Indian outsourcing giant Wipro is expanding its operations in the UK, creating 500 new jobs in the process.
Wipro revealed its expansion plans on Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's visit to India last week. The company already has a 2,000-strong UK workforce and will increase the headcount by 500 in 2007 at its existing facilities in Reading and new sites in lower-cost parts of the UK, including Birmingham.
Kees Tenninjenhuis, European senior vice president at Wipro, told ZDNet UK's sister site silicon.com that as the company starts offering higher value services to UK customers it needs more local experience.
All of the major Indian players are trying to position themselves as less Indian and more global
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary
"We are looking for centres that would be cheaper than Reading and near a university," said Tenninjenhuis. "We are starting with 100 to 200 and scale up to 500. We will send them to India for several months to become fully trained in our methods and processes. We are becoming bigger and more global."
Tenninjenhuis denied that the increased local labour costs compared to Indian levels would hit profit margins and force the company to increase its prices. "If one UK worker can create work for 10 Indian workers we believe we can do it on a neutral basis," he said.
All the top Indian IT companies are expanding their Western operations as they try to become true multinational corporations. Tata Consultancy Services has more than 3,000 staff in the UK and Infosys last year embarked on a drive to recruit UK graduates as the company expands its European operations. Infosys has 60,000 employees worldwide with 1,500 based in the UK.
Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, author of Outsourcing to India, told silicon.com: "All of the major Indian players are trying to position themselves as less Indian and more global. They want a level playing field where they can compete with the established global companies. That's a positive thing for all of us. It means if you work in the IT industry here you are just as likely to work for an Indian company."
Talkback
Wipro is amongst several large companies in India that compete for IT service outsourcing. This means that they go in and "manage" an organization's IT infrastructure, IT facilities and IT support because the organization doesn't want to hire, train and maintain IT staff and hardware/software themselves.
It's a tempting business model for companies that deal with quantity and not quality. I've experienced the quality of customer service of 3 of the top 4 companies - Wipro, HCL and Infosys. I haven't experienced TCS as yet.
Wipro is by far the worst. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is, say, the customer service of Enterprise Renta-a-Car (considered amongst the world's best service), Wipro would be a minus 10.
IT services outsourcing has several facets - customer service, staff courtesy, staff knowledge, expertise with the language, staff problem-solving skills and management's buy-in or support for all these facets.
Wipro fails miserably at all of them.
I have not met or spoken to a single Wipro IT services employee who did give a damn or who was courteous or who was knowledgeable or who was professional. Not one.
This should not surprise people who are familiar with the Indian business landscape; it's cut-throat competition amongst the top companies who constantly strive to undercut each other's prices and consequently constantly sacrifice the quality of personnel. In this landscape, Wipro is notorious for its ridiculously cheap rates ($6-8 per hour for overseas IT projects!!) and equally lousy personnel. They are legendary for hiring below average people, giving them none to below average training, bidding on IT services projects at embarrassingly low rates (and obviously winning them) and populating these projects with dozens of below-par, ignorant employees.
I've had first had experience of their shoddy customer service. Wipro IT department employees calling themselves "customer service executives" treat customers like dirt or worse and have no idea of the problems they create by messing with IT systems. They end up shrugging their collective shoulders saying "we don't know what's wrong" and "no, we don't know why that's not working".
HCL, in comparison, is much better, with a level of professionalism and courtesy that's rare, even in the US. My limited experience with them is one of 100% satisfaction; it's always been a joy dealing with them, especially because they show that they genuinely care and that they really want to spend time with you and solve your problems.
With all due respect Sir.
Unfortunately, u r far from reality; I had the same experience with the SAME car-rental company that u gave +10 points, about a week back in LA......so I am wondering whether to change my ratings to -10 now.
Worst part is.........they did it after being paid $30 an hour; atleast Wipro guys are paid $7 an hour. So if the result is the same, might as well move the car-rental to India.......just kidding....
Regarding the low price snatcher...it is TCS for your info......the company u said......u have no idea about....In terms of pricing......infosys is first, wipro is second and TCS is third. So u r wrong again....
Thirdly, as you said 10 dogs trying to eat 1 chicken pie,
if Wipro was that bad......it would not even get the bones....let alone 40% growth in the last 10 years.
BTW.....any discloures to make....regarding ownership of HCL stocks.......just kidding.....
Karthik -- you are absolutely right. John Cougar's post sounds like he has a lot of interest in HCL!! over 95% of wipro's business comes from repeat customers (as does Infosys) and it wouldn't be possible if they didn't give good service. gartner and forrester also give them very good ratings after talking to their customers...