The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
The summary of 1st chapter “While I Was Sleeping”
1. “The playing field is being leveled” said by Nandon Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys, located in Bangalore, which is the biggest software outsourcing company in the world.
My perspective: If you are a programmer who just can write routine sequence but not Algorithm, you should be careful because those guys in Indian can do the same as you do and be paid less salary than you.
2. Jaithirth “Jerry” Rao started up a company to take charge for small or medium-size account firms’ outsourcing. Don’t be amazing that CPA would outsource their “table and calculation” work to India. The accountant who wants to stay in business in US will be the one who focuses on designing creative complex strategies, like tax avoidance or tax sheltering, managing customer relationships.
3. Bill Brody, the president of John Hopsking Univ hospital found that many small and some medium-size hospitals in the US radiologists are outsourcing reading CAT scans to doctors in India and AU!!
4. Tom Glocer, the CEO of Reuters, outsource as possible as Indians can do such as filing flashing headlines and analyzing raw data - number crunching- for securities offerings. Tom said "We think we can off-load commoditized reporting and get that done efficiently somewhere else in the world."
5. Investment research firms outsource basic analytical work to places like Bangalore. Because they just need to pay $15,000 in Bangalore but not $80,000 in NY.
6. Thomas L. Friedman was born in New Lodon. His hometown used to be a whaling center over 50 years ago and shifted to the factory of Navy and Coast Guard for making electric boat in Vietnam War era. Now it has become casinos of Sun and Foxwoods and pharmaceutical researchers of Pfizer.
My perspective: Taiwan, as I think, of course, can’t resist that kind of shift.
7. C.M. Meghna , a very big 24/7 call center in Bangalore, take charge for any kind of customer service, as you could image, including credit cards, the searching of losing bags in airline, fixing computer etc. Those employee will be trained to move among British, American and Canadian accents so that a customer online will think he/she is talking to a westerner not a woman in sari.
8. International entrepreneur can hire “personal remote executive assistant” in Bangalore for $1,500-2,000/m. They can do anything, 24 hours a day and 7days a week, just like your secretary did before but maybe more just like making PowerPoint presentation, news aggregation, schedule arrangement etc.
9. Kenichi Ohemae, the former CEO of McKinsey Japan, has founded his own company, Ohame & Associate. His company takes charge of the outsourcing of Japanese enterprises such as:
a. outsourcing low-end Japanese job to Janpanese-speaking call center.
b. typing handwritten Japanese documents to digital databases.
c. expanding into computer-aided design for Japanese housing and building firms.
Everything above is happening in Dalian in China. You can say that Dalian is Japan’s Bangalore.
Then, Thomas had interviewed with Xia Deren, Dalian’s mayor and you can find how ambitious he was. Xia Deren said “Today, the US, you’re the designers, the architects, and the developing countries are bricklayers for building. But oneday I hope we will be the architect.”
My perspective: I think bricklayers need specific environment to shift to architects. But they really rob of lots of jobs from Japanese “bricklayers”
10. Amazing Homesource. Jet Blue homesource callcenters to those retired grandma and granpa in Salt Lake City. It really works and let those who call Jet blue feel much more warmly.
My perspective: But how can young people compete with grandma, with smile, in customer service field?
11. Let’s explore Pentagon. In the control room, there are four big flat-screen TVs. First three had overhead images being relayed in real time from different sectors of Iraq by Predator drone, the small unpiloted flying machine. The last one was showing a Yankees-Red Sox game.
My perspective: Don’t be shock. It’s American way.
12. The drive-through-lane order of McDonald’s is taken care by a call center few hundred miles away. Who you order a big MC through microphone needn’t stay in that restaurant you park by.
13. Bill Ardolino, a one-man networker/newspaper building In DC Journal, was just equipped with a camera mobile phone and a mini mp3 recorder. He used them to record what he interviewed. Now, everyone can spend $200-500 then become a journalist.
My Conclusion: Computing technologies really flatten the world. But I still don't think Call centers in India can deal with culture gap between western and eastern world. Nowadays, lots of call centers are moving back to US because of the huge difference between these two countries. If a clerk never wears Nike, how can he serve Nike's customer? I think specific outsourcing like CAT scan reading, accountant table, stock analysis and etc those are globally ruled can work but not everything.
