|
Learning from the Dragons of the Dalian BPO Industry
|
| sdasd |
 |
| asdas |
Hatching the Dragon's Eggs: the Companies in Dalian, their Processes and their Concerns
Despite the positive growth of the ITES-BPO industry in the city, certain concerns still remain—some are common throughout the industry worldwide, and some are unique to Dalian's context.
Carol learned as much in a visit with Dell's Claire Meng, Senior Staffing Manager for Human Resources, and Lisa Lim, Head Human Resources Director. Both have built the Dell team to around 1,300 people over the past three years to fill positions in Dell China and the Dell Dalian Customer Contact Center. Dell's operations in the city involve technical support, sales, marketing, human resources, and several other functions for customer markets in Japan, China, and Korea. For this, the company needs talents who can perform several of the abovementioned functions and can speak English and Japanese fluently, with Korean and Chinese speakers coming in a close second. Finding talents for these jobs has resulted in Dell recruiting all over the East Asian region: Japan, China, even Malaysia and Singapore.
When Carol met with GENPACT Asia, the largest BPO operation in Dalian, she spoke with Urvashi Singh, Executive Hiring Director; Grace Li, Human Resources Director; Benjamin Cheng, Business Leader, IT COE; Laurence Cui, Hiring Specialist; and Helen Han, COE Leader.
GENPACT Asia has requirements similar to Dell's. Having established themselves in the city in 2000, the former GE captive operation now serves clients in Japan, Korea, Greater China, and Southeast Asia. They employ up to 1,700 people and provide services in their Four Centers of Excellence: Finance & Accounting Services, Customer Service, Information Technology Services, and Supply Chain & Procurement. These functional services are available to the Banking & Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing, Transportation, and Automotive Industries. GENPACT serves clients in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, which underscores the need for multilingual, highly skilled talent in Dalian.
Having opened its own Dalian facility in March 2003, Accenture is another outsourcing giant that has capitalized on the city's IT-friendly infrastructure. Here, Carol met with Paul Richardson, Accenture's Executive Director for Dalian, and with Catherine Liu, Human Resources Manager. "Accenture sees enormous opportunity in China," said Joe Forehand, Accenture chairman and CEO. "The launch of Accenture's center in Dalian is an important step in our strategy to develop a competitively differentiated global sourcing approach that allows us to deploy professionals with knowledge, skills and experience wherever and whenever our clients need them."
This facility, together with Accenture's Shanghai BPO Delivery Center, offers services that include Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, Procure-to-Pay Services, Learning Solutions, Customer Relationship Management, Insurance and Banking back-office processing, Data Management Services, Industry specific services, and IT Help Desk services. These services primarily serve companies that operate in China and Japan. These services require engineers who have expertise in UNIX, Microsoft, and as well as SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle, Siebel, and other such packaged applications. On top of all this, talents need to be proficient in Chinese, English and Japanese communication skills to service Accenture Dalian's East-Asian clientele.
| sdasd |
 |
| asdas |
Dalian Software Park : Where the Dragon Lies Coiled
Any discussion of Dalian's success in outsourcing will inevitably include the jewel in its crown, the Dalian Software Park (DLSP). Since its groundbreaking in 1998, the software park has grown into China's Model City for Internationalization of the Software Industry. Because the IT hub enjoys preferential government policies, generous funding, and a large pool of the best IT talents, the DLSP provides an ideal location for the software, BPO and ITES industries, both local and international.
Approximately 200 companies make their home there, with foreign organizations accounting for around 41 percent of that roster. More than a few Global 500 companies are found in Dalian, including Accenture, Dell, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba. Most of the companies in Dalian serve markets in either North America or East Asia.
Through the software park, Dalian continues to attract international and local software companies and is rapidly turning into the largest software export base and professional software training center in China.
Since its opening in 2000, the Dalian Software Park went through several titles and designations: starting from National Torch Project Software Industrial Base, the facility has moved up to National Software Industrial Base and National Software Export Base. Around US$ 480 million was spent on developing infrastructure, education and training facilities and living facilities; by the end of 2004, the DLSP had a total floor space of 700,000 square meters. There are approximately 200 software firms in the park, including 16 invested by Fortune 500 companies. Sales amounting to US$ 544 million and an export volume of US$ 200 million were recorded in 2004. This posted a growth of over 50 percent from the previous year. The total sales revenue of software products and information services ranks first among China's software industrial bases.
The DLSP is unique in that it is the first software industrial base in China to be operated under the management of a company, the Dalian Software Park Co, Ltd., and supported by the municipal government. The company is in charge of infrastructure construction, management and service provision, while the Dalian municipal government offers support through macro control, policy making, investment promotion and financial assistance. The municipal government also assists in planning and design, feasibility research, and the introduction of skilled staff.
Development of the park has three stages: Phase 1 took place between 1998 and 2000, and focused on small- and medium-sized companies. Phase 2 is based on the principles of "Specialization, Scale, and Internationalization"; its objectives include forming an industrial arrangement enclosing a Software Development Zone, a Research & Development Zone, an Information Service Zone, an Education & Training Zone, and a Corporate Campus Zone. In addition to this, a Public Services zone, a Communication Technology zone, an area for commercial exhibition, luxurious residential areas, and residence zones as well as coastal seashore parks will be constructed.
Training and education also have a place in the Dalian Software Park ; the Neusoft Institute of Information Technology of Northeastern University, China's first privately-owned IT educational institution, was built in the park in June 2000. The institute has a capacity of 9,000 students and has a diversified training mode that covers many levels of academic experience, short and medium-term training and online education. In 2003, a second private software educational institution was formed by a collaboration between the Dalian Software Park Co Ltd and the Dalian Jiaotong University. Around 10,000 professionals with medium- and high-level certificates are expected to be trained in the next five years.
In 2002, the DLSP was granted the ISO9001 quality management system certification, which covers three fields: park development and consultation, property management and real estate development. The park employs urban planning that integrates a software community with working, living, business and recreation. Today, the software park includes a residential quarter, a bilingual kindergarten, an IT managers club, and an enterprise service centre.
The park boasts of several great achievements in application software and embedded software development, IT consulting, service and operation management, IT education and training, and telecommunication network services to form a complete industrial chain.
The telecommunication infrastructure and steady commercial environment provided by the DLSP give international firms the confidence to make Dalian their overseas development base. In addition, the municipal government has been taking steps to implement Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Certification to help firms enter international markets more quickly.
| sdasd |
 |
| asdas |
Wisdom from the Dragon: Takeaways from Dalian
Because of its location, Dalian is strategically placed to serve the markets of Greater China, Japan, and Korea. As such, the talents needed by the BPO industry there need to be multilingual, fluent not only in English, but in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages—like Mandarin and Cantonese—as well. The skill requirements also include a spectrum as broad as the customers served in the city; talents must be skilled in areas like finance and accounting, human resources, customer relationship management, supply chain and procurement, and several other fields. Given the BPO boom in Dalian, the demand for highly skilled, multilingual talent will always be there with jobs for those qualified enough.
Dalian's own population, while well trained by the city's many IT-oriented educational institutes and training facilities, isn't enough to fill the demand for talents in the BPO industry there, and this has prompted the firms in Dalian to recruit talents internationally. Japan, Korea, and Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai are the first locations these firms look in, but now they are beginning to consider looking further south in Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia. Returning Chinese expatriates are given special attention, however, and are given incentives if they return to China to work in Dalian.
Government support, both national and municipal, doesn't end there, however. The Chinese government has gone a long way to making Dalian the success story it is today, and this support has been there since the groundbreaking of the Dalian Software Park in 1998. The 200-odd firms that have set up shop in Dalian have definitely made it worth the government's investment.
As outsourcing spreads all over the world as the next big moneymaker, many countries are joining the mad scramble to accommodate interested outsourcers. As a result, a common observation is that call centers have mushroomed in cities the world over without taking the local city infrastructure into account.
It is only in Dalian, however, where everything is fully integrated: the training facilities, the communications apparatus, the government support all come together to aid companies in setting up facilities, training their recruits, getting their certifications in order, and educating the next crop of employees. It also helps that Dalian is China's northernmost ice-free port and enjoys a mild, temperate climate all year round. Because of this, Dalian makes the mad scramble for requirements like talents, real estate and bureaucratic certification a more serene activity, much like picking cherries on a summer's day. Dalian is living testament to efficiency and orderliness in accommodating foreign and local businesses amidst the frenetic pace of today's outsourcing; if Dalian can do it, so can everyone else.
