♦  Business Management Research by Geography

Enterprise Risk Management in India

• Evolving legal standards make it prudent for business organizations operating in the Indian financial market to strengthen their ERM processes based on best practices and widely accepted self-regulatory principles, such as the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO)’s Enterprise Risk Management - Integrated Framework (2004)
• Indian companies with publicly issued debt will come under additional scrutiny of their ERM processes. Standard and Poor’s has released a request for comment on their plans to evaluate every company in every industry’s ERM program. That evaluation will become an integral part of the credit rating decision.
• Other than financial institutions, few Indian companies have developed sophisticated risk metrics. Even at financial institutions, risks are usually managed and monitored by class of risk such as credit or market risk, rather than holistically across the institution.

Learn more about enterprise risk management in India here in Assessing the Climate for Enterprise Risk Management in India.

E-commerce in the UK

There may be a limit to how much e-commerce can poach from offline sales. But most product and service sectors are now well-represented online. As a result, it is difficult to speculate if, when or how much online will begin to languish, as traditional retail is doing. And if the overall economy were to bounce back at the same time that the extraordinary growth in e-commerce began to taper off, e-commerce would still be driven by rising demand.

After all, e-commerce is now a mainstream activity in the UK. Well-known offline retailers are strengthening their online presence. Food, clothing, appliances and housewares have joined music, CDs, DVDs, books and tickets on the list of most-popular online buys.According to the UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), 72% of Internet users polled had bought products or services online in the year to mid-2008, and 44% had bought groceries.

The Web puts price comparisons and consumer reviews at shoppers’ fingertips. Visits to UK sites with these features are at an all-time high. And the range of products, services and bargains available has drawn consumers from economic groups that, in the past, were not considered likely to shop online.

Verdict Research calculated that although the affluent still dominated the ranks of online buyers in 2007, almost 7 million people from lower income levels also bought items on the Internet.

Learn more about B2C E-commerce in UK B2C E-Commerce: Continued Growth in Tricky Times

Outsourcing in Argentina

Argentina has demonstrated remarkable success in growing its way out of the economic crisis of 2001-2002. A key factor in its success is a competitive exchange rate resulting from its devalued currency. This has accelerated performance in its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. Contact center or voice based BPO agent count has grown from 6,500 agents in 2001 to 24,000 at the end of 2005. Agent density is projected to reach 33,000 by the end of 2006 and approach almost 42,000 by December 2007. Its 34% average BPO growth rate for the last 3 years will slow down slightly to 31% in 2007. The country is Latin America’s highest provider of bilingual agents with 60% serving U.S. and Eururopean companies.

Approximately 40 contact center BPO service providers dominate the Argentine call center industry and are concentrated in Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Rosario, three cities with 94% of the market’s agent capacity. Cordoba has the highest per capita concentration of software university graduates in Latin America. Revenues from these centers will exceed US$70 million in 2006 and are projected to reach each US$90-95 million by 2007. Compulsory primary education and free university education provide businesses with over 1.5 million university graduates concentrated in its three cities. These high education levels coupled with extensive bilingual education programs, low attrition rates, falling E1 telecommunication costs and favorable BPO and IT investment incentives make Argentina an ideal location.

Learn more about outsourcing offshore in Argentina in Argentina Executive Call Center Report 2007: Heart of Innovation and Care

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