SigEx Ventures :The end of printed newspapers?by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

The Boston Herald has antiquated production systems which produce paper inefficiently. This is why they're looking to outsource their printing operations. Some people just love this word..."outsourcing".I've heard it for so many times this year and last year that if I wasn't going to call 2007 "the iPhone year", I would definitely call it "the outsourcing year". What does it actually mean? "Outsourcing represents work done for a company by people other than the company's full-time employees."(according to www.investerwords.com). It's a new term, appeared in the '80s but I resent it because it's used for everything. The Boston Herald spoke to Dow Jones & Co.about outsourcing printing operations from Boston to a Dow Jones-owned press in Chicopee, MA, located in the western part of the state. Rupert Murdoch was the former of The Boston Herald and he sold it in 1994. He now owns News Corp and he talked about eliminating the printed edition of the Wall Street Journal- Dow Jones' main treasure. Perhaps it's about time we stop cutting trees like maniacs when we live in a digitalized world. Sure the smell of a paper is unpriceable but who buys papers any longer? Everybody is reading the press on the Internet, from work or from home. I won't comment on weather spending hours in front of a computer is a good thing or not but perhaps the Boston Herald should outsource somewhere else and never mind producing paper but invest in a good digital edition. I am sure this is the future, and we'll adapt rapidly to this sort of change.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

Outsourcing industry growing in Africaby Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

For developing countries, outsourcing is big business. Starting always with call centers, some countries like India or China now produce major parts of equipment for Western companies and are renowned for their small wages and hard working employees. These employees are being constantly trained on the job and many have become very good professionals. Even though some Indian software products don't quite meet American standards, the low level of interest in science from American students means that IT companies are forced to hire outside programmers who fit their needs. In recent years, outsourcing has become quite a phenomenon in Africa, too. Countries like South Africa and Ghana take advantage of their natives' near-perfect English accent and opened telemarketing companies to call the UK and the US. Ex-French colonies like Morocco and Tunisia try to contact French speakers and the business is going great, even though it may take a while to catch up with the Asian rivals. This would also be a great way to pull Africa from its under-development: telecommunications companies have had to build the infrastructure needed for long distance calls and thus brought countries like Kenya a little bit closer to 20th century technology. There is still a long way to go, as the continent lacks IT specialists and is facing a severe brain-drain, as well as a passive and pessimistic mindset. Now the Africans have found the way to success, it's only up to them to create strong corporations and start making life better for themselves.

related story: http://www.guampdn.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070730/OPINION01/707300317/1014/OPINION

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

SigEx Ventures : To-do lists found their solution in outsourcingby Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

Since outsourcing is the business of choice for many developing countries like India, China, Russia or South Africa to name just a few, it's been growing like crazy. Call centers, computer software, customer service or even manufacturing high-tech equipment, no job seems too big for the willing and cheap workers in these countries. The business is flourishing and now it's time to take matters one step further. Some companies hire people to do chores in the name of interested Westerners. Research, sending e-mails, giving wake-up calls, anything you need to be done outsourcers can do it for you. And why not pay someone else to waste time on your annoying everyday activities? If you have enough money to pay the monthly bill and you're generally a busy person, this kind of service is just the thing for you. Sites offering these services can be found by the dozens and their staff is well-trained, polite and hard-working and will do almost anything you ask. There is still a downside: if you start sending work abroad, when do you stop and draw the line? Asking your Indian assistant to do research for you is one thing, but if she's the one reading your child the bedtime story every night, you might be heading for serious problems. This personal type of outsourcing is more reliable than sending big manufacturing tasks overseas. It's a way for the developing countries to grow by their own power; many companies are created by native people without foreign intervention, as is the case with previous forms of outsourcing.

related story: http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=247638&pub=1&div=News

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

SigEx Ventures : Outsourcing firms woes of Bangladeshi workersby Delia Cruceru

Tenaganita, an organisation for renowned human rights of the Southeast Asian nation, did a survey revealing how workers from Bangladesh are migrating in Malaysia and being exploited over there. For the survey they interviewed 150 jobless and stranded Bangladeshi workers and they studied 36 cases of the workers already there who where describing their exploitation as trafficking. The outsourcing companies have to pay between 1,500 and 2,000 Malaysian Ringgit to the Malaysian home ministry, says Tenaganita Director Irene Fernandez. The former president of now dissolved Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies, was arrested for collecting unauthorized fees from workers, after he told reporters that he had to charge more money than the government-fixed rate from the workers. Many recruiting agents from Bangladesh are collecting workers from manpower brokers that make money from the workers pushing the price to two three times more than the actual cost. "We are concerned over the 'cuts' the different parties are taking from the total fees paid by the poor Bangladeshi workers," said in a statement Tenaganita. "We want the outsourcing strategy for labour employment be scrapped as it has failed and brought human rights violations." The living conditions for the workers are very bad, they say that they were given neither jobs nor food, their passports have been taken away on arrivals, and although they had a contract attested both by the Malaysian home ministry and the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur they didn't get any job.

related story: http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/07/30/d7073001117.htm

by Delia Cruceru for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

SigEx Ventures : Outsourcing is a hot flavour among tech investorsby Delia Cruceru

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is still at start for Africa, but the contact centre market from South Africa is being very strong now. In Kenya it is expected that 30.000 people to have jobs from the BPO sector. The Kenyan Government is now converting the Kenya College of Communications Technology to a specialised BPO centre to educate the young people from there and to boost them up in to the industry. The government expects that major changes will happen in the economy with the help of the outsourcing industry, they are hopping to rake in over $200 million by 2013. The supremacy of BPO is held by India, and other countries from Africa such as Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa are considered to be rivals for Kenya's outsourcing industry. Manager of Cascade Global, Peres Were, a local firm specialised in setting up BPO business firms, said that the interest for this sector is growing rapidly. "The company is only three years old and has already set up 10 BPO firms. We are currently expanding into Uganda. We are also providing consultancy services to a number of European companies that want to set up call centres in Kenya," But the biggest problem for a firm to face in Kenya is high bandwidth cost and reliability. Ken-Tech Data, a ten month old BPO firm operating in the CBD, says it spends Sh24,000 a month on a slow and unreliable connection. The government is trying to bandwidth subsidy to the sector for accessing cheap internet.

related story: http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2175&Itemid=5810

by Delia Cruceru for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

There is still hopeby Claudia Sonea

Shocking as it was for me to see a foreigner bragging about Roumania, still things are not to be relieved of. Due to the struggle for power that still exist between the President and the Prime Minister, foreign investors continue to have certain reserve towards Romanian market, but Jean Claude Richard, Swiss Ambassador, admits that Roumania is a country with great possibility and that they are content with the dedication Romanians show. That doesn't surprise me at all, if you pay fairly they would work night and day regardless the work conditions. USA after a trial period of summer workers from Roumania Universities, had established a regular program through which students can go and work there every summer. When it comes to foreign investors from Swiss there are known mostly Nestle, Holcim and Energy Holding. They had success in this small country and saw that we are aware of the brand and the quality a product has. Also other investors from Germany, Spain and Greece have tried the market and never left, so I guess we are after all sitting on a gold mine and we don't even know it. The thing that must change is Romanian mentality and it will take some generations for this to happen, not one, but more. Communism has deep roots in people's mind and it still make people it was better then then now. So in order to fully exploit our potential, we should gave up to attitudes like that and adopt a democratic view. Until then here is some romanian music.

by Claudia Sonea for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

SigEx Ventures : Outsourcing to India causes concern in the USAby Corina Ciubotaru

Outsourcing to India is big business. Western companies started out by employing Indians to perform basic services, like customer support, and now commission them to do specialized scientific work like developing new drugs. And why wouldn't they? India has taken advantage of the new jobs in IT and now has huge numbers of engineers trained in this specific area, ready to take over some of the work from Western developers. Large companies such as Cisco and Citigroup already send loads of high-ranking executives to India to supervise the work. Now the US government comes into play. Some sectors requested that outsourcing be excluded from US trade policy, but they have been unsuccessful so far. This is partly because of the importance outsourcing has for the companies involved, and partly because most of the jobs done abroad can not be done in the US. Engineers are more abundant in India than in America, where young people seem to have lost interest for science. And they charge less, which is always a big selling point. India also has the advantage of language over other countries like China, as two million english speakers graduate from college every year. Indian companies like Zylog and Infosys have hundreds of specialized employees which they train constantly to handle issues from customer care to complex financial analysis. The government is making custom decisions that benefit the industry and creates tax incentives for IT companies, so this business is certainly seen as a major source of income for the state.

related story: http://www.outsource2india.com/why_india/articles/offshore_software_development.asp

by Corina Ciubotaru for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

SigEx Ventures : Blogs for yesterday, Monday 23 JulyTo outsource or not to outsource? That isn’t the question anymoreby Ana Maria Ciobanu

We seem to be hearing more often the word- „outsourcing”. Recently outsourcing is associated with hiving off various business processes to companies in countries such as India Outsourcing used to be a $930-billion industry in 2006. Impressive? In three years it is expected to grow at $1.43 trillion according to a Frost & Sullivan study. The information technology outsourcing trend attracts many companies but these companies should consider more aspects of competitiveness apart from cost effectiveness. The market needs more and more value creation and this is going to change the landscape of outsourcing very soon. India needs to understand this, as it is confronting with a very interesting problem- global outsourcing giants are shifting their bases away from India to other parts of the world like: China, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Poland, Philippines and Canada-countries that have the cost advantage, the quality and availability of human capital and the infrastructure to support it. The top three spenders in 2006 on SSO were the financial and insurance sector with $273 billion, technology and ICT at $233 billion, and health care at $130 billion, accounting in all for more than 50% of SSO spending, according to Frost & Sullivan. There are more areas involved in outsourcing though- areas such as and logistics ($113 billion), energy ($84 billion) and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) at $59 billion. Companies will have to prevent the overheat of the SSO market because India has reached this stage in only three years. We’ve read and heard several opinions in these past years about outsourcing but we need to understand that these companies aren’t trying to take away the industry from several countries, but to complement them by mixing local talent with outside talent, a little bit of salt and a little bit of spice.

by Ana Maria Ciobanu for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

Outsourcing companies aren't as evil as you might thinkby Corina Ciubotaru

Today it’s almost common knowledge in the IT world that if you want services done cheaply India’s the place to go. Outsourcing has become somewhat of a trend and played a key role in developing poor countries with good science colleges such as India, China and Russia. But even though most companies think outsourcing is the easiest way to cut costs, this is not always the case. Cheaper workforce may mean lower quality, as some companies have noticed, and there even exist programmers who will only fix software bugs for a living. Language barriers are a serious problem when it comes to outsourcing, and the presumed low cost is initially rather high because companies have to send their own employees to train the outside crew and it may take him a while to work through all the issues. Outsourcing companies usually handle services like call centers and customer support for various companies, and rarely make the core products themselves. Some companies like Motorola chose to have their products manufactured elsewhere than the home country, but most firms believe it’s too expensive to move entire production facilities along with know-how to a far-away land. Some would say that turning to outside countries for services will ultimately destroy the IT business in America, by leaving worthy programmers out of work. But the reality is that there are very few programmers without a job in the US, while more and more employment opportunities arise for them each year, especially if they have precious knowledge in areas like Web 2.0, XML and user-generated content. This domain just isn’t interesting enough for many people, so companies also need to use workers from outside the USA to meet their demands.

related story: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070424_967747.htm

by Corina Ciubotaru for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models