In meltdown, 2 BPO deals bring cheer

Outsourcing fights back and lives to see another day. While everybody was rushing to write off the industry in the wake of Barack Obama’s election and the global economic slowdown, two major outsourcing deals in the hospitality and the pharma sectors have been signed which should bring hope and cheer for the Indian BPO sector.The world’s premier hotel company, Chicago-based Global Hyatt Corporation, has outsourced part of its financial and accounting transaction services to India’s Genpact. The Hyatt agreement is a trendsetting move in the hospitality industry and follows in the footsteps of other global banking and insurance giants who outsourced a large part of their processes to India’s BPO sector to save costs. In the other major deal, the $30-billion global pharma giant AstraZeneca has outsourced its end-to-end maintenance services for a variety of corporate services (such as human relations, finance) to Bangalore-based Infosys. While the values of the two deals have not been disclosed yet, both envisage increasing the scope of work over time.The Hyatt Corporation chain has awarded a five-year contract to Genpact, covering its North American hotels. Without getting into the value of deal, Harmit Singh, CFO, Global Hyatt Corporation said: ‘‘We have a contract with Genpact for handling the accounting transaction services for some of our North American portfolio, which would be expanded moving forward.’’ From an initial nine hotels, Genpact’s Hyderabad unit will cover another six hotels next year and then 10 hotels by March 2010. The Hyatt group has 118 properties in North America. Says Siddharth Thaker, associate director of HVS International, a global hotel consultancy firm: ‘‘It makes business sense for many US and European hospitality chains to look at outsourcing their financial and accounting services to India in the wake of the global economic slowdown. Outsourcing offers a clear advantage for the bottomline.’’