Information Technology Enabled
Services (ITES)
ITES
refers to services delivered over satellite/telecom networks or the Internet to
a range of business areas and verticals. Technology is used
essentially as a tool/enabler to provide these services, and most of
these functions tend to be human-intensive.
Due to their
human-intensive nature, these processes and services are outsourced in
order to derive a cost advantage without sacrificing quality and
efficiency.
This is where India’s role as an
upcoming hub for outsourced IT enabled services becomes important. A
combination of factors such as low staff costs, a large pool
of English-speaking and Western-thinking people as well as
Indian’s unique time zone position (it is roughly 10 hours ahead
of US east coast) has made India an increasingly popular choice for
outsourcing customer relationship
management (CRM) and other back-office activities. The various
outsourced or outlocated services comprising ITES are:
Specialized, Vertical-specific IT
Enabled Services include:
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Medical
transcription
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Legal database
processing
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Digital content
development/animation
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Online education
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Remote maintenance
General IT Enabled Services include:
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Telemarketing/pre-sales
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Consumer care
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Technical support
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Backoffice
operations – accounts, financial services, etc. and
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Data processing
ITES Segments
Contact Centers have
superseded "contact center" as interaction takes place via phone,
e-mail, or chat. Contact centers provide adequate telecom facilities,
trained consultants, access to requisite databases, Internet and other
online information support infrastructure to provide information and
support to customers.
Contact centers are used for number
of customer-related functions like marketing, selling, information
dispensing, advice, technical support etc.
Backoffice processing
/ data processing
Industries such as banks and aviation
require large-scale data processing and data-based decision-making
capabilities. Raw data and/or paper documents are sent to remote
locations (IT enabled destinations) where the data entry and necessary
reconciliation is carried out.
Similarly large insurance companies
need to process claims that they receive on a regular basis.
Using high-speed datacom links for
their backoffice and data processing operations, these banks,
airlines, insurance companies and other organizations with extensive
data turnover and customer interface, are able to save costs and
valuable resources.
Legal Database
Outsourcing
Involves creating databases of legal
records, indexing them, updating them and mining the data processing
to facilitate the process of researching cases for lawyers. It
eliminates the tedious data processing aspect of legal work, which is
usually done by junior lawyers. This industry is relatively small in
size, and is yet to catch on in India probably because of the skills
needed in terms of familiarity with European and US laws.
HR Outsourcing
HR service components include
recruitment screening, administration and relocation services, payroll
processing, compensation administration, benefit planning,
administration and regulating compliance.
Geographic Information
System (GIS)
GIS is a compendium of tools and
methods that are used for the study of spatial information. The job
basically involves digitizing maps on different themes and also
processing a large amount of remotely sensed (RS) data. The IT
services that create suitable digital input for GIS require skilled
technical manpower. Most of these processes are labor intensive,
which gives India a significant cost advantage. |