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Contact centre information

Dear Sir,

Do you know of any contact centre that can cater to between 25 and 75 seats of a BPO company in the IT staffing business (not a call centre)? The BPO outfit in question does a lot of inbound and outbound calling (each agent makes or receives 6 to 10 calls an hour).

Regards,
Shivram Prasad
CES CRM - Group

Rajiv Gerela, General Manager, Technology, Wipro BPO replies:

Dear Shivram,

There are lots of BPO companies which can provide only seats for work or do the end to end job. All BPO company details can be found on Nasscom’s Web site and they can be contacted for further information.

Thanks & Regards,
Rajiv Gerela

SRM on SAP implementation issues

This is Chandrakanth Nagamalli. I am a student of Victoria University, pursuing a Masters in Accounting. I came across the article published in www.networkmagazineindia.com on SAP R/3 implementation by Hero Honda Motors in late 2004. Could I know if Hero Honda or any other company who implemented its SRM on SAP had issues associated with the implementation? Since I am a student of SAP R/3 doing research as part of the program, it will help if you can advise me.

Thanking you,
Chandrakanth Nagamalli
Melbourne
Australia

Dear Chandrakanth,

Most SAP MySRM implementations have been smooth. At the time we spoke to Hero Honda, the CIO did mention that there was some structural change required in the IT infrastructure before the ERP could be integrated with the SRM, which was facilitated by SAP personnel.

The company also had some configuration problems that could not be solved here, so they were solved by the SAP teams in Singapore and Germany.

Technology in fishing

I read the article in Network magazine, titled ‘Harvesting the high seas’ about GPS technology being used by the fishermen in Kerala. I would like to know more about this.

My queries:

1. Is any other state using the technology for fishing?
2. Are there other organisations promoting the technology (a recent media report cites MPEDA)?
3. How much time does it take to collect and process the data and then get it to the fishermen?
4. How is the technology used by fishermen?

Yours Sincerely,
Deepanjali Majumdar
Programme Associate
Community Enterprise Forum International (CEFI)
New Delhi

Dear Deepanjali,

The use of GPS by fishermen is purely for navigation and for marking fishing spots. This technology is being used by fishermen from Kerala.

This has been happening for over four years now, driven more by the initiatives of individual fishermen and fishing communities than by organisations or research bodies. The fisherman buys an imported handheld GPS unit (usually the Garmin brand). GPS technology uses a technology called ‘triangulation’ based on signals from a dedicated satellite network to calculate location. It is available on the GPS unit with just the time delay arising from tracking the nearest satellites. The information provided is accurate enough and most handsets have features to track and store the route/path taken.

It will be of great benefit to the fishing community if an organisation takes up this GPS data consolidation effort. This holds special relevance today since many of fishing routes and sites have been altered as a result of the recent tsunami that lashed our coasts.

There is more work being done on GIS (Geographic Information Systems) front by research bodies like CMFRI and CIFE than on use of GPS data. You can get in touch with these agencies for more details. MPEDA is supposed to be providing assistance to fishermen in buying GPS units, but I have no information regarding the status of this endeavour.