Author Archives: 123outsource

BPO Delhi Developments!

February 13, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: India | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

BPO Delhi developments!
 
Delhi BPO employees have a lot to contend with in terms of transportation to work. Female employees are at risk of rape based on many recent cases.  Female BPO employees in Delhi have been asked not to sit in the front seat of cabs.  Harrassment of ladies by cab and rick shaw drivers is not limited to Delhi, but it is much worse in Delhi than in any other metro.  Cops say that ladies should not sit in the back seats.  So, if ladies can’t sit in the front or back, where do they sit?  There is no middle row of seats, or is there.  If ladies sit near the windows, then gundas will be able to see them clearly. 
 
Solutions suggested included installing GPS systems which is expensive at a cost of more than US$150 per unit. Additionally, who will moniter these systems?  Airports in India often have the option to take a cab from a company that tracks what cab number is going where.  This is helpful, and few individuals get robbed from these scrutinized cabs.
 
My personal point of view is that Indian cities, especially Delhi need to have mini-bus or rickshaw routes that cater to women.  If the drivers are women, or drivers who have a clean track record of not harrassing women, and the clients are women, then it will be a relatively safe environment for women.  I feel that in India, women are safer in groups, and should try to avoid traveling alone, or after 9pm at night, unless they are in a really ultra-safe area, and only Pune fits that description to my knowledge.
 
Women who work for BPO’s in Delhi or other parts of India have all sorts of unnecessary problems.  Since buses are overloaded, they are not fit for a women, or even a man to squeeze into.  Cabs are expensive, and share rick shaws don’t always go where you want, nor are they safe.  I pray that someone philanthropic, perhaps the government, will try to create a transportation system for the middle class that is comfortable, safe, and takes female issues into consideration. 
 
Female safety in India is a huge problem, and the government should really take the lead in preventive maintenance so that no more problems happen.  People’s lives are ruined each time an incident happens.

Finding a lucky feng shui spot for my office

January 6, 2011 by 123outsource
Categories: Vaastu Feng Shui | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How do I Choose a Lucky Feng Shui Area? What to look for?
My experience says that there are rules for what to look for in an area, but results are always surprising and unpredictable. There are many HIDDEN factors that make readings seem illogical. 
 

An Upper Middle Class Suburb – Good
I know a hotel in a very average area which quadruples my daily revenue.  ts next to a supermarket which makes good money.  But the whole area for miles around there gets me good feng shui readings. Its a very regular upper middle class area. However, most houses there had a double income and hard working people lived in the area including many Asian Americans. 

Wealthy Lazy Areas – Bad
Another area with rich people was disasterous for my business. I decided that the rich people there had already made there money and were slacking off which is disasterous for feng shui.

Koreatown – Up and Coming = Good
The irony is that the predominant language in Koreatown is Spanish, with English in second place.  Koreatown is a place where people from around the world come to America to work and work hard.  The average income is low due to the large percentage of illegal immigrants from Central America. However, income of a neighborhood is not the most important factor.  People there are working hard, offices of all sorts are on the main drag with people working hard.  Nighttime people stay awake and read and study.  Its very busy there and has an up and coming energy even though its a slightly slummy area in many ways. People are working hard and on their way up, and the key word here is up.

Ukiah – New Infrastructure
Ukiah, California is a regular stop for me. I like it there and the energy agrees with me.  There is nothing to do there.  However, the area where the hotel is has all new shops, restaurants and hotels around it.  The area is prosperous, but not wealthy.  This is a place where new sales are 2.7x what they are in my home.  It could be an inate energy of the town, or perhaps its due to the new energy of the buildings which were mostly constructed within the last decade.

 

Seaside Waves and Mountains
Being in a valley where there is a flow of energy helps you capitalize on nature’s feng shui.  The other examples emphasized cashing in on manmade work oriented energies.  Yosemite has good feng shui due to the inflow of water and qi (prana) from the rivers flowing into the valley. The valley with its tall “walls” funnels the qi as it flows Westwardly towards the central valley. This is a wonderful place to get feng shui readings and is very spiritual too.  Areas on the coast are effected by the water energies of the ocean.  But, the energies are much better when the water is moving.  Days with high waves are very potent for feng shui, and my income goes up when I stay in a place within a quarter of a mile of high waves.  We sometimes have good wave height in Northern California during the winter, but the rest of the year the seas are placid. Spending time near a rushing river or waterfall will also help you capitalize on the moving water qi.  You can study how it effects your business. But, if your staff members are taking the day off the day you went to the waterfall, you might not have any sales statistics to analyze.
Generalities.

Look for up and coming areas where there is hussle and bustle.  Areas with hills can be good, but you must be in an area where energy is channeled and is slowly moving and nurturing what it passes. Being at the top of a hill is an example of where not to be on a hill.  Being near a bend on a river could get you some chaotic energies which the ancients have written novels about. I don’t know the details on this, but that is a point to consider. Areas with new buildings are good, and areas with a pleasant feeling that combine nature and housing are a plus too.

In India
If I were in India, I would go straight for a new development with hard working people.  A new office park, or new housing development.
Make sure that for three or four blocks in any direction you see new..new…new.  New mixed with old gets you mixed energies and mixed
energies give you mixed results.   Old areas attract people with old ideas, and retirees, and that is bad for work related feng shui. If you are retired, being in a retiree  area will have energies which support your activity — which is non-activity.  If everybody in the area where your prospective building is are losing money, then no matter how beautiful the area is, you will be sorry you moved there in terms of feng shui.  So, make sure people are prospering and growing, and not just looking like they are prospering. Real feng shui involves a compass, complicated calculations, intuition, and a deep knowledge.  Few of you have time for all of this, so try to understand a few basic principles, use your senses, and track the results of how where you stay effects your life!

Knowledge Process Outsourcing – Facts of Interest

December 30, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: KPO, Outsourcing Articles, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Knowledge Process Outsourcing – Facts of Interest
 
KPO
KPO means knowledge process outsourcing and is a more sophisticated type of BPO.  KPO generally refers to accounting, legal, software, and outsourcing that involves research and good analytical skills.
 
History of BPO & KPO
The history of the Business Process Outsourcing industry dates back to the 1980’s when a handful of European airlines started using Delhi as a location for their back office operations.   Later, American Express consolidated its Japan and Asia Pacific back office operations also to Delhi and the NCR region (which is near Delhi).  In the 1990’s, General Electric was next to follow suit and start back office operations in Gurgaon, which is a satellite city of Delhi.  These initial BPO operations were done using a business model that consisted of parent companies and “captives” which are companies that have an exclusive relationship with the parent company.  Independent BPO operations didn’t start until the 1990’s although the industry didn’t have much strength until after 2000.
 
IT outsourcing
In 2002, all major Indian software companies were involved in the BPO industry including Infosys, Inforlinx, HCL, Stayam, and Patni..  Spectramind was bought by Wipro, and the team that started Specramind, created Quatrro in 2006.  Daksh got bought by IBM, and MphasiS was acquired by EDS.  Accenture, IBM, Hewlett Parkard and Dell, Convergys and Sitel also created venues in India which created a lot of high paying jobs.  These new high paying jobs in India are the reason why the phenonimon of the reverse brain drain from America to India started accelerating from 2004-2009.
 
KPO Services
Investment research, Business research, Data Analytics, Market research, Valuation, Legal research are the main core of what are considered to be specialties in the KPO business.  IT, Software, and Web services can also be considered to be KPO services, although research oriented jobs better reflect how many think of KPOs. LPO means legal process outsourcing which includes a wide variety of legal back office services.  An LPO is a type of KPO as well.  The distinctions between the various outsourcing terms can get blurry, and terms can have definitions that overlap with other related terms as well.  Putting distinctions aside, KPO is a dream come true for India, where they can get a nice market share of higher paying skilled labor and have evolved past the stage of only getting grunt work and software labor.
 
Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Research
Indian companies are now engaged in more and more biotechnology, and pharmaceutical analytical work. This is one of India’s most rapidly growing industries in the KPO sector. Israel is also very prominent in KPO as they have many companies who are very advanced in medical research.
 
Where are KPO’s typically located?
To run successful KPO companies, you need a good skilled labor pool.  India dominates roughly 70% of the world KPO market, and each metro in India has a different focus. Delhi is more oriented towards legal, accounting, and call center work.  Bombay is more oriented towards business.  Hyderabad and  Chennai gravitate towards IT, Data, and Transcriptions, while Bangalore is India’s hub for any type of highly skilled technical or analytical work.  Bangalore has the highest amount of highly skilled workers of any Indian metro and the majority of higher paying KPO jobs are in Bangalore.  Visit our Bangalore KPO page to see search results for KPO companies in Bangalore.

Tweets:
(1) KPO means knowledge process outsourcing and is a more sophisticated type of BPO.
(2) KPO generally refers to accounting, legal, software & outsourcing that involves research and good analytical skills.
(3) The HISTORY of KPO, BPO, and LPO
(4) Looking at a long list of KPO services, what defines them as KPO vs. BPO services?
(5) How do you distinguish what would be classified as a KPO vs. a BPO service?
(6) India dominates roughly 70% of the world KPO market, and each metro in India has a different focus.

You might also like:

How to find great offshore companies to do your back-office work!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/02/how-to-find-great-offshore-companies-to-do-your-back-office-work/

Roadblocks in the BPO outsourcing profession
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/04/24/roadblocks-in-the-bpo-outsourcing-profession/

BPO India – Current Developments

December 29, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

BPO India – current developments
 
IBM first entered the Indian BPO market in 2004 with its acquisition of Daksh.  IBM now has BPO operatons in eight cities in India.
 
Many experts note that India will have to move higher in the value chain to maintain market share in the BPO market.  As India raises its prices for BPO labor, the skill level and level of specialization also needs to rise.  Knowledge and Analytics are the new focus in the India BPO sector now, but for the companies that are only offering grunt work, they need to increase their overall quality offering, otherwise less expensive countries will be likely to gauge their market share.
 
South Africa has recently announced that it will be having incentives to attract business process outsourcing cmpanies.  These incentives could stimulate a rise of South African outsourcing that could pose a real threat to Indian BPO’s market share.  The largest market share for outsourcing is currently in India.  BPO’s springing up in other countries, especially those who have many who excel at English, will eventually cause India to lose its market share of the global market.  Since the global market continues to expand, India’s total dollar value of outsourcing services is not expected to shrink.
 
Since many in South Africa speak English as their native language, and often have an accent that is similar to British English, they have a huge edge over countries where English is their second language.  Another helpful factor for South Africa is that their time zone is very similar to England’s making it easy to make phone calls during business hours.  Both the U.K. and South Africa also have a similar financial system.  South Africa has been an untapped resource until recently for outsourcing, but they will be able to quickly gain market share and become the world’s fourth largest outsourcer behind India, China, and the Philippines.

Data Entry, Data Mining Information

December 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Data Entry, Popular Posts | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Data Entry General Information

Data Entry Clerk – job description
What is data entry and what does it involve? Data entry involves a data entry clerk or typist who reads hand-written or printed records and manually types them into a computerized database. Some data entry clerks are temp workers, while others are regular employees. Larger companies have enough data entry work to keep full time employees busy.

Typical jobs for data entry clerks might involve typing in tracking numbers of shipped goods, typing reference numbers for shipped goods that didn’t reach their destination, data input of medical information.

Optical character recognition technology allows a data entry clerk to read a report generated by an optical character scanning machine. The data entry clerk is still responsible for reviewing the results of the report for incorrect or omitted information.

Data entry work outsourcing is done heavily in many parts of the Philippines and India. Employees in those companies enjoy much higher than average salaries which affords them a lifestyle that includes restaurants, travel, entertaining, and other niceties that are not possible for the average person in their respective countries.

Many BPO companies in India do only Data Entry and data related services. But, many other BPOs in India offer a mixed bag of services including call center, data entry, and a variety of other back office services.

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Data Mining Introduction
Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from particular data and is commonly used for marketing, surveillance, and fraud detection. One example of data mining is when a computer program or human extracts email addresses from a large directory type website, and compiles a list of email addresses to spam. Data mining has been used for centuries to find hidden patterns in data. One interesting example include the computer programs that look for mystical word and letter combinations / patterns in the Torah which originally was a really long scroll of letters with no spaces between the words.

Data Mining in Business
Data mining is used heavily in customer relationship management. Many businesses realize that identifying patterns of customer tastes and behaviors can help them to provide better and more targetted services to their customers. Since its expensive to contact customers, it is practical to identify which customers would be ideal to contact for specific purposes. If you are having a special on hotel rates, contacting customers who travel once per year might not be as efficient as contacting customers that travel once per month. If you are offering a discount on drinks at a bar, contacting teetotaling vegetarians will net you a big fat zero, while contacting avid wine connoisseurs might work better assuming your wine list is up to par. Mass mailings are done with the same principle – by identifying individuals who would be most reponsive to a particular message.

Identifying Ideal Customers or Employees
If you crunch the numbers, you might be able to create algorithms to identify which employee is the best and why. You have to look through data of many employees to find this information. Certain customers are worth more than others too. Some customers spend more than other on high profit items, while other customers spend very little and tie up your phone lines with endless bickering. Data mining can help you determine who is who which can help you figure out who to target to be your customer or employee, and can even tell you how much effort its worth to win someone over. Unfortunately, through data mining, we can put a price tag on everyone’s head. By the way, you (the reader) are worth exactly $5.28 to me! Just kidding – you are worth much more than that!

Profiling
Customer data can be analyzed to learn about spending trends and customer profiles. This is why supermarkets such as Ralphs have Ralphs cards. It helps them develop not only customer loyalty, but helps them analyze who is buying what. Are you a single white male who buys lots of Gatoraid and Ramen noodles? Or are you the head of an Asian American family who purchases twenty pounds of pasta sauce per year? You may think that Asians eat won-tons, but those who understand data mining and data analysis know that behind closed doors, Asians are really eating pasta with marinara sauce and cheesecake in unbounded proportions– at least in California (just a hypothesis based on observation). That way, after interpreting customer data, a company who is advertising in an Asian neighborhood in California can have a smiling Asian lady who is devouring pasta; and display a bottle of tomato sauce with the name of the company on it. That, my friend is market segmenting and profiling in a nutshell — or in a pasta sauce jar.

Other Uses
Data mining can also be used to study educational research to see how students learn most. It can also be used to study drug safety issues, equipment testing, and even genetics. Gene mapping can be studied with techniques that include data mining.

Diary of a Night Owl Who Enjoys Outsourcing

December 18, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Diary of a Night Owl Who Enjoys Outsourcing
 
The night is young from a night owls perspective and the Indian programmers have already finished installing ten new pages with meta-tags, meta-titles and links.  The night owl says, “Wow, this is the way to do business — I didn’t even go to bed yet, and the work is done…. lets assign more”.  A feeling of relief that the Indian Software company in Pune is so fast on the draw, that the entire stack of emails that have the information for five dozen new pages will be done soon.
 
I’ve been writing customized SEO pages for dozens of pages for my new site for a few weeks now.  They are going online one by one, and google is responding generously to my hard work.  But, its so nice that with my odd schedule, I can find companies that are in full function, when I am in full function with my Leo schedule.  Its hard doing business with Americans.  By the time I get out of bed, have my mocha, finish my emails and other pressing matters, its too late to call the East Coast, and the West Coast only has a few hours to go. 
 
India is perfect.  If only we could move it to Australia, then it would have the perfect time zone for my schedule, but I’m not complaining, its excellent already. If only all companies could be like Indian Software companies!   Emails are the way I communicate these days.  Sure, a phone call is easier if there is a lot of back and forth in the communication.  But, emails are best for straight instructions and perhaps one or two quick questions for what the work entails.  Its amazing for me to get back and forth at 10pm when I’m in full swing, and America is unconscious.
 
My schedule is only normal when I take my break and go into the redwoods.  Its a six hour drive to Santa Cruz from here and the various state parts are waiting for me.  There is a feeling of peace there in any of the redwood forests, especially when there is a slight drizzle.  The earth is so soft as its composed of disintegrating pine needles.  Thats the only time I wake up as a civilized hour.  Last trip up North I woke up at 6am the last day and went hiking near Felton, CA at Henry Cowell state park.  I save all of my hundreds of business calls to the East coast for when I go on my trips.  Thats the only time I’m not a night owl.  Its up North that I do my welcome calls for new clients, and reminder calls for existing clients.  I wouldn’t be able to call India from there because I fall asleep at 10pm when India has just gotten to work since its +13.5 hours.
 
If you are a night owl who is in a software business, Indian Software companies are a dream to work with.  Try it!

Do Americans Need To Worry About Losing Their Job?

December 2, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Do Americans Need to Worry About Losing Their Job?

Americans have become a fearful people in the last few years. Unemployment is high, and outsourcing is an industry that continues to grow. If your job is not automized in the next six months, it could be shipped to India, China, or the Philippines.

What Americans need to realize is that “American” jobs have been shipped overseas since the 80’s and if there were a finite number of jobs in the world, our job loss would leave 80% of us unemployed by now. This is simply not the case. With all of the new labor saving technology and outsourcing, Americans are busier now than we ever have been. So, why the high amount of jobless individuals?

Many news articles blame unemployement on internal domestic issues. However, if you take a closer look, the factors might be more specific than you think. If a company is forced to offer benefits to a new employee, the cost of hiring someone with unknown potential suddenly gets very expensive. If there are legal issues or risks involved in firing someone, then companies might be skeptical about hiring in-house employees. Many unemployed individuals have personality issues that make it hard for them to work with others, which is why American companies often find it easier to outsource work overseas. Many of the unemployed in America have skills which are no longer marketable in the current economy, and those individuals need to learn some new skills that meet the current technological needs (which keep changing every two years). Some workers are so slow, that its not cost effective to pay the overhead for renting the square feet they occupy plus the management costs for managing them. The cost of hiring someone and processing payroll for them in the U.S. is sky high. If a job can be outsourced, it doesn’t make sense to have it done here.

In the long run, if we keep losing jobs, the labor rate will go down. We have already seen that salaries for programmers have come down a bit in many cases due to stiff competition from India. Minimum wage has not gone up that much in the United States in the last decade and has not kept up with inflation, making our standard of living lower. If Americans would work for less, and work a little faster (with a shorter lunch break) then outsourcing wouldn’t be such an attractive option in the first place.

The fact is that Americans who are capable of doing work that is marketable in today’s economy are really busy. They don’t have time to return phone calls and will keep you waiting a long time to get work done. Additionally, people in America rarely give me the impression that they are willing to fight for my business. If you want work done in a hurry, you have no choice but to outsource because Americans simply don’t have time to help you on short notice.

As time rolls on, India has hit some roadblocks to its expansion of its outsourcing empire. Labor costs are sky high, attrition rates are out of control, workspaces are really expensive, overpriced, and in short supply, and roads are so crammed, that companies can not realistically relocate to the outskirts of their metro unless their workers live nearby. India’s rates for outsourcing will become so expensive that outsourcing will eventually slow down, or so I think. Additionally, a crisis with Pakistan is inevitable and could shut the whole country down if it got out of hand.

America is the land of infinite road capacity, large buildings with elbow room for employees, political stability. If America decides to lower its rates, it can easily reduce outsourcing in a flash. If America decides to find a way to employ its unemployed, or to make incentives to give unemployed individuals even a part time job, our jobless rate would reduce overnight with or without outsourcing or automation.

Additionally in the future, as India and China get richer, they will need more American soap, cars, beef, and other commonly exported products which means more jobs for Americans! Outsourcing karma comes back to you. What you lose, you gain back in another form in no time at all!

Americans need to fear the internal domestic inflexibilities that cause unemployment and not outsourcing.

Labor Costs & Overall Pricing

November 27, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsourcing Articles | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Labor costs within a pricing formula

The way large companies choose which companies to outsource work to is based on a very complicated algorithmic formula that takes into consideration many aspects. We’re all aware that labor cost is one of the major considerations that effect the price of outsourced labor. But, there is a lot more involved, and since prices are always changing, long term cost considerations need to be included in a calculation.

Per capita income and prices
Statistically, India is a very poor country with per capita income around $700 per year (rough figure) while American income is around $40,000 per year. Therefore, the price of labor in India must be 57 times as cheap, right? Wrong. American income doesn’t vary so dramatically from place to place and from city to countryside. Although extreme cases exist including NYC which has wages that might be double what wages are for similar jobs in Mississippi, the rest of the country doesn’t vary so significantly. There are parts of India such as Bangalore or Chennai where a highly skilled Indian software worker makes $20,000 to $100,000 per year while a peasant in the Bihari countryside might only make 50 cents per day and might only eat once per day (on a good day).

The BPO jobs that happen in India are generally located in high cost urban areas where the price of labor and everything else is sky high. This is why the price of outsourced labor in India is only four times as cheap as in the U.S., and not fifty-seven times as cheap.

Job conditions in India
The next problem is that inflated and rising land prices in India make companies conserve on space. India has less land than the U.S., yet has four times the population, and the population shows no sign of declining either. Indians are typically squeezed in offices with their small desks crammed together like sardines. The American “dream” of having your own 6×6 cubical simply doesn’t exist for most Indian Software or call center workers. The price of land continues to rise in Indian metros making outsouring costs higher and higer. A 2 bedroom condo in the outskirts of Pune costs even more than it would in Portland, OR on a square foot by square foot basis.

High turnover is another cost in India
A few decades ago, it was only the lucky in India who could get a decent job, and the rest had to take menial jobs just to survive working for pennies per day.  Nowadays, there are too many good BPO and Indian software jobs. Its common for young techno-saavy Indians to skip from job to job chasing better working conditions, more likeable bosses, higher salaries, and nicer looking female work counterparts. Every time an employee jumps boat, that costs the boss a bundle to try to find someone new and train them. This cost gets transfered to the customer in the long run.

Management costs can vary
This is a very difficult issue to pinpoint, but there is always a management cost for the company who hires and outsourcing company. If your company is nearby or on a similar time zone, communication is easier and travel to see your outsourcing company is quick. If the company is working while you are sleeping, unless you sleep late, you will have trouble interacting with that company, not to mention the 30 hour plane flight to Mumbai! If you need to visit a company frequently, then outsourcing to India will carry a hefty management tab, but what if you only need to visit for initiating new complicated projects?

Transportation costs can add up
A business that involves shipping would choose a new location primarily on access to good transportation arteries with low warehousing costs. Reno and Memphis are famous shipping hubs in the U.S. as they are centrally located for their respective East and West halves of the nation. A call center doesn’t need to ship anything, but there are still costs for moving workers around. Cab fare in Hyderabad is not cheap. If a Hyderabad software company pays worker’s transportation, it can add up, even if workers cab-pool. Transport is yet another factor in the pricing formula.

Labor costs are only about 20-30% of the total cost of outsourced work. The rest go to infrastructure, management, and other costs.

Please visit our Indian Software page.

About us

November 25, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: About Us | Tagged , | Leave a comment

123outsource.net About Us
 
123outsource.net is owned by the same individual who owns 123notary.com and 123acu.net.  Incidentally, we also have a notary blog for 123notary.com which has a few entertaining entries for non-notaries.  We have been involved in internet directories since 2000 and its been challenging, but always interesting.  We have learned a lot in the last ten years, but the internet culture keeps changing, so we keep on changing with it.
 
The problem with internet marketing is that you are competing with the entire world.  If you are not one of the top few players in your industry, you will not get enough market share to have a business that is worth mentioning.  If you look at the search engines of the world, google gobbles up about 70% of the market share since they are so clever with their algorithms.  Yahoo gets about 20% of the market and the rest of the players share the remaining 10%.  If you feel you can’t be the absolute best in your niche, it doesn’t make sense to try to compete on the web. Our notary directory is the most popular of its type on the net.  Lets see if we can get the same results for our outsourcing directory.
 
The exception to this rule is local business who have a web presence to support their geographically relevant business.  If you run Joe’s car wash in Los Angeles, you don’t have to worry that Carl’s car wash in Seattle has a better web site than yours.  Just make sure that your web site is the most beautiful and best optimized in Los Angeles. 
 
The biggest changes that have happened that effect us in web business is that optimization algorithms for google have changed.  Meta-Titles are more important, meta-descriptions are less important, and social media is the magic that makes things happen.  Since we started our twitter and our blog, our placement on google for our outsourcing directory has gone far up for our  main keywords. 
 
Twitter is our newest development on 123outsource.net.  Our social media manager Anthony has been publishing links to really interesting articles.  I’m personally reading all of the articles and learning a lot about the recent developments in the outsourcing industry.  We hope you will join us on Twitter.
 
We hope to grow 123outsource.net into a huge business and we’ll let the forces of nature guide us in how we expand the business.  Size and refinement are the two biggest issues.  We have 1300 members now, but if next year we only have 1500, but 1500 really serious companies with great communication skills, the quality of the companies is what we are looking for.  Our job is to please our browsers, so if we make their query for quality companies a snap, the browsers will be loyal to us for life!

Marketing Your Outsourcing Company

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Marketing your outsourcing company – Basics
 
Introduction
If you run a company that provides outsourced services or wishes to do so, it is critical that you know how to market your services effectively.  There are many different types of products and services that are typically outsourced.  123outsource.net is familiar with services only, and specializes in promoting a dozen or so professional categories with their respective sub-categories.  There are many facets for marketing your business involving online promotion, public relations, customer service, and quality of service.  All of these aspects are critical and must be perfected if you intend to gain market share.  Being Visable helps you attract clients, but giving clients positive experience helps you keep them and get referrals.
 
Why listen to us?
123outsource.net is owned by the same individual who owns 123notary.com which has been around since 2000 and is the prime venue for effectively marketing notaries public in the United States.  When it comes to internet marketing, we are experienced.  We have been outsourcing programming and other tasks for years and have some basic common sense ideas for what effectively helps a company function more efficiently and provide more desireable service to clients. 
 
Online Promotion
If clients can’t find your company, it doesn’t matter how good you are.  A good web presence makes you accessible to the public, but is only the seed in growing your business.  The truth is that most companies worldwide get most of their business from word of mouth, regardless of how sophisticated the technology they use is.  A small restaurant or a large international high-tech company get noticed primarily because of word of mouth.  If you have a base of satisfied customers, that base can grow with referrals and repeat customers to result in a much larger customer base.  But, to get your INITIAL clientele you need a good online presence as well as a comprehensive marketing mix appropriate for your company and industry.  This outsourcing blog intends to be very general in its approach, so please use a consultant for specific marketing tips.
 
Components of an Online Presence
A well designed, easy to use, informative website is where every company needs to start.  Websites get outdated in content and design every several years, so don’t be afraid to devote part of your budget to periodic or a regular schedule for renovations.  Typical characteristics of an old style website are pictures with faded colors, broken links, information that was from many years ago, and design styles that were popular in the 90’s.  Sites today use brighter colors, high definition photos, and cutting edge web design. 
 
Optimizing Your Website
Regardless of the quality of your site, you will not get noticed without a good optimization campaign.  Optimization is generally complicated and expensive.  Please  visit our SEO page to learn the basics of optimization so you will understand what SEO professionals are talking about when you contact them.   The basics are that certain pages need to emphasize certain keywords, and that internal pages need to be linked to each other in a way that emphasizes keyword similarities and user-friendly functionality.  Additionally, having supporting content from blogs, facebook, twitter, forums, and other social media is actually magical in terms of search engine performance.
 
Public Relations Outreach
One way a company can market themselves is to contact specific companies that could use their services.  Email campaigns are common ways for SEO and web design companies to do outreach.  However, emails normally get discarded if the sender is not known, especially with promotional emails.  Calling companies manually by phone can be an excellent way to attract new business.  If the employee making the call is polite and helpful, but not pushy, new clients can be obtained.  If you are serious about gaining a new client through outreach, its more effective to offer the prospective client something substantial for free.  A few hundred dollars worth of free services is a great way to woo a serious potential client.  Make sure they intend on spending at least a $500 per month for at least a year before you give them anything for free.
 
Customer Service
If your company offers a pleasant experience to your clients, you are more likely to accumulate long term customers.  Good customer service is critical.  The people who answer the phone should speak well, and emails should be returned quickly. Internal management should make sure that all job tasks are explained clearly to the workers, and that the output of the workers is scrutinized BEFORE it gets back to the client.  Make life easy for your clients even if it costs you a lot more.  They will remember you for this.
 
Quality Work
Doing good work is critical.  The speed and accuracy of your work makes or breaks your business regardless of how good your promotional stengths are.  All of the facets of a good marketing mix need to be balanced. If you are good at work but lousy at internet presence, you are compromising yourself. But, if you can be fairly good at all of the components mentioned in this quick outsource blog entry, then you stand a good chance of succeeding in the outsourcing world. 
 
Please see our other related blog entries to read more about customer service, double checking work, and more!

Tweets:
(1) If clients can’t find you, it doesn’t matter how good you are. A good web presence makes all the difference.
(2) Get your initial clients from the web & then get clients from word of mouth! (or word of mouse)
(3) Marketing your outsourcing company from A to Z

You might also like:

Most BPO blogs use cheap looking pics
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/03/11/most-bpo-blogs-use-cheap-looking-pics/

Creating a vacuum in business
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/02/28/creating-a-vacuum-in-business/

123outsource.net’s online presence

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

123outsource.net – Online Presence
 
Introduction
123outsource.net is a relatively new outsourcing directory for outsourcing companies.  Due to the owners extensive experience in internet marketing over the last decade, we have been able to have a very successful and fast start marketing our site.  We used all of the basic techniques that we wrote about in our SEO section.  We optimized each page for certain related and important keywords, and then created an internal link structure to strengthen those pages.  Additionally, our new social media campaign has worked magic to gain us immediate results on google. 
 
Keywords
We now show up on google on roughly four hundred keywords, and get excellent placement under many of our most relevant and critical keywords, especially:  outsourcing directory, outsource directory, bpo directory, kpo directory, call center directory, lpo directory, etc.  We are currently working on optimizing for roughly twenty other critical keywords.
 
Take Social Media, Mix With Water, Get Results!
The results of our social media campaign were so good, it reminds me of this joke by Yacov Smirnoff in the 1980’s.  I don’t remember his exact verbiage, but here is what I remember.
 
When I first came to America, I went to a supermarket.  It was so huge, much larger than small grocery stores in Russia.  Then I went to Aisle 1 and saw milk powder… mix with water… get milk.  Wow!!  Then I went to Aisle 2 and saw orange juice powder… mix with water and get orange juice.   Everything is so convenient in this country.   Then, I went to Aisle 3 and saw BABY POWDER and said, what a country!  I make big family today!
 
Social media including Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and forums improved our search results on every site we used it on.  But, the results were quick and only took a few weeks which is amazing.  Take social media, mix with water, get results! Its actually time consuming and complicated, not to mention expensive, but the results don’t take long to come.  Google places a heavy emphasis on social media because it shows that you are not only serious, but want to interact with the world around you.
 
Pay-Per-Click
We created an extensive pay-per-click account with google.  We are now visable under 400 keywords in various countries.  Our pay-per-click network gets us over one thousand visitors today, not to mention the traffic from our organic search results which are not excellent under many of our top twenty keywords.
 
Link Building
We are engaged in a link exchange program where we offer free listings on our outsourcing directory in exchange for a link to our site.  We are rapidly gaining more and more incoming links which strengthens our search results on google as well as incoming traffic.

Outsource Blog Welcome

November 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Welcome | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Welcome to the 123outsource.net blog
 
Introduction
123outsource.net is a directory of outsourcing companies around the globe.  We have many professional categories ranging from call centers, bpo, kpo, seo, data entry, web design, and software.  If you manage a company that would like to attract overseas clients, please contact us so that we can create a listing for your company.  123outsource.net offers free and paid listings for every budget.  Paid listings show up higher in our search results and statistically gravitate a much higher market share.
 
Outsource Blog
Our outsourcing blog will concern itself with a wide variety of outsourcing issues effecting the global community.  The purpose of this outsource blog is to inform as well as entertain our readers.  We welcome commentary, so feel free to email us at 123outsource.net@gmail.com if you would like to share an opinion, make a request.  Please let us know which topics you liked most, so that we can devote more time to writing about related topics.
 
Looking for Work?
123outsource does NOT hire individuals.  We are located in Los Angeles, CA USA and consist of the owner, one individual who makes outgoing phone calls on a part time basis, and a team of outsourced programmers in Pune, India who we intend to keep for the life of our business.  If you are looking for work, please call the companies listed on our website in your professional category and tell them you found them on 123outsource.net.  Please save your resume for companies who can potentially use you.
 
Topics Involved
This outsourcing blog will deal with topics such as: marketing outsourcing companies, algorithms used for choosing outsource companies, worldwide outsourcing trends, indexing new articles regarding outsourcing, improving your company’s interaction skills with overseas clients, and more.  Please ask us if you would like us to address a particular topic not already written about.
 
The Future of Outsourcing
We believe that outsourcing is a growing trend which benefits the whole world as it makes it possible to find the most efficient service provider irrespective of political and geographic boundaries.  Large companies have been moving towards a business model of focusing on their core competencies and outsourcing other functions to other companies throughout the globe creating a notion of a global workworce and global community.  It is interesting and fascinating living in these modern times.
 
We hope you enjoy our outsourcing blog!