Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) is the next outsourcing process subsequent to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. Estimates are that global KPO industry is likely to be annually worth almost $17 billion and India in once again balanced to capture more than 70% of this pie. In India around 2.5 lakh professionals are expected to be working in KPO industry. India expects an annual growth rate of around 45% as against 26% for non-KPO Outsourcing business.

India is the main KPO service provider in the world based on the intellectual and internet resources in India. A major KPO Indian industry covers a wide range of services for market research, equity research, management, engineering design, animation and simulation, medical content & services and education and publishing.

Legal process outsourcing, its key driver, is leading the way with a high growth potential. As associate lawyers in the US carry price tags ranging from $225 to $450 per hour, India is a natural fit and already five of the 20-odd Indian KPO companies have established themselves and are tapping on skilled legal professionals to handle the outsourced work.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing is not an extension of Business Process Outsourcing. The Knowledge Process Outsourcing "industry" will therefore not have the same rules of the Business Process Outsourcing industry. Therefore, KPO will not be a different industry, as is BPO. The accepted management rules and regulations that apply to Business Process Outsourcing will not apply to Knowledge Process Outsourcing. Business Process Outsourcing is about size and volume and efficiency. In contrast, Knowledge Process Outsourcing will not be about size but depth of knowledge, experience and judgment.

KPO is a huge opportunity for companies around the world to include professional talent from around the world in meeting their business objectives. While costs in India for highly qualified knowledge professionals are far lower than in the US and in Europe, this would not be the key driver in including Indians in the global economy. The key driver of KPO would be access to the vast professional talent in India.

source: http://www.offshorexperts.com/index.cfm/fa/home.outsourcing_news/news/35326

Medical Transcription (MT) is likely to be the fourth biggest foreign exchange earner for India-after garments, diamonds and software. The mainline software actions are reserved almost exclusively for professionals, but Medical Transcription Outsourcing part can be exploited by any sensible entrepreneur.

The entire American MT industry is said to be worth $7 billion has a potential of shifting to India. The industry needs highly talented and well trained personnel. Though, we have millions of unemployed young people with impressive university degrees, hardly 5% of them fit into this Industry. Firstly, the candidate should have good written English, please note, not spoken English. Candidates' capacity to listen with concentration to pick up every word - not just the idea of the statement - is absolutely essential. With regard to training, American MT industry has prescribed 900 hours of teaching and 300 hours of on job training as the standard. To complete this training it takes 6 months. Since Indians are not familiar with American spoken English, it requires extra coaching. The report comes in different American accounts and the Indian operator has to understand every word of it. Such training has to be essentially given by an American expert.

Teaching of medical terminologies numbering more than 1, 50,000 words is the toughest part of the training. An average Indian youngster has to get coached in complex medical language. We need the same process to be adopted for this industry to make the $7 billion industry to come to India. Identification of the suitable candidates for training is critical for the success of the industry. When so many projects have failed to get a breakthrough, genuine investors keep away from the industry. Lastly and most importantly, the American buyers will be convinced that they can not depend on the Indian sources.

source: http://www.indianexus.com/mt/news3.htm

David Thorns, the director of the social science research center at the University of Canterbury says that, "There is growing evidence that more people these days don't work from a physical workplace, but work from home or other places".

Online working is an expanding area in whole around the world. The study looks at Online, home-based workers who perform routine jobs like data entry, data processing or transcription services, as opposed to people with professional jobs choosing work from home.

Thorns says that "One of the interesting gender phases that has come through globally is that men who work from home they need a specific space like office room, where as women who work from home will not necessarily dedicated place. They will find space". Most of the online workers who participated in the study are women.

Some drawbacks of home-based works are loss of social interaction, issues around technology, such as system or backup problems, etc. Another possible limiting factor has to do with security concerns. To access a good broadband connection is also a big problem.

The positive aspects of working from home include flexible working hours; the workers manage their own time to work and also contribute their personal or family needs.

Source:http://www.itworldcanada.com//Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-c11646f2-a894-43e7-a695-d916c74fdda6&RSS=1&UID=A99A1FC1-1693-4D52-ABEA-84C07CB6AA4B

IBM Introduces WebSphere Server

A new speech recognition technology IBM WebSphere Server has introduced by IBM that allows companies to install firm-wide dictation and transcription services. WebSphere is developed for multiple users, whether a small laws firm or large corporation.

Based on the IBM's ViaVoice technology, the new IBM WebSphere Voice Server for Transcription can be modified for specific industries. And it contains the primary vocabulary of more than 160,000 words. Specific vocabularies are offered for the legal and medical professions, and administrators can use "The Topic Factory", a built-in tool for adding additional specialty vocabularies. The advantage is that user can dictate through telephones, USB microphones, and mobile digital recorders.

The legal IT 2006 trade show held on 8-9 February at the business Design Centre in London, the trade show contains a wide range of IT products, solutions and services designed to increase the law firms efficiency, profitability and competitiveness.

On 8th February, the Institute of Legal Cashiers & Administrators (ILCA) is launching its Software Users’ Award 2006. This award scheme gives users the opportunity to express their views about the software they use. Voting will take place via ILCA’s website: www.ilca.org.uk until the end of July 2006. The award will be presented to the software vendor with the most votes at the ILCAs annual lunched on 20 September 2006.

A new conference is done about the study of, The Future of Legal Practice. The study involves all features of legal practice, of which technology is an important part of the overall picture. The conference will establish what drawback to avoid and what opportunities will exist in order to ensure your practice succeed.


AIM Professional Systems
AIM as an “enterprise-wide practice and case management solution for private practice, public sector and corporate users. AIM Professional Systems is set to launch a new version of its all-in-one legal office system, AIM Evolution InSight. It is designed to channel management-reporting data directly to the PC desktops of a firm’s fee earners. The company says this enables them to “manage by exception”.

AIM will also be demonstrating E-Vigilance, an “active exception reporting engine” which can be configured to automatically inform staff, fee earners, clients, referrers and other parties that there are critical activities they must undertake.

Also showing will be the latest releases of DocuMail and PostRoom, the e-mail and document handling applications, plus a system to help firms deal with home information packs.


Crescendo Systems Corporation
Crescendo Systems Corporation presents its new product suite for Citrix® - Access environments. Deploying digital dictation and speech recognition applications from the Citrix® server will bring major administrative benefits and efficiency gains to law firms, President of Crescendo Systems Corporation, Costa Mandilaras explains: “Citrix infrastructures allow for the deployment of software applications from a central server, making them particularly attractive to law firms. They reduce the need for cost-intensive, powerful workstations, saving financial resources and increasing data security, as all files are stored in the central system.”

Crescendo applications on the Citrix server can either be started from the workstation as a desktop application or through a web browser - a practical feature when traveling. Remote employees can also access the digital dictation and speech recognition system from outside the office

Pericom
Pericom is a supplier of broad-based IT and telecom solutions in legal market. They launched a number of new products.
PMS Indigo is an SQL-based program; it aims to be a complete solution to managing back-office operations in small-and mid-sized firms. It will give fee earners more financial responsibility and partners improved financial control, compared with Pericom’s previous offering.
Pericom is also launching a DDS that integrates with its front-office application - OMS Matter Centre-to organize, manage, transfer and process dictations from beginning to transcription.
Audio- and web conferencing solutions are the next product from Pericom. Pericom believes that it is suitable for meeting the needs of law firms of all sizes.

Philips Dictation Systems
The new product from Philips is SpeechMike dictation handset. It’s a “complete solution” for document production. The advantage of SpeechMike dictation handset is flexibility, efficiency and mobility. The SpeechMike dictation handset is linked to a user’s desktop PC; and Digital Pocket Memo gadget for mobile dicta-tion. Philips says that, using SpeechMike solution reduces the firms’ organizational process, saves on time and cost, guarantees security of dictation files and allows lawyers on the move to edit their dictations.

The managing director of Philips Dictation Systems, Thomas Brauner says that, the new generation of our dictation machine is a step further in our efforts towards enabling simple and comfortable operation and increasing efficiency in our customers work process.

WinScribe
Win-Scribe is a New Zealand-based digital dictation developing company. Win-Scribe is launching a voice-recognition system. Digital dictation and voice-recognition seem to be two technologies at probability with each other. The new voice-recognition system gives lawyers the option of using either, or both. Once finished, a dictation can be automatically transcribed and then checked through for accuracy by desk, or given to a team for normal transcription.
WinScribe’s latest systems also allow fee earners to dictate through any hand-held device or touchtone phone. The company claims its voice recognition system creates documents three times faster than normal transcription methods.

Source: http://www.legalit.net/ViewItem.asp?id=27390

According to an American research firm, they study about the outsourcing in legal fieldin India. The study conducted by Forrester said, India has large possible in legal outsourcing field. The number of jobs in this field is increasing to 79,000 by 2015. Currently India has earned over $6.7 billion in US-based outsourcing services such as software and call centers. But the legal outsourcing field was not exploded.

Currently the jobs in legal outsourcing in India are less than 12,000. The study expected that jobs in the field which was improved dramatically from about $80 million annually to approximately $4billion, it would grow to 29,000 in 2008, 35,000 by 2010 and 79,000 by 2015.

Economic advantages from Indian outsourcing are: a significant wage differential with Indian firms report paying legal researchers around $12,000 per year. There are also saving in bonus, overhead, and working condition, the study said that the adding time zone differences allowed for overnight and 24X7 operations.

The legal services work consisted of paralegal, secretarial, and litigation support. Now Indian firms offered more valuable services, including contract review and monitoring, document review for due diligence, patent drafting, simple filings and legal research.

"Indian outsourcing offers the following economic advantages: a significant wage differential with Indian firms report paying legal researchers around $12,000 per year. There are also savings in perk, overhead, and working conditions," the study said adding time zone differences allowed for overnight and 24X7 operations.

The most important challenges to legal outsourcing to India included distress about data security, conflict of interest rules, and the need for Indian lawyers to pass US bar examinations

Interestingly, the need for India-based lawyers was being addressed through American law schools and immigration policies. Legal talent was being schooled in the US, but American education visas allowed these students to stay in the country for only a short time after graduation. Many who studied in the US came back to work for legal outsourcers.

source :http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=58207