The Hindu Business Line : Outsourcing: Australia gains confidence in India

When it comes to offshoring, Australians still tend to worry about `the guy next door who will lose his job to someone in India," said Mr Fred Bertman, Managing Director, ANZ Information Technology Ltd, the captive centre of Australia-based ANZ bank, based in Bangalore.

Speaking at a workshop on outsourcing opportunities (BPO and Call Centres) from Australia, organised by the Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce, he said that it was only in the last three years that companies in Australia had gained confidence to offshore certain company functions to India.

Currently, ANZ's centre in Bangalore is an operation and shared services facility that looks after functions such as managing customer records. But it would still take a while to offshore direct customer interaction services, he said. When asked if ANZ would consider outsourcing to third parties, he said `never say never', but added that it was unlikely in the near future.

Earlier in the workshop, Mr N. Lakshmi Narayanan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cognizant Technology Solutions, said that offshoring is an inevitable development, since a company restricting itself to the local market could not register more than single digit growth. With expansion into a global market, the need for 24x7 services becomes imperative, which in turn makes offshoring a necessity.

Mr C. Sarat Chandran, Director, Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce, said that internal outsourcing was a widely held practice in Australia, with 4,000 call centres employing over 2 lakh people. The market is valued at A$ 2.5 billion and is projected to rise to A$ 3.6 billion by 2008. He said some of the advantages that India has includes the short time difference of four-and-a-half hours, and the cost arbitrage that he estimated to be at about 30 per cent per seat.