How BPO cope with the present economic meltdown

NASSCOM released a report that shows that the Indian BPO sector is no longer in danger of losing jobs. The New Year is about to bring good news for the Indian BPO. NASSCOM denies the prediction that the Indian BPO is about to undergo huge job cut of about 2.5 lakh in the first quarter of 2009. On the other hand, NASSCOM declared that only after an extensive research and interaction with its member companies, it has come to this decision. In fact, NASSCOM is about to release its forecast for the fiscal year 2009. It further added that BPO industry will continue to hire and the fear of large scale job loss is not expected. Along with these positive inputs, NASSCOM also expressed its fear of loss of huge manpower if the Government did not grant the fiscal package.

The US economic slump has done what the BPO sector has been trying to do for years- lower the attrition rate. From 30-40 per cent attrition rate in the beginning of this year, the number has come down to 15 to 20 per cent. The industry experts are of the opinion that the companies are most likely not to miss this chance in rationalizing the salaries of the BPO employees.

Genpact, one of the largest BPOs of the country, reported an attrition rate of about 26 per cent for the first nine months of the year 2008 as against the 30 per cent in the same quarter in 2007. Whether it is Satyam or Cbay the economic downturn has slowed down attrition rate at least by 15 per cent. Infosys BPO has also seen a lower attrition rate for the last few months. However, the company has no plans for job cuts with the slump in US.

What is certain is that the salary of this sector will be rationalized, not only for entry level but also for the middle and senior level. The drop in salary is expected to be over 5 per cent. Further, it is implied that the increase in salary will depend on productivity. There will be a fixed salary; the change will only be in variable pay.

The Business Process Outsourcing sector has thus taken many measures to survive this economic low tide. The sector is struggling to cope with the financial downturn, but any further addition to this might prove fatal for this industry.

Revenue Cycle Management

Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) forms an integral part of hospital management system. Insufficient or poor revenue cycle management might cost your hospital to loose two to three percent of its net annual revenue. The term “Revenue Cycle Management” carries multiple connotations. Some use it to describe claims those are denied of medical necessity, while others use it to show how the information, procedures and service plan are tracked for a specific payer.

Yet, there is another group that associates it with the daily work of a physician’s chamber. So, do not be disappointed at the blank look from your medical billing company for questions like: what is your strategy for revenue cycle management or what are its results.

An effective revenue cycle management system manages the data for the billing process. This accelerates and increases the flow of cash. A good reporting needs to be comprehensive managing all claims. If used properly, revenue cycle management can reduce claim denials by at least 50 per cent.

Promantra Revenue Cycle Management service helps healthcare organizations attain the above goals resulting not only in high revenue management but also increased level of satisfaction. We specialize in the revenue cycle management of long term care organizations. We collect and monitor the rightful reimbursements for the service provided.

To accelerate the velocity of our revenue management cycle, we have compartmentalized the entire process into different sections, like: Admissions, Insurance Authentication, Charge Processing, Billing, Follow Up for Collections, Payment Posting and Bad Debt management.

Our RCM service is delivered exclusively through our proprietary GeroPro platform. This unique platform helps us in managing the contracts (Medicare & Medicaid) of Long Term Care Organizations, authenticate their reimbursements and also provide systematic resident estimate. We also bill for Medicare, Medicaid, Insurance, Co-Insurance for third party and private payers.

Our Revenue Cycle Management service assures you minimum denials. The healthcare system has been striving through a challenge of minimizing cost; the traditional efforts have proved insufficient in reducing the financial margins. Revenue Cycle Management is an effective solution in such cases.

With an experience of more than five years, Promantra has been delivering quality RCM service for Long Term Care units. Certified to the standards of ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 27001:2005, Promantra Revenue Cycle Management assures you rightful reimbursement.

Increase value and reduce risk with outsourcing strategies

Outsourcing is a strategy that the firms and corporations are increasingly using to reduce costs and increase their share of profit. Although companies found outsourcing as one of the significant ways of minimizing costs, but the risks involved in it should also be considered. It is expensive to maintain a large application development and testing staff. So more and more companies favor outsourcing to specialist third parties, who have experienced and skilled resources.

It has often been seen that industries, which have no history of outsourcing often finds it difficult to complete its outsource project successfully as against companies that have knowledge in outsourcing. Most of the projects undertaken by retail and public sectors are successful (77.5% and 65% respectively) where as the transport and financial sector show massive failures because of their inexperience and lack of knowledge about outsourcing.

Careful planning and control are the key determinants in seamless completion of a project. The primary reason for outsourcing is to develop software applications at a reduced cost and also the need to boost resources through access to skilled resources. It is generally expected that outsourcing will increase in the next few years. Although the rate of increase will be lower than as compared to the prior aggressive growth, but at least 20 per cent growth is expected.

If you aim to increase the share of your profit through outsourcing, the first thing that you need to determine is a reliable business partner. An organization should entrust the responsibility of outsourcing to a chosen partner. Thus the organization needs to follow secure coding best practices, the application that has been developed with adequate levels of security. The importance of security increases even more as the organizations are outsourcing such sensitive data as financial and human resource application.

Public sector and retail are the two industries that outsource their sensitive documents and even then they have fewer issues with their projects. The very fact that legal action has been taken in some cases describes that there is a problem in the contract that provides nothing for the companies to fall back on. Hence outsourcing may not be considered as risk, so long as the correct strategies are taken. Experience plays an important role here.

Thus if a company does not have experience in outsourcing, it is likely that it can attract penalties thereby reducing its profitability and adding to the cost of the outsourcer. Before a company starts any of its outsourcing projects, it is important that it gets the contract right. No matter how much time is required, the company should set what are the goals for the development for a particular application or service. The requirement of software or a particular service should form the basis of any contract and it should be reinforced through any service level agreement.

It is also important that the outsourcing company should identify the requirements for application security and also the tools and techniques required to develop the software application in a safe environment. But this is not enough. The company has to have some kind of certification to assure the outsourcers about the security.

It is the responsibility of the organizations to define the tools and techniques that the outsourcer company should use. New vulnerabilities and vectors can occur at any point while providing service. But all vulnerabilities are not of the same order. So it is again the responsibility of the organization to prioritize vulnerabilities depending on the risk level.

The outsourcer should be able to assure the providing company that it can gauge any vulnerability that may arise during the process. In order to ensure the clients that the application has been tested at different stages of the software development cycle, the outsourcer must specify the exact security testing techniques that they use.

As security is the key criterion for outsourcing, it is better that the initial security testing is done by the clients. This, of course, does not mean that the organizations will not test the security by themselves. But it is considered best practice for the outsourcer to write that the client has the right to audit the security before application.

At Promantra Synergy Solutions, we adhere to a stringent rule when it comes to data protection and information security. Certified by the International Business Standard of ISO 27001:2005, data protection and information security are considered most crucial to all our HIPAA complaint healthcare services.

This is further enforced by our unique Healthcare Information Suite: GeroPro. The GeroPro platform gives us a unique flexibility of working with sensitive data in a completely secure platform. Before use, our software undergoes a thorough process of testing using the standards of SDLC. With a complete assurance for data protection and security, Promantra assures high-end quality work in a secured environment at a cost that is most reasonable.

India’s biggest competitor in outsourcing industry – A comparative analysis

The economic boon in India is primarily the result of outsourcing. India is heavily dependent and indebted to outsourcing for its prosperity. Like every other industry, the outsourcing industry of India also is not devoid of any kind of threat. The strengthening of the South-east Asian nations, like Philippines pose as a great threat for the outsourcing industry of the country. China is gradually emerging as a huge threat for the outsourcing industry of India.

A recent study by McKinsey concluded that the IT outsourcing industry of China is now often been mentioned in the same breadth as that of India, although India has no threat from China in the recent future as China needs to consolidate its fragmented industry to gain size as well as expertise. But the statistics generated by Gartner Dataquest, a U.S based research firm, completely contradicted this report. It shows that the IT service revenue of China was slated for a compound annual growth rate of 19.6 per cent and to reach $8.9 billion by the end of the year 2006.

Another study by IDC, a U.S based researcher shows that the IT service market of China is growing at a rate of 42 per cent since 1997. According to the January 2005 report of Yu Guangzhou, the Vice president of the Ministry of Commerce of China, the average annual growth of the Chinese IT industry was 30 per cent for the last five years. It also showed a growth of software export. In addition to that, it also showed that the sales revenue of the Chinese software industry had increased from $7.16 billion in 2000 to $19.3 billion in 2003. The software export of Chinese software has also increased from $0.25 billion to $2 billion in that same period of time.

The report by McKinsey also showed that almost 90 per cent of the IT services of China are locally done. In comparison, only about 28 to 30 per cent of the IT services of India are done locally. The growth of the domestic market of China should be considered as its strength rather than its weakness. China’s membership in the World Trade Organization and the 2008 Beijing Olympics are indicators of long term association of China in outsource industry. Without a strong local market, China can prove to be a tough competitor for the Indian outsourcing industry.

Among the South-East Asian nations, Philippines threats the outsource industry of India the most. According to the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), the industry earned revenue of $423 million from both product software and outsourcing in 2007 as against only $200 million in 2005. The outsource industry in Philippines currently employs 28,000 software developers. For the year 2009, the most important areas of business for them will be customer support, like project maintenance, modifications that a customer might request for and like.

Beng Coronel, the current President of PSIA, described that Philippines is in a better position when compared to India and China in regards to the infrastructure and cultural affinity with U.S. But the uncertainty brought in by the President-elect Obama is casting a cloud on the sector. PSIA estimates that almost 45 per cent of the offshore software work comes from U.S and Japan and Europe contribute almost 25 per cent respectively for the outsource works.

In order to maintain its share in the outsourcing business, India needs to maintain a strong domestic market. China is training its people in English. Indian outsourcing industry should gear up or else there are every chances of loosing business. Another thing that should be considered is the cost effectiveness. Philippines is giving same quantity in a much competitive price. So, we should either make up by high quality work or by competitive rates.