R&D Innovation Council

The “R&D Innovation Council” aims to bring senior managers from R&D centers together to brainstorm on the top challenges and exchange best practices around peculiar issues confronting them. Through this council, a member company can gain a variety of services that would help them benefit in their everyday decision making. Services are tailored to address issues around operations cost management, productivity, innovation, talent sourcing, vendor partnerships, organization structuring and peer networking.

International Conference on Semantic e- marketing and Enterprise computing

The 1st International Conference on ‘Semantic E-business and enterprise computing’ in Kerala, India, will create an international forum for the evolving field of semantic E-business and enterprise computing. 
With the increased size and complexity of e-business applications and products, e-business products are often no longer produced or created by an individual or even a single entrepreneur. Instead, e-business applications and products are now commonly produced by different developers using diverse practices. Therefore the meaning of those applications in e-business are contributed by the organisations and the individuals who are participating in e-business. In order to apply more and more meaning to e-business and enterprise computing and thereby minimising the complexity of e-business and enterprise computing, it is beneficial for those working in the field to standardize e- business applications. By developing e-business and enterprise computing products using semantic techniques, e-business entrepreneurs are finding solutions to these problems and attempting to enhance the meaning of online business and thus reducing the risks of online business, and also reduces the time of enterprise computing applications developments. 

Business continuity and Scale of operations

I am quite intrigued by this admission by Convergys Corp : “The size of the project does not warrant Convergys continuing this business in a separate location, so Convergys intends to close the Malad facility.”

Scale of operations is a critical component in setting up an offshore unit. Reputed research and consultancy houses tracking captives and OPD segment in India come up with bare minimum scale to run a captive centre. Given such data, why would Convergys opt for self-run unit when the scale is below-the-bar and the operation might snag at some point in time. Recession could be a reason here, but it is bound to happen for other external as well as internal triggers. The best bet would be to outsource it to third party specialists when scale falls beyond the prescribed limits for a given category of business. 

Read the entire story :

Leading contact centre and billing solutions firm, Convergys Corp, is shutting down one of its eight centres in India. The company has asked most of its employees at its Malad centre to resign. The centre employs around 400 executives. The employees will be given a severance pay if they continue until the end of the month, according to statement issued by the NYSE-listed Convergys.

Although there have been recession-related lay-offs in the past, this is the first such instance of an entire facility being shut down. Convergys has two centres in Mumbai in the suburbs of Thane and Malad. Sources said a few employees at the Thane centre have also been asked to leave.

However, the company did not comment on this or how many employees had been asked to leave the firm. “Convergys has decided to consolidate all existing business performed at the Malad facility and move it to other existing locations. The size of the project does not warrant Convergys continuing this business in a separate location, so Convergys intends to close the Malad facility by August 31, 2008,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.

“Employees who remain with Convergys on the date of closure and who are eligible under the applicable labour legislations will be paid statutory compensation. Additionally, Convergys will pay a severance benefit to employees who continue to service Convergys until the closure. Further, Convergys will consider transfer/relocation of employees to its other existing locations,”