Insight into the domain of outsourcing

Speakers at the seminar titled 'Best Practices and Challenges in Global Software Outsourcing'.

Onirban, one of the few software companies who have been channeling foreign currency into the country for quite a while through such outsourcing, organised the seminar.

Chief Technology Officer, PCi Corp, USA, Jamil Azhar's welcome speech started the seminar. "The concerned authority should concentrate on investment towards better resources so as to facilitate and improve the condition of the Information and Technology sector," said Habibullah N. Karim, president, Technohaven Co. and former president of BASIS.

He stressed further on the ways through which, local software firms could be encouraged and thus trained into an efficient workforce catering towards the satisfaction of foreign clients and buyers.

The third speaker at the seminar, Saiful Hasan, chief executive officer, Metronet, shared his experience of being in charge of the project management of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, which Bangladesh outsourced as a client.

He pointed out the problems a software firm may face while trying to cater to foreign clients. Hasan referred to the whole incident as a 'legal nightmare' considering the fact that most employees of the exchange did not want to welcome the drastic changes.

Reportedly, the software is currently operated by 650 users in the Stock Exchange and has been running quite efficiently for the last six years. He also stressed on the point that the client and the software firm, should always have a strong 'trust' relationship, which is the one of the key factors in outsourcing.

After a break, the chief guest at the seminar, Jamilur Reza Chowdhury, vice chancellor of BRAC University, delivered his speech. He pointed out that most of the people including the policy makers had the idea that a lump-some amount to the information and technology sector, would improve the sector within very brief time.

"The concerned authority, should dedicate more time and energy towards ensuring a sound and value-based IT education for the mass," said Chowdhury.

As per outsourcing, the chief guest pointed out that the buyers and the sellers must have extensive knowledge about contracts and their performance.

"Solutions for improvement of the IT sector has already been pointed out in a number of occasions, and we are still awaiting the efforts by the authority toward the completion of these solutions," he concluded.

Onirban then displayed their technologies, which has been outsourced to numerous clients in many countries of the world. Their first solution, CRAWiz is the market leading (www.eciwiz.com) CRA and HMDA analysis and data reporting system. Compliance professionals at the largest institutions, community banks, mortgage companies, credit unions, consulting firms, law firms, regulatory agencies, and enforcement agencies use this tool to monitor and assess compliance with these regulations. Already CRA Wiz, has satisfied customers like the Bank of America, FFIEC and many others. They also displayed their second product, Wiz Enterprise, which is an extension of the former and took only five months to be developed.

After the product display, Sanjay Bhatnagar, group development manager, PCi, delivered his keynote speech on the topic.

"The differences in the infrastructure of India and Bangladesh has been a huge factor as far as the transactions are concerned," said Bhatnagar. He elaborated that the slow data transfer processes available to the software firms of Bangladesh have been a real handicap towards outsourcing of their products. He also stressed on the problems of process adaptation and also the miscommunications, which occur between companies and the outsourcing agencies.

"The government has to develop the information and communication infrastructure, if they wish to improve the IT sector and thus channel in more foreign currency as revenue with the aid of such firms as Onirban and so on," he concluded.

"We wanted to share our decade long experience as a software outsourcer. And we believe that sharing knowledge and experience can only increase our combined strength" said Jowad Kazi, director operations of Onirban.

Later a 'discussion session' was held, where the visitors discussed and expressed their own view with the speakers and guests.