A study conducted by Assocham, in an attempt to find the impact of night shifts on women and the opportunities for growth offered to them in various sectors, has indicated that only 28.9 per cent of the respondents surveyed felt insecure to work in night shifts. It is observed that despite the high rate of crime in metropolitan cities, few women felt insecure about working in night shifts.
The study found that Bangalore and Ludhiana were two cities that were perceived (44 and 45 per cent respectively) to be highly insecure for women to work in night shifts. In Bangalore, the Pratibha murder case is reported to have affected the situation adversely, while in Ludhiana, the gender discrimination could have played a major role, coupled with the orthodox attitude and rigid behaviour towards women, said the study.
Women in night shifts want the length of night shifts, including the time of travel, to be reduced to 7-8 hours, instead of the current practice of 10-11 hours. Mr Anil Agarwal, president, Assocham, said, "Favourable conditions of work for women in terms of security, monetary compensation and provision of fringe benefits are necessary for night shifts to be successful and socially acceptable."
The study found that mental harassment levels were high in Ludhiana (27%), followed by Kolkata (19%), Pune (17%) and Delhi (14%) and was relatively less in Mumbai (9%), Chennai (7%), Hyderabad (8%) and Bangalore (6%).
The responses of the employees from different sectors indicate that employees from textile and leather industry face maximum problems. Insecurity is found more in leather (45%) and textiles (34%) and less in BPOs (8%). It shows that BPO companies follow stringent safety norms. Hospital employees (87%) are most satisfied with their duration of night shift because it occurs only once or twice a week.
Women feel secure to work in night shifts
April 26, 2006, 9:53 amFor IT sector, it is a time of reckoning
April 26, 2006, 9:52 am
Even as the Indian software services export industry is exultant over the robust performance of the biggest players in 2005-06 and the prospects for the years ahead, experts caution that the industry faces the prospect of declining profitability and that a shake-out in the industry is on the horizon as major systems integrators like IBM and Accenture ramp up their operations in India.
"The large Indian companies now need to take a call on what to do with the hundreds of small clients, who account for less than $ 1 million in revenues, they signed up in the past few years, because the Indian outsourcing majors have moved up to signing bigger deals like the one Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies signed with ABN AMRO," says Mr Sudin Apte, country manager, India, and senior analyst at the Pune-based Forrester Research, Inc. Industry observers say that while four software makers have crossed the $1 billion mark and this could result in them being taken more seriously for big-ticket contracts from clients, buyers of technology services were also looking at the bandwidth of Indian systems integrators.
"That’s where the domain knowledge comes into play. The largest Indian systems integrators have over 200 clients, while some have over 500 clients. The problem that these companies face is that the smaller clients still suck up the same resources that big-ticket customers require," says Mr Apte. According to research by Forrester, Indian software industry has also to contend with the changing dynamics of the offshore market. "Back in 2000, Indian SIs served just the United States and the United Kingodm, and the number of clients was between 50-100, and the size of the contract was between $200,000—$300,000. In 2006, the geographies have expanded to include the North America, EU and the Asia-Pacific markets, while the number of clients has increased to between 200-700, and the size of the deals is $100 million. Most Indian software companies are struggling to get the bandwidth, in terms of domain expertise, to keep up with the requirements of the market," he said.
"There is now a mismatch between what the bigger clients expect and what Indian SIs are able to deliver. Again, for most large SIs, the top five-six per cent of clients account for 35 per cent of their revenues," he added.
More worryingly, other experts say, for Indian companies, the MNC systems integrators have emerged as major competitors. Some studies indicate that while earlier about 10 people were hired by MNCs technology companies like IBM and Accenture, for every 100 software jobs, the figure has now jumped to nearly 45. IBM has over 39,000 people in India.
While the larger companies struggle to develop the bandwidth for a changing outsourcing market, it is the smaller companies who face the prospect of being squeezed out of the market. "There is sure to be a shakeout in the industry, because the small companies are no longer able to evolve with the market requirements. We expect to see some companies collapsing in the next two years, unable to keep pace with clients’ requirements," he said.
"The large Indian companies now need to take a call on what to do with the hundreds of small clients, who account for less than $ 1 million in revenues, they signed up in the past few years, because the Indian outsourcing majors have moved up to signing bigger deals like the one Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies signed with ABN AMRO," says Mr Sudin Apte, country manager, India, and senior analyst at the Pune-based Forrester Research, Inc. Industry observers say that while four software makers have crossed the $1 billion mark and this could result in them being taken more seriously for big-ticket contracts from clients, buyers of technology services were also looking at the bandwidth of Indian systems integrators.
"That’s where the domain knowledge comes into play. The largest Indian systems integrators have over 200 clients, while some have over 500 clients. The problem that these companies face is that the smaller clients still suck up the same resources that big-ticket customers require," says Mr Apte. According to research by Forrester, Indian software industry has also to contend with the changing dynamics of the offshore market. "Back in 2000, Indian SIs served just the United States and the United Kingodm, and the number of clients was between 50-100, and the size of the contract was between $200,000—$300,000. In 2006, the geographies have expanded to include the North America, EU and the Asia-Pacific markets, while the number of clients has increased to between 200-700, and the size of the deals is $100 million. Most Indian software companies are struggling to get the bandwidth, in terms of domain expertise, to keep up with the requirements of the market," he said.
"There is now a mismatch between what the bigger clients expect and what Indian SIs are able to deliver. Again, for most large SIs, the top five-six per cent of clients account for 35 per cent of their revenues," he added.
More worryingly, other experts say, for Indian companies, the MNC systems integrators have emerged as major competitors. Some studies indicate that while earlier about 10 people were hired by MNCs technology companies like IBM and Accenture, for every 100 software jobs, the figure has now jumped to nearly 45. IBM has over 39,000 people in India.
While the larger companies struggle to develop the bandwidth for a changing outsourcing market, it is the smaller companies who face the prospect of being squeezed out of the market. "There is sure to be a shakeout in the industry, because the small companies are no longer able to evolve with the market requirements. We expect to see some companies collapsing in the next two years, unable to keep pace with clients’ requirements," he said.
New tech to help mobile operators reduce costs
April 26, 2006, 9:51 am
New technologies being tested in the value-added services space could help mobile operators cut costs in hiring additional call centre agents and scaling up call centre operations, as they foray into rural India and attempt to service India’s estimated 300 million subscribers in the coming years.
Location sensitive billing, paying customers to receive calls or texts and interactive media portals are just some examples of the recently-announced value-added services being employed by mobile operators to differentiate themselves in the wireless market.
OnMobile, an Infosys-incubated company that provides SMS, WAP and GPRS solutions to 110 million telecom subscribers belonging to Hutch, Airtel, BSNL and all other major telecos in India, estimates the value-added services market (especially voice-based) to grow at a rate of 100 per cent and touch Rs 1,000 crores in the next 12 months.
The company will be taking customer-level automation to the next level and sources indicated that either Hutch, Tata Teleservices or Airtel could be one of the first operators in India to introduce a new "customer self-care technology system" in their call centres in the next three months. Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, OnMobile’s co-founder Arvind Rao said, "Speech recognition is a complicated technology. This system will use speech recognition to automate routine call centre interactions with high customer satisfaction and will enable telecos to reduce the cost of call centre agents. Calls made to call centres are toll free and telecos have found that the it is difficult to scale up call centre operations in addition to hiring additional staff to serve the ever increasing subscriber base. We are currently testing the beta stage of the product and will introduce this system in multiple languages in the coming months.".
Location sensitive billing, paying customers to receive calls or texts and interactive media portals are just some examples of the recently-announced value-added services being employed by mobile operators to differentiate themselves in the wireless market.
OnMobile, an Infosys-incubated company that provides SMS, WAP and GPRS solutions to 110 million telecom subscribers belonging to Hutch, Airtel, BSNL and all other major telecos in India, estimates the value-added services market (especially voice-based) to grow at a rate of 100 per cent and touch Rs 1,000 crores in the next 12 months.
The company will be taking customer-level automation to the next level and sources indicated that either Hutch, Tata Teleservices or Airtel could be one of the first operators in India to introduce a new "customer self-care technology system" in their call centres in the next three months. Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, OnMobile’s co-founder Arvind Rao said, "Speech recognition is a complicated technology. This system will use speech recognition to automate routine call centre interactions with high customer satisfaction and will enable telecos to reduce the cost of call centre agents. Calls made to call centres are toll free and telecos have found that the it is difficult to scale up call centre operations in addition to hiring additional staff to serve the ever increasing subscriber base. We are currently testing the beta stage of the product and will introduce this system in multiple languages in the coming months.".
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