IT-enabled Services Research Articles

Interview with Tata Consultancy Services — Media and Entertainment Practice

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of Business, IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model. TCS has over 100,000 of the world's best trained IT and business consultants in 47 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $4.3bn for fiscal year ended 31 March 2007. More than 35 of the largest Media and Entertainment companies in the world trust TCS in their quest for certainty in an extremely volatile industry jostling with evolving market forces — Digitization, Convergence and their effects on new media forms. TCS' wide ranging experience spans the entire content value chain — from creation to distribution, across each of the sub-segments (print and publishing, filmed entertainment, broadcast and cable networks, music, advertising and new media), and from IT services to Digital Media platforms across the Globe.

Offshoring of It and it-enabled services: how far does India benefit from Its outsourcing industry

The literature on services offshoring typically focuses on the extent of job losses in the home country. The impact on recipient countries is rarely examined in the western debate on offshore outsourcing. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of offshoring in information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITES), including business process outsourcing (BPO), on employment creation and technology diffusion/innovation gap in India. The paper concludes that being a service industry, the IT/ITES sector cannot be expected to solve India's massive unemployment problem. India needs to build labor-intensive, manufactured products, not just services, in order to create jobs for millions of educated but unemployed young Indians. Concerning technology diffusion/innovation gap, in spite of impressive progress achieved by Indian service providers, they continue to lag behind in high-end areas that call for creativity and innovation such as inventing innovative business products, and creating new global markets for such products.

Information Technology Clusters in India

The Indian information technology (IT) industry is deeply entrenched in the key metros of India, giving rise to seven large IT clusters. The country's tier I cities Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, and Kolkata have all emerged as significant IT hubs. The seven IT clusters are different in their history, economic weight, activity base, anchor companies, business models, government role, and other driving forces. However, even as these cities are attracting IT investments and creating employment for thousands of citizens, the drawbacks of overstressed infrastructure, escalating real estate costs, and shortage of skilled IT professionals represent challenges for IT organizations. The paper substantiates the inevitability of the hardware and software sectors linked development at this stage. It is the first attempt to study the IT industry in India through the prism of the countrywise cluster development and combination of IT sectors – hardware design and manufacturing, IT services, software and research and development, and IT-enabled services for business process offshoring.

Changed Governance or Computerized Governance? Computerized Property Transfer Processes in Tamil Nadu, India

This paper reports on the first large-scale e-government project in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Called STAR (Simplified Transparent Administration of Registration), this project uses ICTs in the administrative processes involved in transfer of ownership of real estate. A World Bank study (Tamil Nadu Governance Challenges published in October 2004 ) identified a bloated government workforce, poor levels of transparency and accountability, high levels of corruption and the poor quality of public services as the significant governance challenges faced by Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu, however, has the advantage of a high-quality ICT infrastructure built for promoting IT and IT-enabled services industries. E-government is generally believed to have the capacity to increase productivity, promote higher levels of transparency and accountability, and contribute to increased quality of public services. It is interesting, therefore, to examine how the government of Tamil Nadu is using ICTs to meet its governance challenges. The Registration Department of the government deals with registration of documents relating to sale, mortgage, lease of real estate properties, providing title search reports and similar functions. Before STAR, the department followed procedures unchanged since colonial times. The department had a reputation of being corrupt, arbitrary and unfriendly. The paper reports the results of a study of the objectives, implementation, funding, and actual working of STAR, as well as a survey of stakeholders on the impact of this project. Based on these, it discusses the effect that key policy choices made have on the impact of e-government projects

Transformational Government? The role of information technology in delivering citizen-centric local public services

Following on from five years of ‘electronic government’, the Labour Government has recently announced a new five year plan for ‘transformational government’. Like its predecessor, t-government emphasises the important role of information technology in enabling the delivery of modernised public services. Modernisation is defined as an increasing emphasis on citizen choice, personalisation of services and understanding and responding to service user needs. This paper explores the appropriateness of the t-government agenda by drawing upon lessons learned from the preceding e-government era. Arguably the most significant citizen-focused technology of the e-government era was customer relationship management. The potential of CRM to support service transformation is explored and co-production, an alternative approach to citizen-centric service design, is examined both as a way of addressing weaknesses in IT-enabled service transformation and as a candidate later stage in the evolution of citizen-centric local public services.

A Framework for Best Practices in the Sourcing Life-Cycle: The Architecture of the Esourcing Capability Model for Client Organizations

Organizations are increasingly delegating their information technology (IT) intensive business activities to external service providers to take advantage of the rapid evolution of the global telecommunications infrastructure. The business processes being outsourced range from routine and non-critical tasks, which are resource intensive and operational, to strategic processes that directly impact revenues. Managing and meeting client expectations is a major challenge in sourcing of IT-enabled services, and examples of failure abound. The eSourcing Capability Model for Client Organizations (eSCM-CL) is a best practices capability model with two purposes: (1) to give client organizations guidance that will help them improve their capability across the sourcing life-cycle, and (2) to provide client organizations with an objective means of evaluating their capability. The eSCM-CL was developed by a consortium led by Carnegie Mellon University's Information Technology Services Qualification Center (ITSqc). This work began in March 2003. Data collection activities have included an extensive review of the published literature; interviews with clients, service providers and advisors; and numerous workshops with global participation. This White Paper presents the architecture and rationale for the eSCM-CL. This document provides valuable information about the eSCM-CL, its implementation, and methods to evaluate and certify client organizations.

Towards an IT-Enabled Customer Centric Service Supply Chain

In this paper we propose a broad research agenda for a total remodelling of the service supply chain. We argue that contemporary service supply chains do not match three crucial elements of contemporary business and are simply a development of operations and supply chain management thinking dating back to origins in the Fordist era. The service supply chain of today has developed through incremental changes to traditional, mostly product oriented practices and as such has remained inefficient, ineffective, and insufficient as a guiding model for global service supply chains that can successfully address contemporary requirements while fully availing of current technological and other opportunities. We suggest that instead of demarcated product or service supply chains elements of both types of operations need to be included. We also argue that advanced ICT must be designed and deployed to enable and support service supply and delivery in ways that the iterative adaptation of centralised legacy systems decades past their sell-by date cannot achieve. Thirdly, we suggest that contemporary service supply chains are designed for operational efficiency with the customer simply being the final receiver of the goods/services. Our view is that customers are the core entity in service provision and delivery, and that understanding and addressing their requirements must be central to the design and operation of service supply chains.

Is more IT offshoring better?: An exploratory study of western companies offshoring to South East Asia

We explore the link between a company's performance and the extent of its offshoring of IT-enabled services, focusing on large western companies. Our performance measures comprise sales, profit as percentage of sales, profit/employee and sales/employee over 1999–2004. To measure offshoring, we consider the extent to which these companies have offshored: (1) software development and other IT-related development and maintenance, (2) business processes such as payroll or claims processing, and (3) call centers. We performed cluster analysis using the three corresponding offshoring variables to obtain broad patterns of offshoring. Then we compared the average performance of the companies in different clusters using ANOVA; did a regression analysis of the performance measures against the three offshoring variables; and performed non-parametric correlations within industry sectors. None of these tests indicated any clear link between company performance and the extent of offshoring thus suggesting that further study is needed to understand when to offshore and how best to do it.

Protection of databases in India and sui generis protection

Historically, databases are protected under copyright law. India (which has been a major beneficiary of electronic commerce) provides copyright protection to databases. The adequacy of this protection is analysed in this paper, which considers the developments in digital technology that make most of the database manufacturers susceptible to free-rider competition. The paper aims to demonstrate that adoption of the Feist doctrine by the Indian courts leads to inequitable results. The solution advocated is the adoption of a sui generis legislation which clearly prescribes the property rights and limitations, to database creators in India. The present legal environment in India grants protection to databases under the Copyright Act 1957. The judiciary has interpreted this protection utilizing the ‘sweat of the brow’ theory as applied in Feist Publications, Inc. v Rural Telephone Service Co. The article argues that this is a thin layer of protection and acts as a significant deterrent to a database author's economic interests. The solution which the article suggests is a statutory sui generis database right. With the increased digitization of data, India is increasingly seen as the back office of the world. This outsourcing of work to India has brought in an economic boom particularly in Information Technology Enabled Services. The creation and exploitation of databases is a natural component of such services. Without the granting of an adequate standard of protection to the authors of the databases, the economic boom will not be sustainable.

Global Sourcing of IT Services and Information Security: Prudence before Playing

This paper calls for awareness of the risks in global sourcing of IT and IT-enabled services. It calls for appropriate assessment and mitigation of these risks. The authors identify ways in which global sourcing (often called offshoring) increases information security exposures and recommends strategies for managing such risks.

Globalisation of Service Activities: Opportunities and Challenges for India

The impact of globalisation on services is increasingly receiving the attention of researchers and policy-makers alike, as services have emerged as the single largest contributor to economic growth and employment. The present examines the processes of globalisation and their impact on the service sector, in particular on the IT-enabled services. Over the past decade or so, low-wage countries such as India have developed vibrant, export-oriented software and IT service industries, which admittedly have both positive and negative implications. On the positive side, globalisation tends to force down the price of services in high cost areas, increase output and improve service quality. On the negative side, there is dislocation from increased competition as uncompetitive firms lose market-share and their employees are laid-off. India is the most prominent off-shore location in the TT sector. Depending on the statistical source one is using, its share of global off-shore outsourcing business is estimated at 70 to 90 per cent. Its service portfolio focuses on a range of activities - application development, taking over the entire IT infrastructure or individual business support services (Business Process Outsourcing - BPO), and call centre services. As India's major trading partner, North America accounts for the lion's share - two thirds - of the subcontinent's software and IT-based services exports. Software and service export firms in India are growing at 20 to 25 per cent per year according to the best statistics available; and each of the three leading Indian software firms (InfoSys, TCS, and Wipro) already employs over 40,000 people. India has made substantial inroads in applications development, where it has captured 16.4 per cent of the world market. India's recent boom in outsourcing of IT services has further facilitated declining costs of international communication and transportation, which points to the wide range of economic opportunities existing in the service businesses. By 2008, the global market for IT-enabled services alone will exceed US $1,000 billion, and India's export of IT services will exceed $50 billion which is double the country's total export of goods and services in 2000.

National barriers to global competitiveness: the case of the IT industry in India

The IT industry, particularly IT enabled services (ITES), in India has shown remarkable growth over the past decade and continues to show resilience even in the face of a global downturn in the sector. While India has not been able to match China in manufacturing prowess, it may have found its competitive advantage in the area of knowledge‐based services to which its factor endowments are uniquely suited. Yet, the tremendous potential and promise of this sector in spurring economic growth and national competitiveness may not be realized, if the numerous obstacles to the sector’s growth are not removed. This paper traces the evolution of the IT industry in India, its positives and negatives and its potential to contribute to India’s global competitiveness. Structural barriers in the national environment to the growth of this industry are identified and discussed. Conclusions and policy implications are presented.

Cross Border Trade in IT and IT enabled Services (ITeS) between India and Pakistan (Initial Research Proposal)

Both India and Pakistan are exporting IT/ITeS/BPO services to USA/EU/UK markets. India has specialized herself as the leading expert in such services exporting services worth of USD 30-35 billion annually. Pakistan with all the necessary demographic and economic factors similar to India lacks far behind with exports only worth USD 150-300 million. Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) attempts to analyse the potential benefits in trading with India in value-added services exported over telecom networks.

Business Process Outsourcing Indian Context: A Retrospect and Prospect

The rationale for the existence of the firm is primarily based on considerations of the transaction cost and production cost efficiencies. The transaction cost approach to the theory of the firm exists to reduce the transaction costs. The concept of production cost efficiency posits that production by a team is the distinguishing characteristics of the firm and the team continues in existence only as long as the team output is sufficiently greater than the sum of the output under independent production to justify costs of organizing and monitoring team members. There are some challenges faced by industry globalisation of business change in the customers' expectations. Increased competitive pressure and shorten widows of opportunity are few challenges from industry points. The Indian software industry has grown during 2002-03, a period marked by fall in ICT sector revenues, a major drop in IT sluggish market condition. During this period Indian Software made efforts to manage on existing customer relationship to generate additional business and to tap geographies outside like US. And now many Indian Software and service companies are trying to tap other political markets like Europe and Asia Pacific. India is the forth-largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. India is one of the world's better performing and economically stable countries. GDP growth in past 10 years has been ranged between 5-7%. As the sector wise composition Agriculture- 27%, Industry- 30% and services- 45%. As far as IT and telecom sector is concerned currently India has the 12th largest network in the world and is growing rapidly every year due to privatisation and deemed surge. In 2002-03 according to National associations of Software and Service companies (NASSCOM) estimates, the Indian ITES-BPO industry is likely to grow by about 65%. Also according to the estimates of NASSCOM, total export revenues of the Indian IT enabled service industry are projected at Rs. 117 billion from Rs. 71 Billion from 2001-02. The key drivers of Indian ITES-BPO industry are Cost Focus on Core competencies, High Attrition. India has maintained its global competitiveness offering the best combination of cost-Quality-Scalability versus competing offshore destinations like Philippines and China. India is by far the leading destination for software and IT-enabled services exports, with total export value of nearly US$ 8 billion in 2001. The other significant destination Ireland has shown significantly slower growth with the CAGR of 18% over the last 8 years compared to India's 41% CAGR over roughly the same period. India has the closest competition with Ireland have slower growth with Cumulative Average growth rate (CAGR) of 18% over last 8 years as compared to India's 41% over the same period. Today India is the largest and fastest growing exporter of IT services. Based on current and future strength India scores over Ireland, Russia, China and other competitive destinations. The industry will employ 2 million people directly and create indirect employment opportunities for at least an additional 2 million peoples. Russia is known for its high quality talent but the policy support makes it difficult to compete on an international scale. China has the vast potential base of talent that could rival Indian Industry. However there are certain weaknesses such as the higher cost, limited project management talent and inadequate familiarity with English language, among others. The future of Indian ITES Industry depends upon the place and direction of globalisation; especially how the government policy creates a further impetus for facilitation FDI and specific programmes of support it provides to the industry. Also the ability of the industry to exploit the business opportunities to their advantage and counter threats in the international environments is also imported.

Valuing Women’s Voices: Call Center Workers in Malaysia and India

This article discusses the experiences of women workers in the emerging Information Technology Enabled Services sector (ITES), in particular those working in call centers representing customer care services for both national and globally-outsourced business entities. Although the Malaysian and Indian cases are not entirely comparable, the case studies give a certain insight into the changes in the lives and career patterns of women in the developing world. The article contributes to the debates about whether these novel institutions replicate the experience of the runaway manufacturing firms in the exportoriented sector of the 1980s. By producing new empirical data and privileging the voices of women workers themselves, the article discusses whether there is a devaluing of women’s work and skills or whether women workers have gained through these new employment opportunities, empowering themselves in the process. The article concludes that the future prospects for this type of work in developing countries need more state attention, in the context of the potential informalization of these jobs and trade protectionism from the West, particularly in the case of offshore locations.

Globalisation and the Changing Paradigm of Trade in Services

Globalisation involves increasing interaction or integration of economic systems across the world through trade, capital and technology flows. So cross border exchanges has led to outlocating of investment and production. In this background this paper traces the trends of business process outsourcing, especially IT enabled services (ITES), in the country.

Global Outsourcing of IT and IT Enabled Services: A Framework for Choosing an (Outsourcee) Country

Global market for outsourcing of IT functions took off in late 1980s and for the last five years, global market for IT as well as IT Enabled Services has been growing steadily. IT functions include IS analysis, IS design, IS development, IS implementation and management of entire data centers. IT enabled service, also called Business Process Outsourcing, include functions like call centers, accounting, payroll, employee benefits, tax preparation, radiology analysis, films and cartoons production, and even research and development. Outsourcing location can be onshore, near shore, offshore or far shore. Outsourcing industry has been inventing itself in a myriad ways. This is a conceptual paper providing an outsourcing scope framework and also a model for selecting an outsourcing destination country.

The role of export-driven entrepreneurship in economic development: A comparison of software exports from India, China, and Taiwan

In the puzzle of economic development, there is moderate agreement around one issue: that entrepreneurial, export-led development is likely to produce higher economic growth rates than inward-looking development. This paper begins by taking an overall look at the size and competitiveness of the economies of India, China, and Taiwan, with particular reference to the software and the information technology (IT) sectors. It then focuses on the role of software export entrepreneurship in India and Taiwan as exemplars for other sectors and for formulation of government policy. In Taiwan, successful exporters constitute a model deemed worthy for other companies to emulate. In India, whether the booming software sector will prove to be a sufficient exemplar and catalyst for change throughout the economy and government remains an open question. The paper concludes by taking a look at another related export sector—IT-enabled service exports. Throughout the various sections of the paper, government policy implications remain an important backdrop.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): Emerging Scenario and Strategic Options for IT-enabled Services

The paradigm shift that the Internet has brought about in communication has opened up a plethora of opportunities for outsourcing business processes (BPO) across continents. Success lessons in manufacturing sub-contracting are found to be relevant for under- standing the logic of BPO. Outsourcing involves transferring certain value contributing activities or processes to another firm to save costs and for the principal to focus on its areas of key competence. The possibilities of disaggregating value elements for the purpose of creating value in them at the sub-contractors‘ premises and final aggregation and synthesis at the parent organization are determined by the nature of industry, limitations of coordination and control, product maturity, and level of inter-firm competition. IT-enabled services (ITES) includes services that can be outsourced using the powers of IT; the extent to which this is possible depends on the industry, location, time, costs, and managerial perception of the risks involved. The Internet has facilitated execution of several activities, previously done within geographical proximity to the firm, from remote low-labour cost locations, drawing both transaction cost and production cost efficiencies. Some of the factors that come in the way of parents setting up their own operations in India and have significant implications for the growth trajectory of Indian BPOs are: direct cost of operations and scale economies long-term assessment of India as a low cost centre cost-benefit assessment of own vs rented possible loss of control over their transactions and confidentiality and security of the data if an outsider handles them brand implications of perceived drop in quality robustness of existing systems and processes. Many BPO firms do not seem to realize the possible exit barriers and strategies to manage exit, if necessary. What happened in the dot com era can very well happen in the BPO space also unless care is taken to manage this rapid growth while retaining productivity and quality. Two key capabilities required for success in ITES space are: capabilities to understand customer needs in the specific domains and acquiring business (BD capabilities) and capabilities to execute them efficiently (Ops capabilities). ITES firms are likely to bifurcate their firm into two parts based on these two critical success factors. The successful segregation of value elements in a number of processes has enabled value configuration in as many ways as required by customers, both in the case of product and service components of customer value. The current trend in outsourcing will go up when such analysis-synthesis becomes a routine. This will be accelerated also because the capabilities required to do so depend not only on technical skills and knowledge in a domain but also strong process capabilities. The trend of outsourcing is likely to continue to grow in the future despite temporary political protests because of the robust arguments outsourcing finds for itself in the economics literature, both in terms of transaction and production cost advantages. Sub- contractors need robust systems and processes along with adequate domain knowledge and assured physical infrastructure for this to happen. In any case, the Indian BPO firms have to consistently prove their capabilities to deliver and create near indispensable situation for the parent to survive without them. This will not only involve growing technical and domain expertise, but also refinement in systems and practices, while keeping costs under control. In essence, BPO firms have to manage their consolidation and growth challenges simultaneously.

IT Industry and Women's Agency: Explorations in Bangalore and Delhi, India

This article examines women's agency in the Information Technology (IT) industry and is based on field research in two cities in India: Bangalore and Delhi. We looked at both the software industry and IT-enabled services, particularly through the perceptions of women and men workers and managers within the IT industry. While a large number of women continue to work in gendered homes and work sites, balancing work and domestic responsibilities with little help from the men, they do, however, carry on an ongoing struggle to challenge embedded patriarchal relations within the family and in the industry. Conceding that there are socially sanctioned gender inequalities in the market, women prefer to work outside the home in an attempt to improve their social position and construct greater scope to enhance their agency, than be subject to family-based dependency and coercion.