Offshore outsourcing hits the mainstream

Offshore outsourcing is enjoying a period of "super growth" which is propelling it into the mainstream.

A study published today by Datamonitor indicates that major outsourcing providers are seeing their order books filling up once again, with India and the Philippines cashing in on the jump in offshore projects.

The report predicts that over 250,000 new call centre agent positions will be created in India and the Philippines by 2009.

The US represented the vast majority of overseas demand, followed by the UK. While India continues to dominate the global offshore call centre outsourcing landscape, the Philippines threatens to poach some activity as its own market grows in strength.

According to Datamonitor, both India and the Philippines will see substantial growth in call centres now that US presidential elections are out of the way allowing US and UK businesses to ramp up their offshore operations.

The analyst firm added that the increasing diversity of industries will dilute the market share of early movers like financial services and communications.

Datamonitor predicts that more firms are set to follow the likes of British Airways, Citibank, General Electric and HSBC, all of which have spun off a part or all of their operations to India.

"Outsourcing providers are competing to run entire customer processes for their clients, rather than merely the voice-based call centre part," said Ryan Powell, call centre analyst at Datamonitor and author of the study.

"The fact that they are able to win this kind of work is testament to the efforts that have been placed on assuring quality control and improving call resolution rates in order to improve customer satisfaction over the past year or so."