Businesses in different industries based in the northern part of the Philippines were forced to halt their operations because of the heavy monsoon rains that fell during the early days of August this year. The heavy rain that happened has caused for major cities in the Philippines to be submerged in flood. Unforeseen circumstances like these can affect a business' revenue and flow of operations which is why it is highly recommended for business owners looking to delegate their operations to an off-shoring partner to know whether a contingency plan is in place. During the calamity, the Philippine government has issued notices that all operations including that of the BPO industry are to be stopped and have the employees go home. Business process outsourcing companies have complied with the government notice but are still hopeful that the bad weather would stop and that their employees and their respective families are safe. The situation significantly improved in the following days and some employees were able to go back to work and businesses were able to resume their operations.

For companies offering contact center services, one of the proposed measures during unforeseen national calamities was to forward or redirect incoming calls to a different site that is not affected. This way, there won't be an opportunity to miss any calls that might be converted into revenue or sales.

As for those that do not have other facilities in the country, it is best to give the client a prompt notice of the situation and if feasible, suggest a work from home or remote access alternative. It is also common practice among companies to have a skeletal force, to be comprised of team members who live near the area and who are not affected by the rains.

During the calamity, call centers such as Convergys (NYSE:[[CVG]]) have turned a part of their facility to serve as evacuation areas for employees who are stranded to guarantee their safety. Business process outsourcing companies value their employees and reports of workers' rights violations are now being acted upon by the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP).

A sound contingency plan and business continue plan could be a parameter to be considered when choosing the right outsourcing partner for your company. Great weather and effective strategies can always bring businesses to cloud nine.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Employee training contributes a huge deal to the outcome of the calls rendered by the agents in a contact center environment. Training enhances their confidence in dealing with both happy and frustrated customers. Business operations and processes may vary among industries but what is common is their value for their customers' satisfaction and their belief that their customers only deserve the best service or product.

Having a trained team of individuals attending to your company's customer service can be correlated with a higher production and customer satisfaction level. However, in a call center setting, what is often measured is the amount of time spent dealing with a customer, which is referred to as the average handling time.

Another standard that call centers wish to maintain is the quality of calls that their agents make. It has been regarded many times that a customer's feedback on a company's efficiency with their customer service could mirror how their company is being viewed by their customers. This is the reason why companies turn to a contact center, one that can cultivate and foster customer engagement that could lead to customer satisfaction. But despite being experts in that particular field, call centers still need to keep their performance and call quality in check regularly.

However, in a recent article from Harvard Business Review published on August 14, 2012 suggests that companies offering customer service solutions, primarily those in the call center field, look at a different angle when measuring the performance of their call center team. In the article, it points out that solutions providers are often cost-driven, attempting to keep their calls as short as possible to be able to make more calls within the day. This may look promising but what it often entails is a lower rate on conflict resolution, especially if conflicts are complicated. The article suggests that companies take on a different set of metrics or they can modify it according to their solutions. An agreeable criterion focuses on customer satisfaction and the ability to resolve the issue during the first call from a customer. This has been implemented by Belgacom, a Belgian telecommunications provider and the said metrics have reduced the volume of calls by 20% and it has driven a higher customer advocacy score.

It is understandable that outsourcing companies want to capitalize on their agents' performance, especially when they hire individuals with high competency. But it is also important to note that a good set of metrics will help them deliver a better suite of solutions to their clients.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

Just as the month of July was about to end, India experienced a massive black-out, a black-out considered as one of the world's worst power shortages ever. The power shortage, according to reports, happened on Monday and lasted for 15 hours. However, just a few hours after the electricity was restored, a system collapse happened across India's northern and eastern parts, bringing almost half of the country's population to darkness. The power outage was said to be caused by some regions exceeding the quota on electric consumption and the power minister of India warned that the states that have exceeded their power quota will be penalized.

The blackout may have affected around 600 million people in India but only a small percentage of that population was able to enjoy generators and most of them are from the cities protecting their businesses. Most Indian companies, particularly those outsourcing companies who have facilities in India such as HCL Technologies (NSE:HCLTECH) and CSC (NYSE:[[CSC]]) are well-prepared as news reports have suggested that power interruptions frequently happen in the country. But outsourcing consultancy firm ISG's partner, Steve Hall, pointed out that solutions providers have already invested in back up plans that are "capable of providing at least five to seven days of continuous operations in the event of a power failure." Also, it is important that redundancies in the systems are in place. It is suggested for businesses to know whether their solutions provider to regularly check whether their contingency or redundancy plan is in place.

It has been known that it is not only India who experience power interruptions because it has been reported by China Electricity Council that China will have a power shortfall that may reach 40 million kilowatts this year, which will be reflected in regional, temporal and seasonal failures.

It may be seen that these power shortages in major outsourcing destinations are testing the capabilities of outsourcing vendors to provide continuous service under circumstances brought about by external factors. Outsourcing companies who have set up plans to be in effect during emergencies show that they not only value their clients for the sake of earning money, but they also care about the business of their clients.

Share you thoughts with us in the comments section on what else should be in a company's contingency plan.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

Recently, news broke off that the Anti-Outsourcing Bill has been blocked by the Senate of the United States with a 56-42 vote. In the event that the bill pushes through, it would definitely have a massive effect on the economies of both India and the Philippines. Also, it could also cost companies a percentage of their budget as there will be penalties should they wish to pursue off-shoring. As protection to American companies, those who will opt to have their operations within the United States will be provided with a 20 percent tax deduction on costs. But would the 20 percent be enough to match the amount of savings, and also the other benefits, that outsourcing companies pitch to their clients?

The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) has already voiced out its opinion on the said Anti-Outsourcing Bill before when it was proposed and now, they have once again released a statement regarding the Anti-Outsourcing Bill; this time, welcoming the news that it has been rejected.

Benedict Hernandez, president and CEO of Business Process Association of the Philippines, said that "outsourcing business services to the Philippines helps make American companies more competitive and profitable." This is primarily the reason why there are outsourcing companies who have become the trusted and preferred outsourcing partner of businesses across the globe.

There have been groups in the United States that create advocacies, such as the No Tax Breaks NY, that stand against contracting outsiders for call center services such as inbound customer support or outbound customer support. This is because they claim that outsourcing middle or back office jobs hurts their unemployment rate. However, according to the article cited earlier, there have been studies that debunk the notion that outsourcing pushes the unemployment rate in the United States to go up. In fact, the study by Matthew Slaughter suggests that for every job being outsourced, American firms create two jobs in the United States.

It may seem impossible to restrain businesses from outsourcing because of the benefits outsourcing services vendors provide their clients. Also, businesses are keen to keep their monetary resources at a healthy level and outsourcing restrains them from depleting their resources as one of the primary benefits of outsourcing is having the same level of work quality but at a cost-effective business model.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

According to a press release issued by MarketsandMarkets during the latter part of last week, the global healthcare business process outsourcing market is growing at a CAGR of 21.4%. Pharmaceutical outsourcing takes up the largest share of 64.3%, but its growth will slow down within the next 5 years. Whereas on the other hand, the healthcare provider outsourcing has the highest forecast for growth rate of 31.9% between the years 2011 and 2016. However, as the market becomes saturated, the sector's growth has a tendency to slow down in the future. In this particular analysis, claims processing is the dominating service that has the highest share in the market, taking up 59%. Next in line after claims processing is the member services/customer care services. With the growth that is expected from the healthcare outsourcing industry, it is quite possible for companies to dig deeper into this particular branch of outsourcing now before the market gets saturated.

Recently, a statement has been released by ExlService Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:[[EXLS]]) that it has decided to expand its global reach through establishing an outsourcing facility in the Philippines. Together with this expansion is its aim to deliver complex solutions in the field of insurance and healthcare, as well as customer service, finance and accounting and legal support services. The Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Sponsor of ExlService Holdings Inc. says that the Philippines has "established itself as a center of excellence for unscripted voice work, clinical management, customer service, legal services and finance & accounting," and this could be the very main reason for their strategic decision to put up a facility in the Philippines. Their new facility's manpower is targeted to attract manpower of 1,000, an added headcount to their existing 1,500-employee count in its existing facility in the country.

Late last year, around the month of October, the Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (HIMOAP) points out that the association is looking to promote the country as the top outsourcing destination for healthcare solutions. The Philippine government is fully supportive of this endeavor as they regard the IT industry, which includes healthcare information management, as "one of the key big industry winners".

With the growing market for the healthcare sector in the outsourcing sphere, solutions providers are confident that they will be able to tap the prolific market of healthcare, especially that the outsourcing destinations' governments are very vocal of their support to the rise of this particular branch in the BPO industry.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

The outsourcing industry's market has already grown exponentially within the previous decade, now having a large population of solutions providers and quite an impressive amount of clients and business owners looking to outsource a part, if not all, of their processes. One of the industries that we have witnessed become a regular customer of outsourcing services is the public sector whose contracts that are being covers a longer period of time as compared to the other kinds of outsourcing clients.

There is a wide selection of outsourcing companies available in the market who can serve government offices, but quite a number of them still turn to certain outsourcing solutions providers for assistance. CSC (NYSE:[[CSC]]) is one of those companies who offer assistance to the public sector in conducting their agency processes, and one of those providers who get approached frequently. Recently, it was announced by Maricom, a company under CSC, that it has been awarded a contract by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The contract focuses on CSC's information technology solutions to be able to provide enterprise data services. Maricom has been a partner to this particular United States government office for almost 15 years, which is a great example of an aforementioned reason for being a regular customer of a solutions provider - having built a long-standing relationship with each other.

Another outsourcing company that recently sealed a deal with a government agency is G4S(LON:GFS). The outsourcing contract, which costs around 200 million pounds and will last for ten years, is bound to cover information technology solutions, among others, for the Lincolnshire Police Authority.

Most of the outsourced processes of government agencies are more inclined towards the IT outsourcing side; however another area that is common in public sector outsourcing is back office solutions. Government agencies are looking at the best way possible for them to provide efficient and quality work processes to better service their citizens and they have found that outsourcing actually works for them. The public sector is just one, and it is certain that there are other industries around the globe that also benefits from outsourcing.

Author: Jamee C.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.