We
recently hosted a roundtable with senior sourcing executives from some major
companies. The discussion was far-reaching  and quite provocative. One topic
really brought out the passion: These executives just don’t see eye to eye with
Indian providers.

I’ve
written previously about the conversations I’ve had with most of the leading
executives of the major India-based providers.…

At a recent meeting in Dalian, China, I was chatting with a site manager for a leading India-based service provider. Naturally enough, the topic of workforce management challenges came up, so I took the opportunity to ask about the relative difficulties in attracting, training, and retaining employees for business process outsourcing operations.…

When the topic of offshoring comes up in most
settings, the conversation invariably turns to culture. The frequency of
mention reminds me of my days working at a Wall Street investment bank: Culture
was mentioned so often that one felt that the bank was in the yogurt business!

Recently, however, I’ve begun to detect some bristling
among client executives who deploy and manage offshore operations when they are
presented with the roster of “cultural challenges” related to offshore operations.…