- We are used to the idea that a number of British call
centres are staffed by inhabitants of Bangalore, who call themselves "Dave"
and natter about the terrible weather. But the outsourcing story is mutating.
Q2A Solutions, a publishing company, is now exporting creative work to
India where it has recruited illustrators, designers, editors, website
producers, picture researchers and writers to produce books for the Western
market.
-
- It's the kind of news that strikes fear into the hearts
of professionals who might have expected to be left alone by the galloping
trend towards outsourcing. The manufacturing jobs have long gone, the unskilled
office jobs are going, white-collar gigs in software, finance, science
and engineering are on their way, and now the creative, media and marketing
sectors are looking to Asia. Many of these jobs were once considered "safe".
Not any longer.
-
- Gayatri Singh is the joint managing director of Q2A with
her brother Hanut, and publishing director Chester Fisher. The company
is three years old, and despite its not having quite gone into profit yet,
the industry is watching its progress with keen interest. The market analyst
Nasscom-McKinsey reckons that Indian outsource companies will hold 12 per
cent of the world market for design, animation and content development
by 2008.
-
- In its offices in Nehru Place, Delhi, Q2A Solutions employs
more than 60 people - a staff number that Singh confidently expects to
become 300-strong by next year. The employees commute into work by bus
and car. As in most capital cities, the average time of the commute is
about 40 minutes. Except that here - and this is a key district in India's
capital city - parking costs 12 pence a day.
-
- Moreover, the rent is cheap, says Singh, who has worked
for the Economist Intelligence Unit and Arthur Andersen in India. "The
Indian business environment is very positive about outsourcing," she
says. "It needs foreign exchange. There are very good incentives for
outsourcing businesses, including tax holidays."
-
- While the Q2A offices are in an "export processing
zone", these are not the kind of trainer-stitching sweatshops that
exercise Naomi "No Logo" Klein. Indeed, they appear to be rather
better than the multifarious London pits in which many of us have toiled:
standard open-plan, with Apple Macintosh computers, desk dividers, swivel
chairs and the usual international-style blonde furniture. The staff start
late by Indian standards; they come in at about 10am, the better to converge
with GMT, and work through until about 6 or 7pm. There's a real person
making tea and coffee, and lunch is a subsidised thali, which costs about
15-20 pence.
-
- British illustrators and designers are often freelance
and work from home. But the Q2A workforce is right there in the building
- a bit like the old Hollywood studios, with teams of artists cross-hatching
away while their designer colleagues "Quark" the results on to
the page. At present, Q2A produce mostly children's and information books,
but they are working on plans to do the same for magazines and catalogues.
It's better this way, says Singh. "It keeps the work highly integrated,
and we can keep a handle on the quality control. The idea is that we do
the dirty work for you."
-
- Singh, who travels back and forth to India every six
weeks, says that public understanding of Indian outsourcing should stop
fixing on call centres. "It's changing," she says. "India
is already known for its IT expertise, and now it's time to look at its
other professional strengths, such as its huge creative community of illustrators,
designers and editors." What's more, because English is the lingua
franca of India, and the education system is still post-Imperial (Singh
herself attended a Catholic school run by Irish nuns), written and spoken
English is as good as in the UK - some would argue, better, despite its
archaic flourishes.
-
- Singh says that the "key is to get the right people";
highly qualified BA- or MA-level graduates in fine and applied arts who
have been sourced from top Indian colleges. "They're from all over
India, although Calcutta is a very good source for designers," she
says. Everyone trains for 15 days before starting and each is given a style
guide as a clue to the Western design market. Most are in their late twenties.
"Any feeling that they are less sophisticated is totally untrue,"
adds Fisher.
-
- Indeed, there may be human advantages to having an Eastern
workforce, says Bruce Thew, president of Ceridian International, who has
studied offshore outsourcing for 20 years. "It seems that workers
on the sub continent are more loyal," he says. "They still have
a view that the person you're working for is providing a living, in contrast
to our individualism."
-
- Which is all very well, but don't creative and media
professionals need to work closely? Singh and Fisher are keen to emphasise
that Q2A's systems are solid, despite the fact that you can't take tea
with your colleagues. "People want to know how we check for quality,"
says Singh. "So we set up systems to develop work that we can follow
24 hours a day. There's total visibility." Q2A doesn't need to do
video-conferencing, and although clients are often keen to go to India,
no personal contact is necessary. "In my experience, people only need
to see their workmates once," adds Singh. "That's enough to satisfy
curiosity."
-
- The whole process is technology-driven, says Fisher.
"Technology has changed everything. Ten years ago, you couldn't have
done this." Now, with servers, hi-resolution downloads, mirror servers
in the US and Hong Kong and local know-how, it's all there. And, before
you ask, India's privatised telephone system is now excellent. "The
only thing you need is a generator, in case of a power cut," says
Singh. "We have two. In India, you still need 100 per cent power backup."
-
- Yet, some British companies still need persuading. "There
are companies that have shown resistance to our idea," says Singh.
"Others are excited by it." For some, adds Fisher, "it's
still too big a leap" and, as well as the quality control fears, those
with personal interests can be chary. "I used to be on the other side
and I was wary of outsourcing," says Fisher. "But now the product
is so good that reactions have changed."
-
- Singh estimates that, overall, the costs are about 60
to 70 per cent cheaper than in the UK. If an Apple Mac designer took a
£30,000 wage here, they'd receive about £10,000 in India. And,
if the cost of an illustration was £200 in the UK, a comparable Indian
job might be about £80.
-
- At this point, a part of me starts to feel a little bit
redundant. Should I, a freelance writer, worry about sub-conti- nental
competition? Not necessarily, says Matthew Gwyther, editor of Management
Today. "The Indian workforce is highly qualified and they're very
good," he says. "But outsourcing starts to get difficult when
you're dealing with product that is very specific to the market."
Which includes scary articles about outsourcing, one hopes.
-
- The price of the free market is eternal vigilance, of
course. "Businesses always want to get their goods and services cheaper.
If you're overcharging, then perhaps you should be concerned," says
Thew. "For instance, a few years ago certain IT and software costs
were silly, and businesses looked elsewhere, as you would if you could
shave 60 per cent from your bill." But even the unskilled jobs, he
says, are still a small amount of the British economy, perhaps 2 to 3 per
cent.
-
- Even so, the fears are ramping up. Thew says that, in
the US, outsourcing has become a huge election issue, as both sides are
trying to reassure the public that they'll stem the flow of jobs to the
developing world, a political debate that is bound to raise temperatures
here, too. "They come over here, take our jobs", went the old
anti-immigration whingers. Now they'll have to change their tune: "They
stay over there, take our jobs..."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=536481
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