A lot of professionals regularly visit India around their offshorcing initiatives. This may include to evaluate vendors, to meet and manage their exisiting partners, or to gather information on setting up their own Captive Center.
The most common go-to place for seeking information on how to travel to India and the "business" best practices, has been the offshore vendor or travel agents (online and offline) or other colleagues who have done the gig before. None of these on their own will completely prepare you. Remember, India can be shocking for the first time visitor and can continue to surprise repeat visitors.
I thought of putting in place a continuing series under the label "Visiting India". I am breaking this series into 2 broad categories - Traveling to India and While in India.
So keep looking for the updates and do share your experiences
Just some definitions to avoid confusions with these two often (wrongly) interchanged words.
Outsourcing is the activity in which a company gets any of its business activities done from another company. It could be a small law firm getting color presentations printed at FedEx Kinkos or a large Fortune 500 using an Indian or US company to get its IT or Business processes executed.
Offshoring is the specific instance where you send the activity outside of your shores (country's boundaries). These could be any activity (not necessarily limited to IT or BPO), ergo - Offshore oil drilling, Offshore tax havens or Offshore sailing.
Offshore Outsourcing is the most commonly used terminology for when companies in the US and Europe send work outside their shores, with a special focus on IT Services and BPO. This terminology has also been used more frequently with respect to sending work to India.
The event was held in the Behrakis Center at Northeastern University, Boston on Nov 18, 2006. The all day event was keynote"d" by James Champy (http://www.perotsystems.com/about/James_Champy.htm), most famous for his path breaking book Reengineering the Corporation.
As a member of the panel on Software Development and IT Outsourcing, I joined other speakers to discuss with a modest audience the hows, the whys and the dos and don'ts of outsourcing. The discussion tended to focus on how to choose the right model and vendor to outsource or offshore with.
Visit TiE Boston for more information or other upcoming events (http://boston.tie.org/)
I got to share the stage with such experienced professionals as: Rajesh Hukku, Chairman and MD of iflex Solutions; David Good, Chief Representative Tata Group, Dinyar Devitre, CFO of Altria Group and was moderated by Prof. Amarnath Bhide, Lawrence Glaubinger Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School.
This was a very well attended and covered event and included Sam Pitroda as the morning keynote speaker; and Kanwal Rekhi as the afternoon keynote speaker.
If you don't know who Sam Pitroda and Kanwal Rekhi are, you are in the wrong blog.
