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India to get 400 UK health service jobs
LONDON: Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is expected to move around 400 jobs to India to save costs as part of a part-privatisation of its back-office accounting and purchasing division.
IT services firm Xansa is reported to be taking a 50 per cent stake in a government agency that does purchasing and accounting on behalf of the
NHS. The firm has guaranteed to cut costs by 20 per cent, potentially saving the NHS £220 million over 10 years.
The deal will initially mean the transfer of 230 NHS staff to the private firm. They are based in Bristol and Leeds and are employed by the state-owned group Shared Financial Service Centres, which will become a private company in April under the terms of the deal.
The staff already conducts back-office work such as invoice payment and VAT (value added tax) returns for 36 of 663 NHS organisations and Department of Health agencies.
Xansa plans to increase the number of NHS divisions it services to more than 300, which should bring in revenues of around £500 million in the next 10 years.
A Xansa spokesman said that as the firm increases its staff numbers, 350-400 employees, a third of the staff on the project, will be based in India.
"We understand that any extra capacity created as more NHS trusts come on board will use resources in India," said a Department of Health spokesman.
India ranks fourth as US immigrants
NEWDELHI: India is the fourth largest source of immigrants to the United States. Immigrants have been the biggest source of population increase in the United States.
There are more than 34 million foreign born US residents, a record high. Between 2000 and 2004 , 6.1 million persons migrated to the US , of these nearly two million are illegal immigrants. While Mexico is the largest contributor, India ranks fourth behind China and the Philippines.
What could emerge as a worry point for Indians in the US, is the erosion of diverse nature of the immigrant pool.
The diversity of the immigrant population continues to decline, with the top country, Mexico, accounting for 31% of all immigrants in 2004, up from 28% in 2000, 22% in 1990 and 16% in 1980.
This could mean that future policy and legislative measures targeted for immigrants may be skewed. Interestingly, the percentage of Indian immigrants has been stable over the period.
Immigrants now account for nearly 12% of the US population. This is the highest percentage in more than 80 years.
The immigration trends over the last four years have had no significant effect on the age structure in the US. If the 6.1 million immigrants who arrived after 2000 had not come, the average age in the US would be virtually unchanged.
'It is time to learn EU languages'
NEW DELHI: An enlarged European Union presents India with a huge opportunity to tap the services sector there including the information and communication technology, but Indians need to overcome the language barrier, said a senior official on Thursday.
"Services sector in EU gives us an added advantage, but it is not being fully exploited due to the language barrier as there are 25 different languages in the expanded Europe, with UK being an exception," commerce secretary SN Menon said at a CII organised meeting in New Delhi.
He said as a first step to remove the problem, the government had initiated a language course for the entrepreneurs starting with German.
Besides, Chinese and Japanese have also been taken up, he said, adding the young enterpreneurs should increasingly make use of the expanded EU.
Menon said business process outsourcing from the European countries could be fully tapped only by learning their languages.
India can target potential areas for business like pharma, biotechnology, nanotechnology and auto components, he added.
Emphasising on quality, he said India could compete with others only if we have products of international standards.
He said the government was playing its part to help the industry for standardistaion with testing, inspection and certification of products.
Instead of just concentrating on the traditional items of exports, Menon said at the CII-organised 'Doing Business with the EU' seminar that industry should look at more diversified products and services.
HR BPO the next big thing
CHENNAI: After customer care services and medical transcription, outsourcing of human resource services or HR BPO is emerging as next big opportunity for Indian BPOs with the global market in this segment estimated at $40-60 billion per annum, experts said on Monday.
"HR BPO comes to about 33 per cent of the outsourcing pie. India has immense potential as more than 80 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies will discuss offshore BPO as a way to cut costs and increase productivity," said V Chandrasekaran, co-founder of Secova eServices, the first Indian HR
BPO. Sensing the potential, global BPO players including Fidelity, Exult and Hewitt have begun setting up operations
in India. However, most HR BPO players have not leveraged the offshore advantage as yet, he told
PTI. Research firm Gartner has forecast HR BPO to reach $51 billion and represent 39 per cent of all BPO revenue by 2004-end. "Payroll and benefits services are the most popular in HR BPO and are driving the growth of the market," said an analyst with
Gartner. "HR opportunity is absolutely new. It is a sunrise opportunity with huge potential," Chandrasekaran, who formed Secova eServices to tap this potential, said. "Our initial focus will be only on HR administration, benefits and payroll, in the mid-market which accounts for $13.2 billion."
Standard Life may shift jobs from UK
LONDON: After resisting the economic attraction of moving jobs to India for some time, insurance and pensions major Standard Life has admitted that it would soon have to succumb to labour market forces.
The company's chief executive Sandy Crombie, addressing an insurance industry conference here, cast doubt for the first time on the long-term viability of keeping jobs in the UK.
Crombie has so far stood firm in his view that customer service roles would remain UK-based. The company employs about 7,755 people in Edinburgh and 173 in Glasgow.
He said Standard was constantly examining what services add enough value to make customers want to pay a premium for them.
"If it's non-value added, we have to get it done as cheaply as possible whether it's done by people in our office, or by people sitting elsewhere," Crombie said.
Asked at the sidelines of the conference what he meant by this, and whether he was alluding to offshoring, he said Standard remained committed to providing services that add value.
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