Hot spot for America's offshoring

To keep the competition at bay, Indian IT firms are racing to acquire firms in Europe and the US to gain clients and customer experience. At the same time, big global IT firms are acquiring firms in India as well as expanding operations.

The recent acquisitions by Indian companies throws light on the fact that while its important to have a large offshore capacity, it has to be supported by global delivery capability. The Indian IT firms are acquiring companies in the US and Europe to get clients (in a certain domain) and people (with actual client experience) to grow inorganically in the shortest possible time.

India is the foremost "hot spot" for America's offshore outsourcing of technology and business services functions today. It has been observed that five elements of western business culture poses special challenges for Indian teams interacting with their western counterparts -- whether in the ITO, BPO or call center environment.

In American business culture, rank and title aren't as important as they are in India. For Americans, strict adherence to time commitments is seen as a basic principle of professionalism and courteous behavior. They also prefer clear, detailed agreements, and are uneasy with vague expressions of general commitment. The American style of communication is characteristically straight forward, candid and relatively unconcerned with face-saving or the avoidance of conflict. The expectation is that questions will get answered with a clear "yes" or "no" and that disagreements will be dealt with openly and straightforwardly. Indians and people from other cultures that tend to avoid conflict and loss of face often find it hard to say "no" or raise problematic issues effectively with their American counterparts.

Cultural awareness and the ability to adapt effectively to another culture's way of doing things are complex skills -- whether you're a programmer in Bangalore or a project leader in Sunnyvale. Everyone tends to take their own cultural ways of doing things for granted and to assume they are self-evident to others.

In recent years, American companies that offshore outsourcing to India, have been willing to invest in general and region-specific cross-cultural training for their onshore employees. They have also learned to devise process accommodations to circumvent the negative effects of certain cultural tendencies in their offshore teams