Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » Tata's Mexico move tackles time zones

June 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Tata's Mexico move tackles time zones

TAGS: None

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of the world's largest outsourcing firms, headquartered in Mumbai, India, announced that it will be opening up outsourcing facilities, a GDC (Global Delivery Center), in Guadalajara, Mexico, to serve the U.S. and Canadian business market.

While TCS already has 14 GDCs to serve the Latin American market, this is the first center to target the North American market.

Initially, TCS will hire about 500 programmers and software engineers in 2007.

According to a statement issued by TCS, setting up in a "similar time zone" to much of the U.S. will give them the ability to provide near-shore services.

While TCS made no mention of recent problems it and other India-based outsourcing firms are facing with a rapidly rising turnover rate due to competition for computer science graduates and programmers and the resulting increase in salaries, most industry experts say this played a large part in the TCS decision to open in Mexico.

In addition, the large disparity in time zones between the U.S. and India has always been a challenge that is difficult to overcome despite advanced global communications technology.

Add up the existence of 14 GDCs for the Latin American market, and the latest center to open in Mexico to serve the U.S. and Canadian market appears to indicate that the time zone differential plus the lack of on-site project management may be a deterrent to the future expansion of off-shoring as an outsourcing solution.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 7, 2007 11:21 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: