Outsourcing Turns Inside-Out as Indians Open U.S. Centers
By John Helyar - Oct 25, 2012
Janie James says she was cool at first when Indian outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd. (INFO) approached her about a job near Atlanta, even though she was unemployed. She didn’t know much about the company, and it seemed a step down from her old vice-president post at Primerica Inc. (PRI)
In the end, she decided she could use experience gleaned from her work at life-insurer Primerica and another stint at a financial-investment company to help Infosys build its insurance outsourcing business. Now James is an operations manager at the Bangalore, India, company’s first predominantly U.S.-staffed center, which opened in April.
“They saw this was a city with a lot of people who were out of work and had the skills they needed for this center,” she said. “Anything that can be done to decrease unemployment is a great thing.”
James is one of thousands of workers filling outsourced jobs that are coming back to the U.S., or at least not going offshore. Indian and U.S. outsourcing companies, along with corporate icons like General Motors Co. (GM) and General Electric Co. (GE), are reversing a 20-year outgoing tide.
These companies and others, including software developer GalaxE.Solutions Inc., say some complex functions, such as human-resources and software development, are better to have closer to their own operations and to respond to customers. Indian outsourcing companies are finding it tougher to get visas for workers brought from India, and some U.S. businesses want to outsource -- yet keep jobs in the country. State tax breaks also provide incentives to hire locally.
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