This morning's DominionPost reported that between "400 and 1500" Telecom jobs are to disappear to offshore contractors, with any losses “expected to be concentrated in Telecom's in-house IT business Gen-i”.READ ALSO: Telecom's Passag
This morning’s DominionPost reported that between "400 and 1500" Telecom jobs are to disappear to offshore contractors, with any losses “expected to be concentrated in Telecom's in-house IT business Gen-i”.
READ ALSO: Telecom's Passage to India
“Fundamentally, our position is the story is factually incorrect,” Gen-i Australasia chief executive Chris Quin told NBR this afternoon.
“There is no proposal to outsource any Gen-i roles.” Equivalent high-tech services roles in Telecom as a whole were also safe.
Mr Quin said the situation was that a contract held by HP/EDS to carry out in-house IT work for Telecom expired at the end of last year.
Now, a process is underway to find a new IT contractor, less some work that Gen-i itself will take on. While the search continues, HP (which last year bought services company EDS), continues its inhouse IT contract with Telecom.
The new contractor, might well choose to carry out some work offshore. But if they do, it will be taking over work today done by HP/EDS contractors. HP/EDS, like all major IT service companies, already includes an offshoring component in most major contracts.
Seven companies, including IBM and India's Tech Mahindra, are tilting at the Telecom inhouse IT contract currently held by HP/EDS, said Mr Quin.
The chief executive said the process was in its “very early days”, with several more rounds of submissions to come over the next few months.
All the contenders had put in whitepapers - some of which discussed offshoring alternatives. One of these whitepapers - forwarded to the DomPost by Labour communications spokeswoman Clare Curran, had been mistaken for an in-house Telecom proposal.
Telecom has previously off-shored around 700 call centre and low-end back office roles to Manila, and has said it is committed to continuing this arrangement as part of its continued drive to cut costs.
The company's shares (NZX: TEL), which were trading at $2.44 when the XT outage hit last Wednesday, fell another cent today to close at $2.34.
