Switzerland-based financial services provider UBS (NYSE: UBS) is reportedly selling its business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) units. And is said to be in talks with Indian offshoring giants Infosys Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: INFY) and Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT). The UBS Indian Service Center and UBS Krakow centre has an estimated value of $200 million, reports The Economic Times.

Reading the Indian mainstream news yesterday about India Inc.’s strategy to expand operations in Eastern Europe and hire multilinguals to serve the European finance and accounting sector does not surprise me anymore. In my April article, I talked about how Europe is becoming more comfortable with outsourcing not just to its neighboring countries but also to Asia particularly to the Philippines. The following month, I wrote an article on Philippine Outsourcing re-focusing its efforts to the European market instead in anticipation of US political and trade condition changes.

Every company needs to understand the market they cater to, to help them identify the areas for improvement as well as areas for opportunity. The research industry as a whole has gone through a lot of standardization and consolidation due to the advancement of technology. The market research industry, in particular, has changed over the years due to globalization, increasing competition, changing market demand, among other factors. All these changes paved the way for greater outsourcing.

The first quarter results show the trends the companies will take in the succeeding quarters. Companies will continually lower costs through divestitures and workforce reduction and pay cut. Revenue generation strategies will be consolidation through mergers and acquisition and outsourcing.

News on layoffs has become a norm nowadays. Some blame it on the economic slowdown, some on political bureaucracy while others blame it on offshore outsourcing. There could be a number of reasons for the job cuts but it all boils down to “cost reduction”.

Market pressures are looming at every corner of the globe and corporate executives are doing whatever they can to bring down cost in order to be more competitive. Before the economic slowdown, companies used to send non-core work to low-cost countries. But as the state of economies worsen, firms started to see offshore outsourcing in a different perspective.

With the Philippines continually betting on revenues and jobs from the global outsourcing market, forecasting a growth rate for this year of 20 to 30 percent, the country then needs to refocus its promotion direction to new markets like Europe especially with its main client, the United States’ increasing protectionist moves.