BPOVIA Official Blog | About Virtual Assistant, Outsourcing, KPO, BPO and China » Talent

SMEs get better opportunities to hire talents

Yvonne Dong — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:03:58 +0000

According to the head of a global recruitment agency, as a result of the worldwide financial crisis, staff layoffs at a number of multinational companies (MNCs) in the country should present an opportunity for small and medium-sized domestic enterprises (SMEs) to grab whatever talent they can.

CEO of Antal International Tony Goodwin noted that the SMEs should do so before the MNCs realize the potential of Chinese economy and start to rehire next year. In an exclusive interview by China Daily, he said hiring people will offer greater long-term benefits than firing. Corporate executives should consider formulating “long-term” human resources strategy during these uncertain times.

In China, US companies tend to react a little more aggressively to the effect of global economic downturn in reducing their workforce, according to Goodwin. In contrast, domestic and European multinational enterprises keep more restrained attitudes toward the unfolded crisis. And such kind of conservative approach is a wise one because of the underlying strength of the lager developing economies, especially China.

The fact that some MNCs are now firing people would probably cause problems for themselves in coping with the growth of business next year. However, they have provided great opportunities for small and medium-sized companies to recruit many talents they never found before. “If the financial crisis had not had happened, the smaller companies would never have stood a chance of competing with the big corporations for top managers,” said Goodwin. With so many talents, SMEs like BPOVIA in Nanjing is becoming much stronger and more effective.

He also noted that foreign companies can accelerate their localization instead of firing people to save costs. That is to hire more Chinese managers rather than bring people from their own countries.

Liew Mun Leong, CEO of Singapore-based MNC CapitaLand said the firm will have a 100 percent Chinese management in 2009.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO ) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

French business talent develops in China

Yvonne Dong — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:34:44 +0000

The French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China (CCIFC), founded in 1992 under the inspired leadership of French companies engaged in business in China, has stably increased the number of members each year. 2008 is following the trend of 2007 and the Chamber now has over 1,200 members.
According to its president, Annick de Kermade-Bentzmann, the Chamber has both large companies and small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which play an active part in communication and cooperation with Chinese companies in many fields.

The president said, “Of course the large French companies are all very active in China. But a majority of our members are SMEs. France’s economy has a very large basis of SEMs and our young professionals and entrepreneurs are very talented in creating new companies to produce, create and sell new products, concepts and services.”

She noted that China is giving this opportunity to the SEMs to bring their talents to China, which benefits both France’s and China’s economy.

The president said they really care for the new SEMs members and give them a hand as far as they need. In terms of fixed costs, new SMEs have little room for tactic, so they try to relieve SMEs’ costs.

China takes up almost 10 percent of the trade of French exporting companies, which is already very significant.

“However, our goal is to have more exporters among French companies in France. The role of the French Chamber is to welcome them here and to give them a chance to gain success.” she said.

“All sectors of industry, trade and services are well-represented in the Chamber. It means that as a very sophisticated industrial and economic territory, China is able to appeal the whole range of enterprises, from the primary to the most advanced, from commodities to highly specialized products and services.” the president noted.

The French Chamber, along with the Assembly of French Chambers (ACFCI), has organized for the third year an award for SEMs in France and in China, helping promote the beast performing SEMs or entrepreneur.

She said, “To gain this goal with effort, we work very closely with the French governmental Agency UBIFRANCE which focuses on how to encourage a company based in France to become an exporter in China. Between export, research and development, creativity and economic, financial, market share show is a virtuous circle.”

The role of the French Chamber is more important as it is still quite difficult to access some of the business sectors in China. “Of course, in recent years, there has been a lot of improvement in the business environment in China.” she said.

“The legal conditions of the enterprises in China are much better. Let us mention the labor laws and rights as an example. China has made big progress in regulations that are already applied in many countries, among them France. The French enterprises have developed in China the same way as in France, with high standards in labor laws. The raising of legal standards brings the Chinese companies closer to those already applied within foreign companies.” the president said.

“Our members are still expecting improvements. Let us mention the question of quality and traceability standards of products. There are still difficulties about counterfeiting, respect of copyright, etc. We may also mention the need of improvement in the management of energetic and environmental resources by Chinese companies: petrol consumption, water and air management. The pressure on enterprises in the environmental and energy saving fields should be the same for local and foreign enterprises,” Kermadec-Bentzmann added.

Referring to the worldwide financial crisis, the president said, “In my view, the members of the Chamber will remain highly confident about the future of China as in the past, despite the wide-spread financial crisis.”

She said, “Generally, we may say that French enterprises in China are not on the front line of this crisis since their financial situations are sound. The set up of a company in China goes along wih a good cash situation, without heavy outstanding banking debts, which minimizes losses here.”

She also pointed out that the crisis might have some positive effects in compelling the enterprises into more rigorous governance, which will be pf help for them in the future.

To help French business enter this market and develop successfully is the major role of the Chamber. There are also huge opportunities, such as in aeronautics with Airbus or in energy with EDF, for cooperation between Chinese and French business.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

Talent Crunch Forces BPOs to Dilute Tasks

marissa — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:30:00 +0000

The Chinese BPO job may be getting onto a factory like assembly line chore. Similar to automobile shop floors, where jobs are broken down into miniscule tasks and processes demarcated step by step, BPO companies in China are experimenting of breaking a complex activity into numerous simple chores, to be easily performed by even school passouts.
The dilution of task difficulty is primarily seen as a solution to talent crunch and a way to check attrition and battle wage inflation. Although it is not yet mainstream, if scaled up, it will throw up an opportunity for China to become the backoffice for BPO operations in metros.
According to Jimmy Huang, marketing manager of BPOVIA, “These experiments are being piloted by some BPO firms and the results are encouraging. We have to see how this can be scaled up. Essentially, this could help the BPO industry spread to tier II and III towns.”
The BPO industry in China is currently centered around five metro cities which account for over 90% of the operations.
Offshoring within China would capitalize on the vast rural and school dropout population. Says rural back office chief integrator Jay Yang, “Destinations like Dhaka and Philippines are becoming attractive as lowcost centers. There are 30 million 12th pass people in rural China who could be part of the rural BPO revolution.”
Typically, non-voice and data entry activities could be offshored. Take the example of a mobile phone bill. It has components such as name, address, billable amount and so on.
This activity could be broken into multiple tasks where one person is responsible for only typing names while another does only addresses and the third keys in the billable amount. The software aggregates this information to process the final bill. Also, in more complex jobs, a step-by-step process training is being conducted for quicker and accurate job completion.
BPOVIA, which has 30 people working in Nanjing, deals with a variety of processes in the areas of HR, administration, finance and helpdesks. For instance, booking a cab, checking out eligibility for claims, structuring CVs in a company-specific format and taking calls in English are some of the jobs that get done at BPOVIA, where employees get to earn up to $300 with attrition at a low 3%.
While sceptics feel that such tasks would be monotonous and repetitive, Miss Shen says, “Old jobs will always make way for new. There will be something else that will come up in the future and people will reskill themselves. In a rural backdrop, a low-end data entry job is seen as white-collared and is well-regarded.”