This is the spirit of lateral thinking that helped Britain build its empire, birthplace and home to some of the best engineers in the world and the use of newspaper to keep your fish and chips warm as you walk through the freezing streets of most seaports around our great island.
British students are using online freelance expertise in IT to complete their course assignments by posting request for Quotations (RFQ’s) of their coursework on outsourcing websites and buying the completed coursework.
Called “contract cheating” in academic circles, lecturers in computing departments in universities are struggling to recognize outsourced assignments since such coursework is of high quality and difficult to detect through normal plagiarism detection software.
The trend is particularly seen in IT courses, in which students need to write programs and students can pay amounts ranging from 5 to 50 pounds for the completed coursework that they then pass off as their own work and gain their degrees.
Once again, we have stories of poor quality manufacturing in China, with this latest article involving chairs, supporting a move to Smart Sourcing of manufacturing to countries that have a far more mature manufacturing sector. After seeing this, I wouldn’t buy a chair from there.
Please beware that Wal-Mart is selling lounge chairs made in China, the plastic is very cheap and thin. Purchase at your own risk!!!
Apparently a Sapporo based company, Digital Technologies Corp, has developed a software that can analyse the mood of callers phoning into call centres.
According to a report on Nikkei.net, the software can establish whether the person on the other side of the line is sober, slightly outraged, or simply barking mad.
It bases its analysis on biometrics and divides the results into whether a caller is happy or displeased, on a scale of one to seven. The report doesn’t relate whether if things go to the top end of the scale, whether the call centre will put them on hold indefinitely and refuse to engage with them any more on human rights grounds, or assign them to an anger management course. (Sponsored by the Call Centre of course)Read the rest of this entry »
The people in China understand the outsourcing concept much better than we think, and I’d like to thank Helen of ‘justlogin.com’ for this wonderful anecdote.
Let me share a story.
A few years ago, I visited Beijing for the first time. At the airport there, I got into a taxi and paid 450 yuan (about S$100) to get to the city. To my horror, I later found out that the normal taxi rate for the same distance was 60 yuan!
Because of this bad experience, I became more careful whenever I took taxis in China.
Once Bitten Twice Shy… Read the rest of this entry »
Here are some great examples of why India has grown so quickly to now stand at the top of the global call centre ladder…ermmmmmmmm hmmmm
Infosys, Bangalore: An employee applied for leave as follows: “Since I have to go to my village to sell my land along with my wife, please sanction me one-week leave.”
This is from Oracle Bangalore: >From an employee who was performing the “mundan” ceremony of his 10 year old son: “as I want to shave my son’s head, please leave me for two days..”
Another gem from O&M. Leave-letter from an employee who was performing his daughter’s wedding: “as I am marrying my daughter, please grant a week’s leave..”
From Accenture Administration Department: “As my mother-in-law has expired and I am only one responsible for it, please grant me 10 days leave.” Read the rest of this entry »
Reading Kevin Kobayashi-Hillary’s blog the other day made me think about how deep outsourcing of one form or another pervades our everyday life. (Kevin is a member of the National Outsourcing Association board)
This paradigm shift in services and how we interact with vendors and clients at all levels has seemingly ‘crept up’ upon us all in a manner that we simply accept it as being to our benefit and convenience…hmmm…..cant remember the last time someone at the local super duper hyper mega market asked me how my mum was doing, or how driving 25km to fight another 1000 cars into what seems like only 100 parking bays is convenient…..
Ok, the humorous dig at the Indian populations preponderance to demonstrating against anything and everything made my email inbox a little warm for a day or two but most people seemed to enjoy it and took it all in good spirit, however I do apologise to the people who didn’t quite understand it to be the completely fictitious ‘post’ that it was.
Now I’ve apologized before I see effigies of myself or Newcaslte United Shirts being burnt in the streets and my local Indian food stall refuse to serve me my favourite Bryani rice I’d like to highlight some actual SPO which is taking place in the so called capital of the ‘free world’ Washington DC. Read the rest of this entry »
The excellent evolving excellence blog (www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog) ran a story yesterday of an outsourcing initiative for retirees to make extra money. Its truly entrepreneurial, but unfortunately illegal. I enjoyed it so would like to share it.
The rate of offences by French drivers over 65 jumped 38 per cent from 2003-05.
Of course the first root cause that comes to mind is that those French grandmas are driving old Citroen’s that are finally falling apart, causing accidents on the way to the local patisserie. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as the roads may soon be rid of one of the ugliest cars ever created. But no. The real reason is far different, and far more interesting. Read the rest of this entry »
Outsourcing is getting a grossly inflated bad press in the US at the moment, however I can’t help wondering how many people embrace this at the moment:
Mon Jul 16, 2007 at 05:49:31 AM PDT
Washington, DC (AP) — Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of August 1, 2007.
The move is being made in order to save the President’s $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $521 trillion in deficit expenditures and related overhead the office has incurred during the last 5 years. “We believe this is a wise move financially. The cost savings should be significant,” stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). “We cannot expect to remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay,” Reynolds noted: Read the rest of this entry »
Unscrupulous dealers in used panties are outsourcing their panties, according to a new survey.
The survey found that some panties which are described as having been worn by females have in fact been sprayed with a new synthetic panty aroma product. A VOLATILE MARKET
Warning to investors - the used panty market is very volatile.
Panties may come down as well as go up.
