Apparently a Sapporo based company, Digital Technologies Corp, has developed a software that can analyse the mood of callers phoning into call centres. According to a report on Nikkei.net, the software can establish whether the person on the other side of the line is sober, slightly outraged, or simply barking mad It bases its analysis on biometrics and divides the results into whether a caller is happy or displeased, on a scale of one to seven. The report doesn’t relate whether if things go to the top end of the scale, whether the call centre will put them on hold indefinitely and refuse to engage with them any more on human rights grounds, or assign them to an anger management course. (Sponsored by the Call Centre of course) Lets look at this from a broader application, and first up.. could it be scaled up to avert those occasional domestic ‘disagreements’ caused when our wife or girlfriends claim that men are empathy black holes when trying to gauge their all to frequent mood swings...?

Companies with multi-channel advertising campaigns for product launches or up selling campaigns, typically have a missing link – there is no way for customers to communicate in the same medium they are conducting their business beyond the usual channels of telephone, fax, email, telephone call centres and Web forms, – One Malaysian based company is very successfully demonstrating that there is the power of communicating one-on-one with Website visitors and judging by the results and reviews, is about to take car makers and marketers into a whole new area of sales potential. Malaysia’s national car manufacturer Proton is now receiving great reviews and experiencing measurable success in selling their cars on the internet with a Program called Proton>> Live!, an online real time interactive behavioural marketing BPO service. See: http://paultan.org/archives/2007/08/13/protonlive-experience/#more-5005 Much maligned for a lack of vision in design and poor build quality, most likely caused through complacency, given the amount of protectionism provided to it by the Malaysian Government, Proton have seen their huge captive market share fall significantly as Malaysia’s entry into AFTA and the WTA has seen the Governments ability to keep that protectionism in place. However, a re-vamp of the product range and an inspired vision based on how many buyers now do research on the ‘net’ for their major purchases such as cars and mortgages led them to try out the latest in leading edge online BPO marketing, coincidently developed in Malaysia by a Malaysian/Australian Joint Venture with the aid of a Malaysian Government R&D grant package. See: www.catenate.com.my www.electricangels.com. The joint launch of a new model, the new Proton Neo and Proton>>Live! has given the Automaker a much needed boost to sales, but also judging by comments recorded on the Proton>>Live! site also the local perception of a National car manufacturer which has started to produce good cars as well as enhancing customer experience.

Another day another story of product recalls from Chinese factories for health and quality issues, this time is 1.5 million toys for one of the worlds most renowned Toy Manufacturers Mattel’s Fisher Price division which has drawn enormous world wide media coverage and added more fire to fan the flames of the Anti-Outsourcing supporters. Metagrobolize was created to draw attention to Best Sourcing, which may not be too popular with some of the worlds largest corporations as they ‘globe trot’ for the lowest pay scales, but takes a holistic view of the outsourcing companies requirements and endeavours to establish an offshore destination that is the best suited to both the process to be outsourced as well as the company considering to outsource. That China is now attracting this very negative attention comes as no surprise, because outside of the largest of manufacturing companies, China’s manufacturing industry is still very immature, with little or no regulatory control. As many so called ‘experts’ have recently commentated, this brings other Asian countries into the offshore outsourcing frame such as Vietnam, Cambodia and ‘Malaysia’ as options with a cost scale similar to China. “While companies could decide to shift some of the production out of China into Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam, it doesn't guarantee that they won't face the same issues in these countries whose infrastructure is less developed than in China.” Quotes BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson. Mr Johnson obviously doesn’t know the S East Asian region very well, as whilst I fully agree with this assessment of Indonesia and Vietnam as simply replacing Chinese manufacturing problems with an identical set of problems and for identical reasons, Malaysia and Singapore are the 2 most mature and advanced manufacturing hubs in S E Asia, and certainly Malaysia CANNOT be mentioned in the same breath as either Vietnam or Indonesia due Malaysia’s 30 yrs of manufacturing maturity, and longer political stability and 1st world infrastructure. However, Malaysia cannot provide clients with a labour force cost comparative to China, Vietnam, Indonesia etc, however what it can provide is goods and services that are delivered on time, at a cost that reflects the quality but is still very competitive when comparing to High Cost economies, making it a ‘Best Source’ location for many companies to consider. Take the time to look at other similar posts on this blog and you’ll understand our message.

Following Peter Allens 28th July Post, heres another take on Country v Country. Reminiscent of schoolboy (do schoolgirls also do this?) playground one-upmanship, where arguments would escalate to include ‘implied’ threats of how things were going to end up if the argument continued with statements such as “My dads bigger than your dad”…and the normal response of…”well my dads in the Army”..etc etc...is now spilling over into the Outsourcing debate. It’s almost impossible to avoid the buzz of articles with commentaries comparing countries against each other in their ‘suitability’ for offshore outsourcing. Singapore claims to be better than Malaysia (Nothing new in that and vice versa) the new kid on the block Vietnam claiming to be bigger and better than its South East Asian ‘peer group’ countries and Russia doing all it can to drop its playground bully image with promises to be a good boy and far more friendly in future. Of course the comparison process is way too difficult to generalise as there are almost as many business processes and application being outsourced as there are locations competing to attract them. Certain types of processes will undoubtedly work better in certain locations, but there are so many variables that involve Labour supply, legislation, FDI and taxation policies, maturity of vendors, quality, infrastructure, language, culture and so on, rendering a general ‘comparison’ pretty much impractical. All companies considering offshore outsourcing initiatives must look to where best suits the process, part or service that they are about to outsource, as well as what also best suits their company culture and working methods and aspirations to establish which is their ‘Best Source’ location. Is it logical to outsource your CRM to a call centre in a suburb of Kalyan-Dombivali India because its very cheap, or perhaps more sense to a ‘best source location like Malaysia where the costs are undoubtedly higher, but where English is the ‘unofficial’ national language and an empathy with the people they are communicating with due to the 100’s of thousands of students who have been educated in the US, UK, Australia etc over the past 20 years?

Malaysia has been ranked as the fifth most preferred locations in the world for shared services and outsourcing (SSO), an improvement from its sixth placing last year, according to a study conducted by global consulting company Frost & Sullivan. "Over here, we see concerted efforts by the Government to attract the attention of global Fortune 500 companies," said Frost & Sullivan's vice-president, information and communications technology practice, Nitin Bhat. "While the Government may make certain efforts, it ultimately (depends on) the service providers, whether they are local or multinational," he said when commenting on Malaysia's prospects of climbing up the rankings at a presentation in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. In the study, India maintained its top ranking, followed by China, Ireland and Singapore which also retained their second, third and fourth positions respectively. Nitin added that in addition to Malaysia’s good quality infrastructure, if all the other relevant elements work together, there is a chance for the country to move up in the rankings, especially with the small margin between the countries ranked third and fourth