Thread: Mich. firm turns tables on outsourcing

Burroughs moves call center back to Plymouth from India

LOUIS AGUILAR
The Detroit News Plymouth -- When a Burroughs customer called to report a problem with a My Vision X check scanner, Rodney Dillon was ready.
In his old job, Dillon assembled the desktop machine, which allows businesses to process checks instantly. Today, in the same Plymouth Road building, he works as a call center technician.
"It's basic hands-on experience with machine, really," said Dillon, who diagnosed the customer's problem -- a loose wire -- in just a few minutes.
What makes this transaction different is that Dillon and five other customer service employees for Burroughs Payment Systems Inc. work in Plymouth -- not in India or some other hub of offshore outsourcing.
In fact, a part of Burroughs' call center used to be in Bangalore, India, until company officials began to examine the real cost benefit of outsourcing.
Burroughs is not the only company starting to question whether the initial cost savings adds up, long term. A small number of businesses and several state government offices are looking to bring jobs back to the United States and to Michigan in particular.
"I am having those conversations with businesses in the (auto) supply chain and other manufacturers, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more of those jobs returning," said Satish Upda, dean of Michigan State University's College of Engineering.
For example, the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment, whose campground reservations were routed to Maryland, awarded its new contract to Iron River-based Global Response North.
And Oscoda-based Crusecom Technology Consultants provides call center support for assistance programs managed by the Department of Human Services. Those calls previously were handled in Florida, Mexico and India.
It's a countertrend to the wave of foreign outsourcing. Due to rising customer dissatisfaction and long-term costs, Upda said, some offshore outsourced jobs will likely return to the United States.
Satisfaction increases
The Burroughs experience is an illustration.
While Indian workers were paid less than Burroughs' American workers, other costs were rising when customer calls were routed offshore.
The number of machines returned to Burroughs was growing, as was the number of times the company had to send an engineer into the field to fix a problem.
CEO Alan Howard began to question whether the up-front cost savings of outsourcing held up over the long haul. So Burroughs, which recently split from Unisys Corp., returned its call center to Plymouth, staffing it with the workers who had actually built the machines.
"Our cost savings is greater than 10 times the cost saving we would have achieved offshore," Howard said.
Customer satisfaction spiked, according to the company's internal tracking, and fewer units are being returned for repairs. And engineers are less often sent to the field to fix problems.
"Customers prefer to talk to people who know what they are talking about," Howard said.
'Some went overboard'
Robert Kennedy, associate director of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan business school who studies global business trends, said that while there may be some examples of returning offshore work to American soil, "that doesn't add up to significant trend."
The only other Michigan example he could give is IBM Corp.'s Global Delivery Center for Application Services, which opened last year.
The facility focuses on upgrading software for IBM systems used by the state government, such as the Michigan.gov Web site, and by corporations around the country. Previously, those 100 jobs would have been outsourced to foreign countries, Kennedy and state officials said. IBM officials would not comment.
"It doesn't mean offshoring is reversing. It means that some companies really went overboard with it and are bringing some jobs back," Kennedy said. "Some companies became too enamored with upfront cost savings."
Indian outsourcers expect to hire 150,000 information technology and business process outsourcing workers this year, according to The National Association of Software and Services Companies, an Indian trade group.
Kennedy thinks a bigger trend may develop in the number of foreign companies that will set up shop in the United States.
The alliance between Dow Chemical Co. and an IT consulting division of India's Tata Group, for example, will result in a new service delivery center that eventually could create 1,250 jobs here.
Announced in November, the service center near Dow's Midland headquarters would provide services including supply chain scheduling and planning, invoice and data management and accounts receivable and payable. Tata Consultancy operates an office in Troy.
laguilar@detnews.com">laguilar@detnews.com

Originally Posted by maniclion

"The number of machines returned to Burroughs was growing, as was the number of times the company had to send an engineer into the field to fix a problem."

Man I should hire myself out as a consultant for shit like that, I could have told them exactly that would happen. Indian folks are very smart but the education in countries like that doesn't focus on developing "outside of the box" critical thinking, every thing is strict logic. Those call center folks will read from the troubleshooting list if it doesn't help then they give in and tell them to send the product in, an American will run the symptoms through their brain and try to imagine what might have caused them outside of the logical, especially guys like me who love to be the small hero of the moment when it comes to tech stuff....Also you gotta have some of the engineers who built the product on hand to get through the harder issues...

thats why India send the smart ones to school over here...