The call center industry has been present in the market for so many years already and its extensive presence in the industry has promoted innovation and expansion within the industry. This has brought about changes in the market, especially now that companies are constantly looking for ways on how to conduct their processes seamlessly and more efficiently. Part of its innovation as well, is the emergence of and virtual call centers and its acceptance into mainstream contact center processes.

Outsourcing of back office processes such as data entry services remains one of the easiest functions to outsource as more companies are learning, becoming a popular choice to outsource for various industries.  Back office outsourcing is now seeing increasing adoption among different verticals including the banking and asset management sectors.

If it’s not about healthcare reform, it’s about information technology.  Whichever the case, both indicate that healthcare outsourcing is expected to garner a lot of business this year – and healthcare outsourcing providers such as medical coding or medical billing companies know it.

The Big Blue is making the state of Indiana and its residents see red. In a series of events that began with the signing of a very profitable outsourcing deal between the state of Indiana and technology outsourcing company IBM, the deal has now ended up with IBM (NYSE:IBM) filing a countersuit against Indiana late last week in an affair that began as, well, somewhat good, to bad and now, to worse.

Contrary to what some naysayers of outsourcing are saying, the industry is alive and well, and it seems that it’s going to stay for a long while yet. As mentioned in a previous article, competition in outsourcing is becoming very stiff now, what with the industry expanding, as is what professional services firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers surmised in its Jan, 2010 report. Everyone wants a piece of the cake, but when everyone’s toting the same salver, it’s a bit difficult to decide to whom to give a piece to.

With the United States market still in slump, businesses project difficulties in profit increase in the next 7 years. Job cuts continue in the US and the rate of job creation of 25 per year is not sufficient to offset job losses in the next 5 years. On the other side of the world, Indian outsourcing firms show an opposite trend. Global IT service providers such as Infosys which provides technical consulting, design and development of business solutions have been aggressively increasing their workforce. Last week, the company reported that in the second quarter it has hired 6,069 people offsetting the 4,521 employees it laid off in the same quarter. Tata Consultancy Service is also bullishly hiring with plans of hiring 25,000 people worldwide for this year 2009 and 90% coming from India. Also part of the bandwagon is Wipro Technologies. In October 15 Wipro CEO Azim Premji said that the company is planning to hire about 500 local employees for a new service centre by Jun 2010. Manpower India Director Cherian Kuruvila also highlighted this hiring trend by Indian outsourcing firms saying, “Companies are expected to build a talent pool for upcoming projects as green shoots are visible”.