

Indian software maker Infosys is weeks away from crossing the 100,000-employee mark and joining Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in the prestigious club.

Infosys currently employs 82,000 people and has made job offers in more than a thousand engineering colleges in India.

“We have given 18,000 offers. This shows our confidence in the business. We will soon employ in excess of one lakh people in India,” says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director of Human Resources and former CFO at Infosys.

The company expects the conversion rate (number of candidates employed) to be between 70 and 80 percent.

Infosys has announced plans to hire a total of 25,000 employees this year in IT, business process outsourcing and consulting services. For comparison, Tata Consultancy Services has plans to hire between 30 and 35 thousand new employees, including 20,000 fresh hires from 200-250 colleges.

IT analyst Apurva Shah says: “Headcount addition is in line with their guidance and shows the business confidence despite question marks over the U.S. economy.”

The company is aggressively hiring, but also taking steps to fight off attrition. “We are tightening our assessment of top performers. We would also introduce variable pays for middle and senior-level management,” says Pai.

 

The company has a new performance-based pay structure that can make a difference between average and top employees’ salaries to vary up to 40 percent. “Our attrition is 13.4 percent and we want to get it in single digits,” comments Infosys’ head of human resources, Nandita Gurjar.

 

Companies in the IT and business management sector employ a total of about two million people in India. Local technology giants Tata Consultancy and Infosys have most of their staff based in India.

Global industry leaders IBM and Accenture employ 368,000 and 172,000 people worldwide respectively and, because of the lower costs in India, they are currently waging a war for talent in the country, for employees and staff in middle management.

This is not to say that Infosys does not recruit new employees abroad. This year, the company has hired more than 20 people from UK campuses and 145 from US campuses. 

 

 

Several companies have announced major job cuts and plans to offshore IT jobs to India over the last couple of days.

Barclays' tech staff in Poole fear that their division will close by the end of the year, which would result in a loss of a few hundred jobs, following the announcement the bank made earlier this year, revealing plans to offshore some of its UK IT roles.

A Barclays' representative said: “As each part of the business grows, there will be changes and within those changes there may be an impact on the IT function and there may be some element of offshoring to meet the needs of business," adding:  

“Our business in Africa is growing, therefore we have service hubs that we need to develop to meet the (region’s) growing needs… (which) may require the offshoring of some jobs from the UK to Africa.”

Publishing firm Thomson Reuters will cut 250 out of 650 jobs in its IT, content and operations division in the wake of the results of the consolidation review processes, which showed that many of the jobs in question overlapped.

Staff reviews were part of the consolidation plan since the merger. When the two media groups joined forces, they announced plans to save £383 million by the third year through “synergies in areas such as property and technology.”

The consolidated company does not yet know how many UK jobs across the specific divisions, including technology, will be gone, but expects to have the exact numbers within the next two weeks.

Royal Mail recently made almost a half of its permanent IT jobs redundant following a similar staff review.

Lloyds TSB will outsource about 450 IT jobs - 200 contractor posts and up to 250 permanent positions - to a technical facility in India.

The bank's decision will reportedly affect IT staff in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and other big cities and leave only a fifth of the IT staff in the affected areas in the UK. The offshoring process begins in August. The bank reportedly plans to offshore a total of 655 IT jobs to India over the following nine months.

The workers' union Unite called the decision “unjustified,” saying that it “represents a lack of faith in the IT skills of their UK workforce.”

The bank said that the employees who find themselves redundant would be offered replacement roles. In response, Steve Tatlow, assistant general secretary to Lloyds TSB Union (LTU), commented:

“There is no guarantee that these replacement roles will be on the same pay scale, (in the same) location or even that the job will be in IT; they could be completely unsuitable. A lot of people will be choosing redundancy. We are fundamentally opposed to offshoring.”

Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro will take over the positions.

 

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Information technology companies have been reporting a steady, healthy growth of revenue, but U.S.-based IT companies have had higher revenue growth than their Indian peers according to a new study by IT research and consulting firm Gartner.

In 2007, Indian IT companies' revenue grew 38 percent and U.S. firms' saw a 55.4 percent growth. Revenue from IT services totalled $748 billion globally last year, which is 10.5 percent more than in 2006.

The domestic IT services market in India chalked an 18 percent growth, which was a better result than the overall Asia-Pacific growth rate in the sector.

“While cost remains a key consideration in the outsourcing services market in India, operational efficiency and business agility is driving most IT services engagements,” says Gartner’s senior research analyst Arup Roy.

India-based IT services vendors performed well on the whole, chalking a 38 percent growth rate, but none of them were ranked in the top 25 IT service providers. India’s best ranked IT vendor is Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) at #28.

IBM remains the world’s market leader in IT services with 7.2 percent of the share and a growth rate of 12.2 percent. Accenture also reported a strong growth rate: 19.7 percent.

Kathryn Hale, vice-president of research at Gartner’s worldwide IT services group, said:

“This strong growth, combined with strong first quarter results for market leaders, runs counter to the gloomy and widespread economic concerns arising in the U.S. To build on their success in 2007, service providers should focus on selling services that will deliver visible returns in 2008, either in cost, speed to market, or business impact. Apart from that, they should also focus on growing sales in emerging markets that enjoy faster-growing economies and high growth rates.”

World's biggest PC maker Hewlett-Packard was reported to be in advanced talks to acquire IT services provider Electronic Data Systems (EDS) yesterday and news about the acquisition, as the Wall Street Journal predicted, arrived as early as today: HP has agreed to buy EDS for $13.9 billion. 

HP chief executive Mark Hurd said:

"The combination of HP and EDS will create a leading force in global IT services. Together, we will be a stronger business partner, delivering customers the broadest, most competitive portfolio of products and services in the industry."

The acquisition will be a tremendous boost to HP's IT consulting arm and more than double its size to produce a new business that will be better equipped to take on International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) as a rival on the IT services market.

Hewlett-Packard has tried for years to challenge IBM in the lucrative field of IT services by improving its technology consulting and data management arms.

In 2000, HP's attempt to buy the PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting division failed and the PwC consulting business ended up in IBM's hands instead.

“While Hewlett-Packard has over time built up its own outsourcing practice, this clearly is a move by Mark Hurd to challenge IBM in the services area,” said David Garrity, director of research at Dinosaur Securities.

The information technology services market is particularly interesting to HP because experts predict that it will grow more than eight percent annually over the next five years. At the same time, Wall Street analysts predict that HP will grow about five percent.

EDS reported revenue of $22.1 billion last year. The company's main rivals are Accenture and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) on the U.S. market and Indian tech giants Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies Ltd. internationally.

In 2007, IBM held 7.2 percent of the share of the technology services market. EDS followed with three percent and HP had 2.3 percent and was fifth overall, according to a Gartner report.

In the last three years, HP has mostly seen its business flourish. Since Mark Hurd came onboard as the new chief executive, the company has overtaken IBM as the largest global technology company and Dell as the world's number one seller of personal computers.

The acquisition of EDS will also help HP yield more government contracts: EDS' government projects are worth about $2.5 billion. The company is among the top 10 government technology contractors in the U.S. and the number one government contractor in the UK.

This will be HP's biggest acquisition since 2002, when the tech giant bought Compaq Computer Corp. for $19 billion.

In the wake of the acquisition talks, EDS shares rose almost 28 percent, while HP's dropped more than five percent, reflecting investors' concerns over the deal.

Commenting on yesterday's reports, an IBM representative said: “Integrating services companies is difficult. And to be competitive today, you have to be globally integrated.”

Echoing the thought, AMR Research analyst Dana Stiffler warned: “Palo Alto versus Plano wrangling will destroy any short-medium term benefit unless there’s a strong integration roadmap.” 

A new global survey of information technology service providers and clients who buy IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services shows that the current economic slowdown in the United States will most likely not have a major impact on the global IT services and BPO industry.

The survey was conducted by CyberMedia and it included 129 buyers of business outsourcing services and more than 200 service providers, both groups mainly from the U.S.  

IT services giants such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro will be at an advantage during the slowdown period as they are better equipped to pursue new business opportunities.

The survey also shows that, in response to the slowdown, the IT services industry is increasingly focusing on markets outside the U.S. and re-aligning existing services areas.

IT service businesses mainly plan to focus areas that are currently in demand – systems integration, BPO and infrastructure management – on markets outside the U.S.

Companies that offer business outsourcing, infrastructure management and application maintenance services reported that the market recession had not affected the deals pipeline in this quarter and that, in many cases, the exact opposite was the case.

On the other hand, businesses selling new application development and offshoring services said that they were suffering delays, downsizing or renegotiation of contracts.

More than a third of the service buyers said that there were no large scale cuts in IT spending and approximately the same number of respondents said that their business leaders may outsource IT projects in the short term.

The majority of respondents predicted that the staff most likely to be affected by the slowdown and subsequent spending cuts in the short term were IT contractors, full-time hires and IT consultants.

The area least likely to suffer the consequences of the recession is business process outsourcing, said more than a half of the respondents.

Global Services editor Ed Nair said:

“BPO vendors handle business-critical processes needed to keep the business running. Most BPO assignments are long-term annuity contracts and thus shielded from the effects of economic cycles.”

The survey will be published in the upcoming issue of the Global Services magazine.

Established U.S.-based companies surpassed overseas competition to earn the top two spots on this year's Global Outsourcing 100, the annual expert ranking of the world's best outsourcing service providers compiled by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP).

Accenture was ranked the number one outsourcing service provider for the first time, coming out ahead of IBM, who had garnered the leading position since the list's inception three years ago.

Half of the top 10 companies are from India, reflecting the country's strong outsourcing growth.

Infosys Technologies was number three on the Leaders List, representing firms with annual sales of $60 million or more. The other top-ranked India-based firms were Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro Technologies, Genpact and Tech Mahindra.

Two companies based in France -- Sodexo and Capgemini -- also earned the highest rankings from the independent panel of recognized industry leaders.

Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto, California, came in number eight on the list.

"The power balance in outsourcing is shifting," said Jagdish Dalal, IAOP's managing director, thought leadership, who led the judges' panel. "The intensifying global competition was reflected in this year's ranking with companies from 19 countries vying for recognition."

More than 60 percent of the winners on the Rising Stars list are based outside the U.S., indicating that the companies to watch in the future will be from emerging countries.

First-time honorees include Beyondsoft of China, LawScribe of the U.S., and MERA NN from Russia.

The data also provides a unique industry snapshot and reveals its continued fast growth. Revenue among Leaders grew 24 percent in 2007, compared to 16 percent growth the previous year. These companies averaged $1.7 billion in annual sales and engaged 27,000 employees globally.

IAOP established the list as a resource to help companies compare providers using an objective methodology. It includes both Leaders and Rising Stars, as well as 25 sublists based on geographies, services and industry.

Similar to the request for proposal process, companies are ranked on quality following a rigorously judged application process that examines 18 criteria. Final rankings are based on a weighted average on demonstrated competencies, size and growth, management capabilities and customer references.

"At a time when companies that outsource are scrutinizing their providers more closely, the criteria our judges used are increasingly important in differentiating the top players in the industry," said Michael Corbett, IAOP chairman.

"The Global Outsourcing 100 is a comprehensive and useful guide to help companies research and compare service providers." For the Global Outsourcing 100 list and sublists, see: www.outsourcingprofessional.org.

About IAOP

The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With 40,000 customer, advisor and provider members worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn, more visit www.outsourcingprofessional.org.

BusinessWeek has released its fourth annual report, “The World’s Most Innovative Companies," based on a survey of key executives around the globe and made in cooperation with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). IT consulting firms Tata and IBM are on the list. 

The survey covered the largest sampling of respondents to date and was even more global in nature than the previous ones.

The companies that made the list have one thing in common: they have all nurtured creativity and maintained an interest in developing a wide range of innovative projects despite the economic downturn and the subsequent nned for cost cuts.

IN: Inside Innovation editor-in-chief Bruce Nussbaum says: “It’s tough out there and getting worse. Our annual list of the 25 Most Innovative Companies shows how executives are using the slowdown to create new value through innovation."

Other than the executives’ votes, the factors involved in producing the list of the most innovative companies were three-year revenue, margin growth and stock returns.

BusinessWeek.com also features the complete list of the world’s 50 most innovative companies, including lists of the companies by region and industry.

 

The 25 Most Innovative Companies are:

1. Apple

2. Google

3. Toyota Motor

4. General Electric

5. Microsoft

6. Tata Group

7. Nintendo

8. Procter & Gamble

9. Sony

10. Nokia

11. Amazon.com

12. IBM

13. Research in Motion

14. BMW

15. Hewlett-Packard

16. Honda Motor

17. Walt Disney

18. General Motors

19. Reliance Industries

20. Boeing

21. Goldman Sachs

22. 3M

23. Wal-Mart

24. Target

25. Facebook