QAI India Ltd. - Consulting

Ideality and the Evolution of Outsourcing Industry
by Shree Phadnis and Aditya Bhalla, Consultants, QAI

Is the outsourcing industry following a definitive pattern of evolution and can someone leverage that knowledge to reliably predict, prepare and manage the future? The answer to that question is in the affirmative. more..

Outsourcing - Innoculture Establishing an Innovation Culture
by Shree Phadnis and Aditya Bhalla, Consultants, QAI

Innovation not only concerns the generation of ideas that are novel and useful to the industry and workplace, but also the implementation of those ideas to develop new products or services (product innovation) and new ways of working (process innovation). more..

Reduction in Attrition using Six Sigma & Mahalanobis Taguchi System (MTS)
by Shree Phadnis, Consultants, QAI

The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country which is expected to employ around one million people by 2008 is facing the challenge of finding quality human resources given the current attrition rate of around 45 to 50 percent. more..

Ideality & design of technical systems
by Aditya Bhalla and Shree Phadnis, Consultants, QAI

Ideality is one of Key Concepts in TRIZ (Russian acronym for Theory of inventive Problem Solving). TRIZ Provides technical and non technical people with an algorithm for inventive thinking more..

Edison and perils of psychological inertia
by Shree Phadnis and Aditya Bhalla, Consultants, QAI

Thomas Edison, a distinguished inventor was well known for his recipe for innovation: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. Soon giant R&D labs sprung up manned by thousands of technicians adopting Edison’s philosophy of carrying out thousands of simultaneous trials in the hope of discovering a new phenomenon. The great inventor Nikolai Tesla’s pertinent observation sums up the woes of adopting Edison’s more..

ITRIZ and the Digitization of your Business
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

In today's knowledge economy the debate on digitization within business is no longer on why to digitize. Instead the on going struggle is to accurately ascertain what to digitize.
And the answer proffered by IT consultants/ technology vendors would be It depends.
In depends on your willingness to junk your legacy systems and migrate to newer platforms and technologies and it depends on the budget sanctioed for the IT department more..

Bridging the Divide
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

A buyers and vendors improve their business relationships, the biggest challeng is to define the boundaries of outsourcing - no longer restricted to development of stand-alone software applications bundled with an annual service and maintenance contract.
IT oursourcing now includes identiying, developing and managing the automation of even core enterprise process, For buyers, the definition of software quality has evolved to include the creation and deplopyment of IT systems integrated software and hardware that add business value. more..

The Innovation Conundrum - Is India upto the challenge
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

Any successful enterprise be it fortune 500 company, or small shop, recognizes the importance of inventions and innovations to its business. The time has come for innovation to enter the mainstream of management thinking, to achieve its rightful lace alongside financial managemet and strategic planning as a determinant of business success. Accorduing to a report of the United Kingdom office or Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the accounting and consulting firm, Top innovators develop 75% of their revenue from products that did not exist five years earlier ( Davis, 1999). more..

CSAT application of MTS
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

A grocer used to be very fussy about his cheese. Cheddar was made and sold by hundreds of little factories. Representatives of the factories had particular customers, and cheese wass prepared by hand to suit the groces, who know precisely what their patrons wanted in rat cheese, pie cheese, American and other cheese. some liked them sharper; some liked them yellower' some liked anise seeds in cheese, or caraway. more..

India BPO Success story Crafting a profitable roadmap
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

In the recent past the Asia Pacific region has emerged as the hub of activity related to the outsourcing from both the English and non-English speaking countries. India has successfully demonstrated its leadership in attracting significant business from English speaking countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. more..

Aligning Performance and Process Discipline: Hardwiring Processes to Outputs
by Mr.Chetan Khosla, QAI

Quality Standards, benchmarking and Best Practices are some the most important differentiators that Indian IT services and BPO companies have been able to adopt to gain an edge in the marketplace. Riding on quality and process excellence, they have achieved customer and employee satisfaction, as well as built the next level of business leadership. In the current environment of cut-throat competition—which exists in both the domestic and global markets—it is imperative that Indian ITES-BPO players continue to move in this direction and align their processes to outputs. In a three-article series, NASSCOM BPO Newsline explores this crucial issue, with the aim of enabling organizations to excel in their respective domains. more..

Caveat Emptor
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

In the past 3-4 years the APAC region ahs witnessed a significant and broad based improvement in the service delivery capabilties of the BPO/ITO service providers. the upward trend continues as lower tier organisation scale up their capabilities and the top - tier players target even higher levels of process maturity. more..

6 sigma in Services Emerging Paradigms
by Mr. Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

The first wave of competition for outsourcing was very coutnry orited with nations like India. Malaysis Singapore, Philippines, China, And Australia show casing their success stories to direct investments, The second wave of outsourcing has already moved onto the next level of maturity with organisatios scalling up and leveraging the strengths of each location for optimal cost structures. more..

Quality and Benchmarking: The Way Ahead For The Indian ITES-BPO Sector
By Chetan Khosla, Principal Consultant, QAI
(Published in NASSCOM's India ITES-BPO Strategy Summit 2006 - Background and Reference Resource)

What is Quality? Is it doing things accurately the first time? Or Is it doing the right thing right the first time every-time? Or is Quality a characteristic of a product or service? more...

The India BPO Success story - Crafting a profitable roadmap
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

This article deconstructs the India BPO success story and how Indian organizations are realizing that upward movement on the maturity curve is the way for increased profitability and for creation of barriers to entry for competition from within India as well as from across the world. more...

Bridging the Divide
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

This article talks about the Best Practices that a CIO/buyer should keep in mind while outsourcing software development work to a vendor more...

And Now Structuring Innovation
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

This article briefly stresses the importance of Innovation to the outsourcing industry and that with TRIZ, Innovation can now be a predictable process not subject to individual bursts of inspiration coupled with good fortune. more...

The Innovation Conundrum– Is India up to the challenge?
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

Having delivered billions of dollars of high quality services and products, the Indian IT and BPO sectors recognize that for continued dominance, widespread Innovation will sustain the momentum and leadership. Innovation, is hence an opportunity, for India to demonstrate –once again - its ability to successfully lead from the front.” more...

Customer Satisfaction: Through Innovative approaches like MTS & TRIZ.
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

This article talks about how to get accurate insight into customer preferences. Also highlights on early adapters like Motorola, Lucent, Xerox, HP,etc. more...

Innovative Problem Solving using TRIZ Methods
By Shree Phadnis, Consulting Partner, QAI

This paper attempts to apply the TRIZ concepts to predict the evolution of Six Sigma in the future more...

Innovation- The next big differentiator in service delivery
By Shree Phadnis, Consulting Partner, QAI

Quality is a continuous journey for which there's no end.
Now that the companies have achieved this time has come for the organization to move beyond quality frameworks and use excellence to create the differentiator. It also shares some insight on India and the Innovation story more...

Leveraging ITIL Best Practices for Indian IT and BPO industry
By Prakash Sharma, Principle Consultant - ITSM Practice, QAI

IT organizations constantly struggle to ensure that their IT services are value-added and meet the needs of the business in a cost-effective manner. Critical reliance on Human Capital & IT Infrastructure for delivering value to Global end-customer is common to BPO and IT Organizations and that makes ITIL an indispensable framework for them. This article talks about the innumerable benefits in general for India IT and BPO Organizations and also the road ahead. more...

Hell’s Fire - Dragon in your Basement
How the Chinese IT industry is quietly transforming into a global powerhouse
By Aditya Bhalla, Consultant, QAI

A concise, clear, insightful picture of what has worked in China, that goes beyond a mere regulation of facts and highlights the emerging picture. This article also elucidates some of the strategic directions adopted by the leadership teams at the Indian organizations like QAI as well as international organizations like IBM, Accenture, etc besides shedding light on some of the unexplored opportunities. more...

How to build a Winning Service Desk
By Prakash Sharma, Principle Consultant - ITSM Practice, QAI

This article gives a roadmap and key considerations for setting up an efficient service desk encompassing the traditional and evolving expectations from the new age Service Desk. The artcile shall enable the CIO's, CTO's, IT support people, Service Desk/ Delivery Managers, IT infrastructure Managers, etc to plan to set up a Service Desk or manage a Service Desk to consider the implications for their organization. It also lists down a set of best practices which can serve as the starting point for such an evaluation and improvement process. more...

Is your Process on its Best Behaviour ?
By Shree Phadnis, Consulting Partner, QAI
(Published in ASQ, August 2005)

This paper highlights that an approach based on process behaviour charts not only allows you to understand the process, it also allows you to create the forecasts based on predictability of the process and helps you understand the process from a cause and effect perspective more...

COPC and/or Six Sigma
Dilemmas of Customer Service Providers and BPOs
By Umesh Vyas, Consulting Partner, QAI

Two approaches to performance management and process improvement have gained widespread acceptance in the Customer Service and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) space. COPC is used by Microsoft, AT&T, Bell South, AMEX,
Dell, Compaq and Convergys, amongst others. General Electric is among the major users of Six Sigma. Some organizations, like Motorola, use both. more...

Monitoring using CUCUR
Best Practices for Transaction Monitoring
By Umesh Vyas, Consulting Partner, QAI

Transaction Monitoring, also called quality monitoring or call monitoring, is one of the most important processes in a BPO or a customer contact center. It is also often inappropriately practiced and inadequately utilized. This paper presents the
best practices for deploying and leveraging transaction monitoring using the CUCUR guidelines. more...

Six Sigma Hats for Continuous Profit Improvement
By Deepak Kumar, Consultant, QAI

For some time the concept of “Six Sigma” has been regarded with high esteem and great respect. Ever since Wipro Infotech Group adopted the concept whole-hog as a mechanism to take the enterprise on a ‘continuous improvement’ loop post CMM level 5, the awareness in the industry and expectation from the concept has grown exponentially. more...

Boosting business value with accurate customer mind capture
By Deepak Kumar, Consultant, QAI

Most businesses are trying to achieve profits shooting in the dark – when viewed through an analytical framework such as Six Sigma. Failures are attributed to anything under the sun except the organization's own failure to harness the potential of tools and techniques. more...

Six Sigma Will Raise India's Competitive Edge
By Deepak Kumar, Consultant, QAI.

Models abound and there seems to be takers for every one of them, and new ones keep cropping up. However, 'business goal' is the most important driving factor that can justify any model. And any process model must have this in mind. This is true even at the industry level. more...

Managing Outsourcing Maturity
By Deepak Kumar, Consultant, QAI.

If there is one thing on which the future of the IT industry lies, it would probably be outsourcing. Outsourcing has been a management tool for decades and has evolved from the 1960's from a 'time-sharing' model to giving out parts of IT operations. Entire IT operations were outsourced first in the 1980's, which extended into alliances. Today everything comes under the fold of 'IT enabled services. more...

IT Supported International Outsourcing
By Deepak Kumar, Consultant, QAI.

Indian companies have been largely comfortable with software outsourcing – as service providers. With opportunities such as IT enabled services, business process outsourcing and contact center operations promising to open up new avenues, these companies seem to be in a position to tap into their experience to occupy all points on the value matrix. However, the ‘outsourcing’ cloud is undergoing rapid changes of its own, threatening to upturn all assumptions. A Finnish University, which has been studying the issue for almost a decade, has some insights on how organizations are evaluating ‘outsourcing service’ providing companies and countries. more...

Transitioning from ISO 9000:2000 to CMM® Level 4
By Satish Kumar Tumu, Consultant, QAI

The latest revision of ISO recommendations clearly shows a trend towards maturity models by providing enough scope for Software Organizations to improve their process quality, and also to make the entire system more customer-centric. more...