Happiness Outsourced :)

This post is going to be about BPO industry in India and how it has been keeping thousands of Indians "happy" - hence the title "Happiness Outsourced."  This is going to be a quick short post by me and this post does not intend to analyze the pros and cons of working in a BPO, so please do not leave comments of the same - may be I could save it for another post.

BPO is a segment which constantly keeps on growing  without looking back in the ITES industry.  Companies with international market presence (especially US and UK) are convinced that outsourcing a process to India means effective and efficient work flow at reduced costs.  The ITES/BPO sector has grown so big in the past 10 years to a point where we could find several successful BPO units running even in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.  Few years back, this industry was restricted to Tier-1 cities (Mumbai/Chennai/Bangalore rocked and still rocks).  Today it is a different story, companies in Tier-1 cities are looking for options in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities due to reduced infrastructure costs and possible quality work force.  India is recognized as the world's best destination to outsource and it is because of the large English speaking Internet savvy youth available and the unique geographical location.

I remember hearing the word BPO first time in the late 1990s while I was still at school.  I never knew the real meaning of the same at that point of time.  The first outsourced service I remember is medical transcription which spread like a wild fire with new units mushrooming everywhere.  I was very skeptical about that industry but later on had a very long satisfactory run working in the same industry.  The BPO industry transformed greatly in the early 2000 as state dominated telecommunication services where pushed backward by private telecommunication providers.  It was the time I started to hear words like "call center," "inbound," "outbound," "voice," "non-voice" and many.  This time I was able to understand all these jargon because I had a couple of friends working in call centers.

As years passed by, whenever I visited Chennai or Bangalore I could find MNCs establishing subsidiaries of their parent companies in these cities.  As I worked for one of the leading health providers in  the US,  I could avail only the US holidays and the US weekends.  Whenever I needed a break, I used to hit the cities as I had friends and family there.  On these days,  I could find a large number of  BPO executives hanging out in all kinds of places -  they were everywhere - call it theaters, pubs, food joints.  It was like you could find one every 2 steps you take and they were very sociable.  Some of these executives (good friends of mine) I met were very outspoken and I felt as if they were bringing in a new cultural shift  - obviously now I could say they (we) definitely did.  On Monday evenings, the scene shifted and I could find the same large number of people hooked on to their mobiles and going to work - the same group which buzzed all the "hangout spots" sometime back.  All  faces going to work - happy.

BPOs have helped the Indian youth greatly.  I remember reading somewhere that almost 70% of  today's Indian youth work for BPOs.  They help fresh graduates to jump start their career as an executive and get attractive pay packages - making these jobs the best option for everyone with English language skills could get their hands at.  I dislike people when they say that BPO culture is bad and it has promoted the "pub" culture and also the "casual sex" culture.  Pubs existed long before BPOs existed and they were busy during the old times too.  The media has been very successful in amplifying news on sexscapades of BPO executives although everyone know the fact that it can happen anywhere and not limited to the BPO industry alone.  BPO executives are classic examples of the tweaked corporate cultural philosophy 'work hard smart, play party hard.'  I do not intend to get more into the "culture," will save it for another post - may be.

I honestly feel this post needs a sequel and definitely I will post one with more deeper insight.  Here comes the last few lines of this post:

I have been working in this sector for many years and so do lot of good friends of mine and I always feel that it is not just work outsourced by companies - it is indeed "Happiness Outsourced" which keeps thousands of Indians like me smiling and happy 24x7.

 

Bloggers Vs. Journalists

Who is better?  Blogger or Journalist - this is not this post about.  This post is about who is the 'best' out of the two. The blogger vs. journalist debate has been going on for quite sometime and probably ever will.  I am an infrequent and casual blogger and still my opinions are not biased.  I have great respect for reporters and journalists (though not all of them).  It is obvious that bloggers evolved from journalists.  Journalists have been existing long before the internet and digital age.

I am more famililar with blogs and I do feel most of the bloggers are not biased (not all).   Bloggers have the habit of writing what the news is from a reader's perspective - as it is mostly.  Journalists do have a tendency to be biased (there are good ones too) on what they write because they do not want to create unwanted feedback.  They are very cautious. The bloggers on the contrary never mind about the positive or negative feedback they get on what they write.  Journalists write down articles only to be read  by the public.  Journalists never get any reader's views on their articles.  They analyze and write the article keeping in mind who are involved and how to write it out in a professional manner (extrinsic factors).  The blogger on the other hand keys words straight from his heart (heart usually speaks the truth) - and it is definitely amateurish but good.

I Googled and came across a study which I would like to share.  PR Week and PR Newswire in its study done in mid-2010 came out with a fact that 52% percent of bloggers considered themselves to be journalists.  This shows bloggers are not at all casual in what they do even though they sit and write from home.  Bloggers consider themselves to be journalists because they understand their responsibility in bringing out real facts.  Most bloggers are more famous than journalists who cover news from the same stream.  Political views of certain  influential bloggers are gaining great momentum lately.

Let us dig a little about technology news now.  Basically, the way people search for news and reviews have changed lately.  Technology magazines just cover the specifications of a specific product.  Bloggers do a detailed review of a product and key down the pros and cons from a user perspective.  Most of the buying decisions are based on reviews on blogs rather than articles on magazines or newspapers.  This means bloggers have more influence on the consumers than technical writers and journalists.

Bloggers spread the news much faster than their main stream media counterparts.  Once a news hits on a specific blog - we could find it being exploding in Twitter, Facebook and other major social medias.  The blogosphere also brings diverse opinions (people-centric) on the same topic.  In the case of journalists, mixed opinions can be found (biased to either party involved in the news) very rare.  This is because main stream medias are owned by influential persons who have biased views (this is purely my perspective - correct me if I am wrong).

Blogs are taking over main stream media and this has led to all major main stream medias to have a number of dedicated blogs written by eminent journalists and bloggers.  If a journalist writes on a blog it is a news article on a blog - not a big change.  These main stream media companies should hire fresh talent available in the blogosphere who would be able to create unique content which would not reflect the news article.  Most mainstream media blogs have blog posts which reflect their news article (Mirror).

This post is not intended against journalists.  There are lot of good journalists around and they always will.  There are reporters and journalists who are not biased and bring truth the way it is.  They are persistent and determined to bring the truth and in order to bring it out they work in unpleasant and life threatening environments (journalists in conflict zones).  Internet is the lifeline of this century where people with diverse opinions connect and you cannot give a news based on journalism ethics - you have to understand the audience and transform.

Journalists and bloggers are doing the same thing but in different formats but their target is the audience.  Journalists have a "PRESS PASS" and bloggers have a "BLOG PASS."  The first one is physical and hard to get while the latter one is a piece of cake.  You can easily start a blog on Blogspot, TypePad, WordPress and more. Now, who is the best?  both, because they both are one (almost except method of exporting the news).  I have seen credible, reasonable, misleading (3 major types) of journalists.  Likewise, I have also come across honest, reasonable, doubtful and misleading bloggers.  So where are we now? Bloggers Vs. Journalists again.

Technology Distraction

Distraction is something that takes you attention from what you are doing. Distractions can be interesting, amusing, relaxing – yeah definitely anyone would love that. But distractions are irritating when you don’t want your attention to be diverted. Just like passive smoking, sometimes a person addicted to electronic gadgets not only is distracted by own self but also wastes valuable time he is expected to spend with others (kids on video games, men hooked onto laptops, women chatting away on their mobiles are classic examples of the above – lot of passive damage involved).

Some of us know about technology distraction and some of us really are not aware of the same.  I wanted to write about technology distraction in this blog after a few instances which forced me to blog about this.  Sometime back the status message of my "Anni" got my attention, her facebook status message read like this "Bryan (her son) said to his DAD (my bro) you are like Scrat (Ice age - needs no introduction) and his NUT - Pappa and Laptop."  Most of the dads are hooked onto the laptops, me too, but my daughter is a toddler and just tries to distract me and grab attention and does not say statements like my nephew.  You may think I am cruising off topic, it is not.  I am keying here about technology as a distraction for quality family time.  Many years back laptops were not quite common but still everyone were doing their job.  When people came back home they spent valuable time with the family.  Nowadays with wi-fi enabled homes and laptops becoming cheap everyday, most of the homes have a laptop.  To be honest, people who use laptop at home should ask themselves a question first.  Is it really needed to use the laptop now?  I think most of them would say yes, but in reality it is not true.  Some people like to take home work (I am talking about people who spend time chatting in office versus people who like to work more, more, more, more even if they are assigned regular work).  The technology distraction in the family does not stop alone with the grown men alone.  Kids on the other hand are hooked onto gaming consoles or PC games.  Social media has made stay-at-home moms busy and they either tweet, scrap, post on the wall, or share photos, videos, among friends.  To make everything worse social media is available in most of the phones to bring in more distraction.  Okay let me stop talking about home.

Happy Life with no technology distraction

 In office many people like to show off their fancy ringtones, it is good if you like that particular ringtone, but think if you are in middle of a very important job or a business and you hear Black Eyed Peas "My Humps" on the next desk, to add more flavor to it MORE LOUD.  Not to mention the SMS we receive on our own phones (we have to check on it because it might be an important one from the spouse or family).  The same applies to the marketing calls also.  Even if it is in the vibration mode, it makes us to turn our heads to the phone and then realize that it is not the call for you.  I remember reading somewhere that it takes you 10 minutes to regain concentration if you are distracted.

I think I have keyed in enough for the day, would like to key in more regarding the same in the future.  To all GPS users, I have a question for you all, how you guys are able to concentrate on the road and also look at GPS (don't say you listen to the voice commands because I have seen people using GPS and having their car stereo on).  I would like to know how you could multitask the stereo, the GPS, the traffic, and in India (shift manual gears).