SPG PLANS INTERNATIONAL OUTSOURCING FORUM IN AMESTERDAM

By M H AHSAN

The Indian arm of UK-based publishing company SPG Media endorsed a thumping success of a three-day European Outsourcing forum for European and Indian companies in Dubai. European Outsourcing Forum India (EOFI 2005) the industry's first invitation-only, interpersonal event geared towards ensuring that European business understands how outsourcing in India can enable them to reduce operating costs and increase competitive advantage and customer satisfaction.

Around 45 European companies from banking, insurance, retail, supply chain management and telecom sectors with a turnover of $500 million participated in the forum. Around 15 Indian ITeS and BPO companies used the platform to generate business.

With the continued growth of any new industry comes a variety of new challenges, successes, failures, positive & negative reactions all combining to create new challenges for sustained growth. The International Outsourcing Forum is structured to assist the industry in completing these new challenges by discussing, developing and implementing structure within the industries associations, institutes, key players, leading vendor, consultancy and research companies. SPG plans to launch the International Outsourcing Forum in Amsterdam, next year, to bring Asian ITeS, BPO companies in touch with global companies looking to outsource work to low-cost locations.

An outsourcing forum will be useful to a number of companies in India who wished to penetrate into Europe, where language may be a problem. For Europeans too, coming to India is a difficult proposition. A common meeting ground will benefit both buyers and suppliers in fields such as applications development, bill processing, data warehousing, HR services, IT development, IT services management, records management, and secretarial services.

It is the right time for mid-sized Indian outsourcing companies to shift focus from a declining US market to the EU market. Europe accounts for around 30 per cent of the global IT services market. IT services spending in Western Europe is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11 per cent in the medium term. Unless there is a shift in focus, Indian companies are likely to lose a fair amount of the business opportunity to rivals in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

Last year, SPG Media held a similar event called the European Financial Services Outsourcing Forum in Mumbai, targeting the financial sector. Dubai Forum's scope was broader and, apart from companies in the financial services sector, included companies in the retail, telecom, airlines, logistics and supply management sectors.

Outsourcing is becoming increasingly strategic as it moves further away from commodity outsourcing of simple, non-core activities towards a powerful management tool to transform businesses' technology infrastructure, business operating model/processes and financial statements. SPG India is also launching Packaging & Conversion Europe (PACE) Forum out of India for Indian & Asian suppliers to meet European buyers. PACE has already attracted over 25 key decision makers from top multinationals. This forum will be held in February 2006 in Rome.

The company organises around 12 forums a year, mostly in Europe. They include the European banking forum, the Leaf Forum for architects and another one for the broadcasting industry.