Regardless of the steep fall in real estate transactions in recent months, prices have remained steady, Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) macroeconomic and monetary development report said on Monday.

RBI said that though interest rates remained high, home loans disbursals have gone up while overall credit off-take has fallen. According to RBI data, interest on home loan has gone up by 1.5 – 1.75 per cent since December 2010.

“Property markets are facing moderation in demand, but price correction has not occurred as real estate firms are holding land banks and slowing new launches and sales to retain pricing power.

Higher housing loans coupled with price rigidities in the housing market reflect the continued pricing power with the developers as also the increasingly stretched balance sheets of residential buyers,” said RBI in the report. In order to curb inflation and bring down the demand, RBI has increased key policy rates 13 times since March 2010.

However, number of transactions has gone down implying that many other households are getting priced out from the housing market. Data for July-September 2011indicate further increase in property prices in most cities though at a slower pace. Also, in contrast with the preceding quarter, there was some increase in transaction volumes, said RBI.

“Retail loans, especially home loans have been growing at a steady pace. It is the corporate credit that has fallen. Demand for home loans up to Rs 50 lakhs have been witnessing growth,” said a senior official, Bank of Baroda.

“Despite home loans becoming costlier, the demand for home loan remains robust. Home loan remains one of the fastest growing segment and we have not witnessed any decline in home loans,” said SBI official.

The RBI’s quarterly House Price Index (HPI) based on the data on transaction of properties collected from registration departments of respective state governments, now covering 9 cities, indicates a hike in quarter on quarters prices in all cities during June – September 2011 except for Bengaluru. On the other hand, the data on volume of transactions for the same period show increase in the number of transactions in six cities, except Mumbai and the recently included cities of Kanpur and Jaipur.

Via : Mydigitalfc

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Across the country, properties have benefited from the IGMAS Hospitality IT Service Center model, packaging together its Hospitality IT helpdesk, centralized datacenter operations, field- engineering team, purchasing management, compliance reporting, and project management teams – all deeply experienced and keenly focused on the Hospitality industry.

The IGMAS IT Service Center model uses a single-point of contact for all property IT needs from electronic ticketing, vendor management, alerting and reporting, to consulting, and managing the user satisfaction survey system. By bringing together these areas under experienced project management, the program is able to focus on the three key issues where hospitality companies continue to struggle with respect to providing IT services: enhancing productivity of existing resources, managing costs, and improving overall IT responsiveness. The value proposition in this integrated support model is enhanced by the impressive cost savings compared to existing IT “Siloed” support models.

Individual properties as well as hospitality management companies and ownership groups have benefited from the IGMAS IT Service Center model and economies of scale. IGMAS offers clients of all sizes “solution sets” which are fully customizable to meet the unique requirements of each organization. The IGMAS model includes an advanced service desk solution as a “Software as a Service” (SAAS) bundle, meaning no capital investment in additional staffing, infrastructure, deployment, or training. Most solutions include access to the IGMAS US-based 24-hour Helpdesk and Response Team. Optional onsite staffing can be added for permanent or short-term onsite positions as a part of an integrated solution, all with the full support and coverage of the IGMAS IT Service Center Team.

What does a client experience as a result of deploying the IGMAS Service Center Model? Impressive gains in property IT responsiveness, staffing efficiencies, and IT cost savings in an impressively short period of time. These efficiencies are realized through additional hours of live support coverage, escalated assistance to property IT vendors, and thorough tracking and reporting of service tickets by people experienced in Hospitality. Property team members are able to contact the Service Center 24-hours a day by dialing an “in-house” extension, calling a toll-free telephone number, emailing in a request, or by accessing a self-service portal that can be reached from any desktop or Web-enabled Smartphone. Management has access to a sophisticated reporting engine offering real-time statistical reporting for property services as well as a user satisfaction system tailored to the individual property’s needs.

Clients report that they quickly realize the benefits of efficiency and effectiveness while experiencing a decrease of true IT support costs by nearly 25%. Many continue to comment that the IGMAS IT Service Center model has noticeably improved the service of end-users and greatly improved the effectiveness of the IT team as a whole within their own organization.

Via : PRWeb

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It is the large corporate houses like Ambanis and financial conglomerates like ICICI and HDFC groups that are leading the gains in stock markets, after taking a huge beating in the previous year.

All the listed companies together lost nearly Rs 19.5 lakh crore worth valuation in 2011, when the stock market tanked by nearly 25 per cent amid global headwinds.

While markets have appreciated by only about 5 per cent in the 10 days of trading so far in 2012, the total gain in valuation for this period stands at about Rs 4 lakh crore.

Out of this, 10 leading business houses together account for nearly one-fourth or over Rs one lakh crore of the gain.

As per the BSE data, the cumulative market value of all listed firms in the country stands at Rs 57,40,194 crore currently, as against Rs 53,48,645 crore at the end of 2011.

The market benchmark Sensex has gained nearly 700 points or about 5 per cent so far in 2012, after falling by more than 5,000 points during 2011.

The stock market data shows that market valuations have improved significantly for almost all the large corporate houses so far in 2012, barring a few like Bharti group, Infosys and HUL, and the experts are optimistic about a rebound on these counters as well.

Among the large business houses, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries group has gained over Rs 13,000 crore in its valuation, while Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group has seen its market value surging by about Rs 12,500 crore.

The net gain for Tatas is comparatively lower at about Rs 8,000 crore, largely due to a sharp plunge of about Rs 15,000 crore in the value of IT giant TCS.

Otherwise, only four Tata group firms — Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Power and Titan — have registered a gain of close to Rs 20,000 crore in their cumulative valuation.

Financial services conglomerate HDFC group has gained Rs 15,000 crore of valuation so far in 2012, while ICICI group has also added over Rs 12,000 crore to its market value.

Aditya Birla group has gained about Rs 5,000 crore, Adanis have added over Rs 9,000 crore, L&T about Rs 12,000 crore, ITC about Rs 4,000 crore and Mahindras about Rs 2,000 crore.

Vijay Mallya-led UB group, whose shares were heavily battered in 2011 mostly because of debt troubles at Kingfisher Airlines, has also gained about Rs 3,400 crore of value, which accounts for about 20 per cent of gain.

In percentage terms, the gain is the highest for Anil Ambani Reliance group at about 25 per cent among these business houses, while groups like ICICI, L&T and Adani have also gained over 10 per cent each.

Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta group has also gained about 10 per cent, while Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance group has added about 6 per cent to its valuation, HDFC group has gained about 8 per cent, Mahindras about 3 per cent, Birlas about five per cent and Tatas about 2 per cent.

Tatas are the country’s most valued group with a total valuation of close to Rs four lakh crore, while other leading corporate houses include Reliance Industries group (Rs 2.4 lakh crore), HDFC Group (Rs 2.1 lakh crore), Vedanta (Rs 1.7 lakh crore) and ITC (Rs 1.6 lakh crore).

Most of these groups had lost heavily during 2011 and the continuing weak cues from global markets and on domestic economic front, marketmen are wary of some short-term headwinds across the market.

However, experts are generally optimistic about the longer-term gains across the market, including in the shares of those groups also that have already registered smart gains in the first two weeks of 2012.

Via : ET

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In the new world, the biggest buzz word to sell products and services is the ‘cloud’. In the case of cloud computing, everybody has heard of it, but no one knows what it really means. Cloud computing as a concept and service is making inroads into businesses everywhere. This article will serve to help businesses better understand what the term ‘cloud computing’ means and how it can help improve the bottom line of any business. You will begin to understand the non-technical basics and the concept of cloud computing and why services that exist in the cloud can result in better profits for your business.

Defining the Cloud

Let’s begin with a classical definition of Cloud computing. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is “Internet based development and use of computer technology whereby dynamically scalable virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.” I’ll bet a vast majority of readers didn’t understand it. Now don’t be perturbed by the jargon, just read on. What this definition indicates is that services residing in ‘the cloud’ are based on scalable, on demand architectures that run in remote data centers with the service itself being delivered over an Internet connection. By this definition, pretty much any web site could be considered a cloud computing service. However, when it comes to actual cloud computing, there is so much more that is offered and utilized by customers worldwide. This can be best explained by using another term often used in conjunction with cloud computing: Software as a Service (SaaS). Most people in the business community are more familiar with this term and it might help as a stepping stone to understanding ‘the cloud’. SaaS is a class of software that is available on demand directly from an application service provider. Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management (CRM) application used by many businesses is a well-known SaaS application. Under this popular SaaS model, users can connect to Saleforce.com’s web-based system, buying only enough licenses for their users instead of being “per computer” as is the case with most traditional software business models. Thus the Salesforce.com SaaS runs “in the cloud” because it relies on the overall infrastructure that is called cloud computing. Services like Skype and BitTorrent are often referred to as cloud computing architectures due to their peer-to-peer and scalable natures. These two services are inherently scalable simply because that’s the way the services were created.

How does ‘the Cloud’ work?

Armed with the understanding that the purpose of cloud computing is to deliver software and services to customers, how does it all work? What makes it possible for these services to be delivered to you? There really is no single architecture that defines cloud computing. As mentioned before, Skype and BitTorrent are often considered cloud computing services even though these services are completely decentralized. Salesforce.com on the other hand, relies on servers in data centers in order to operate. As more users are added to the service, they add capacity to handle the increased load. Companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft continue to build out massive data centers for the sole purpose of providing cloud computing services. So, even SaaS providers need not have a massive data center and can simply rely on the services of one of these cloud computing infrastructure providers. This allows companies to focus on developing the best software possible for their customers instead of tackling hardware infrastructure related issues. And that leaves the end user or the customer to connect to whatever infrastructure is put into place either by the SaaS vendor or by ‘the cloud’ infrastructure provider. The vendor may choose to build their own infrastructure or may choose to partner with a cloud service provider. By sharing infrastructure rather than building infrastructure, cloud computing helps keep overall hardware costs lower.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Looking at the whole cloud computing gamut, there are a number of benefits to be had when using cloud computing-based services over buying individual software packages and installing them on individual workstations at various locations.

• Lesser Manpower or Human Resource: There is no need to hire IT staff to manage the services that are being delivered to you over the Internet as there is no local application to worry about. You only need a technical wizard on your payroll to help sort out technical issue of minor glitches and fine tuning the application.
• Minimal Resources or Infrastructure: With cloud services one only needs a computer and an Internet connection. Since your data resides in data centers on the Internet, there is no need to setup a local data centre and as for scalability you basically pay for what you use and you have the option of scaling up at a moment’s notice.
• Liberation from Licensing: While this is not always the case, but with cloud computing-based services one often saves money on licensing. The few caveats include a) Vendor reliance where you don’t have to base your entire business on a single primary application vendor. The cloud model allows you to continue running the application while looking for a new vendor. Under the traditional model, one is dependent on the application provider or vendor.
• Data Security: Under a cloud computing model, all of your data, including sensitive customer information is stored on servers in data centers that could be half way across the globe. So one must understand exactly how the data can be accessed by your service provider and carefully review the company’s security practices and history. At the same time, the cloud service providers take greatest pains and most stringent of measures to ensure that your data remains safe, thus your reliance on a third party security solution is also negated.

Conclusion

To conclude, cloud computing is a boon for many organizations and particularly for those without IT infrastructure and staff. SMBs and startups stand to benefit the most as they can choose a solution based on their requirements and scale exponentially if the need arises without much ado. The benefit of cloud computing allows you to focus on the business of your business without investing your energy in complex infrastructure and extensive resources.

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Accenture (NYSE:ACN) is expected to hire at least 60,000 employees in 2012 after ending the last quarter with a global headcount of 244,000, according to an article by consultant Sramana Mitra. As Accenture tends to maintain its utilization rates stable at above 85%, the projected increase in headcount indicates that the firm is expecting good growth in its bookings for the year. Accenture is a major global player in technology consulting and IT outsourcing industries and competes with the likes of IBM (NYSE:IBM), HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Deloitte Consulting.

We estimate that outsourcing is Accenture’s biggest business making up nearly 30% of our $59.72 Trefis price estimate for Accenture which is about 15% above the market price. Below we take a look at some of the major trends that are expected to shape IT outsourcing business in 2012, and how they could impact Accenture.

Cloud Computing, M&A activity to Drive IT Outsourcing Market in 2012

According to a recent report from research firm Everest Group, the IT outsourcing market in 2012 will be driven by cloud computing and M&A activity. While a Dell-Perot, HP-EDS, or Xerox-ACS type of merger is not expected next year mainly due to the lack of attractive second-tier providers capable of delivering more than added scale, there is a possibility of large providers buying out software or cloud-based tool makers, as it was with the IBM-Emptoris deal recently. There may also be instances of an offshore provider, an Indian heritage firm for example, acquiring a major U.S.-based multinational.

In addition to driving M&A activity, cloud will be more than a buzz word and we expect to see increased adoption. Companies and their IT departments will also develop better understanding of the technology and will perform thoughtful evaluation on firm policies related to what can be classified as cloud, data that goes into it, as well as the overall review process and decision-making in regard to cloud services.

This will result in increased demand for not only Accenture’s outsourcing services but also its technology and management consulting expertise, which we think is the reason why Accenture wants to increase it headcount.

Economic Uncertainty to Keep Buyers at Bay

The report also notes that outsourcing buyers will hold back from signing contracts until current economic uncertainty lifts at least in the first half of the year. This could play a spoilsport as far as Accenture’s targets for the year are concerned.

However, by fall 2012, the business confidence is expected to improve which will boost outsourcing activity, particularly offshoring deals.

Via : Trefis

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Currently, foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail trade is prohibited except in single brand product retail trading in which up to 51 per cent FDI is permitted, subject to certain conditions.

The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, part of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, has now allowed FDI up to 100 per cent in single brand product retail trading, under the government’s approval route. However, the government has put on hold provisions for 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail.

The relaxation in foreign investment norms for single brand retailing would be subject to following conditions:

1. Products should be sold under the same brand internationally, i.e., products should be sold under the same brand in one or more countries other than India.

2. ‘Single Brand’ product retail trading would cover only products which are branded during manufacturing.

3. The foreign investor should be the owner of the brand.

4. Proposals involving FDI beyond 51 per cent would need to ensure mandatory sourcing of at least 30 per cent of the value of products sold, to be done from Indian ‘small industries/village and cottage industries, artisans and craftsmen.’

The government has said that ‘small industries’ will be defined as industries with a total investment in plant & machinery not exceeding $1 million. This valuation refers to the value at the time of installation, without providing for depreciation. If this valuation exceeds at any point in time, the industry shall not qualify as a ‘small industry’ for this purpose.

The compliance of this condition will be ensured through self-certification by the company, to be subsequently checked by statutory auditors, from the duly certified accounts, which the company will be required to maintain.

What Does It Mean

The relaxation in foreign investment in single brand retail sector comes as a compromise for the government who has not been able to arrive at a political consensus to open multi-brand retail stores to foreign investment.

Nevertheless, the reform has far-reaching implications for corporate activity and even consolidation of businesses. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the latest policy announcement will be brands like Ikea, the Swedish furniture retail giant, as also various fashion apparel brands that depend on local partners to expand their retail footprints in India.

Another beneficiary might be the US coffee chain Starbucks that struck a local sourcing JV with Tata Coffee last year and was said to be in talks with the Tata Group for opening its retail stores in the country. Given the relaxation, it may now open its own stores while maintaining its sourcing deal with Tata Coffee that will also allow it to meet the mandatory norms.

On the flip side, some of the conditions imposed as part of opening the sector further for single brand retailing, is self-defeating. For example, quite a few product categories, could-have-been candidates for this space, fall under the luxury product segment. And those are made in their respective country of origin – Swiss watches for instance and Lladro porcelain work. It would be difficult for these brands to meet the 30 per cent sourcing condition.

Another irritant could be in the process. As per the conditions set by the government, applications seeking permission for single brand retail trade would specifically indicate the product/product categories proposed to be sold under a ‘Single Brand.’ Any addition to the product/product categories to be sold under ‘Single Brand’ would require a fresh approval of the government.

Via : Team VCC

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Outsourcing IT support is a way in which small businesses can reduce their expenditure, according to technology expert Phil Wainewright. Mr Wainwright, who is vice-chairman of Eurocloud, said that paying people to run servers and kept day to day maintenance in check by employing in-house IT staff is an expense that could be better utilised in implementing system improvements.

He suggested outsourcing core elements to specialist providers and using the in-house staff to get the best out of other business functions. He said: “You can employ their skills better by working with the online applications and getting the most out of them, rather than just having them keeping servers running.” He was also keen to stress the merits of cloud computing. He stated that the platform was capable of being much more than just a hosted management system. “It’s not just managed hosting, you’re getting a complete application that is a complete service in the cloud,” he said. “It’s not like taking software and just running it on a server that someone else manages for you, it’s actually getting the whole application delivered and running.”

Mr Wainwright’s comments come shortly after a report by the advisory agency TPI found that spend on IT outsourcing by businesses in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea) regions was higher in the first nine months of the year than in the whole of 2010. Despite the overall rise, outsourcing by financial services institutions has fallen sharply this year. After the first three quarters of 2011, the financial services businesses (such as banks and pension providers) had invested just under 48 per cent of the amount they did in 2010. Emea financial services sector spent some €1.6 billion on IT outsourcing during the quarter up until the end of September this year, compared with €2.7 billion in the same three months in 2010.

Via iHotDesk

The US-based firm, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. reported a 7.8% sequential growth in revenue to $1.6 billion i.e. strong earnings for the September quarter, rounding off the results season for the information technology (IT) outsourcing industry in style. The US-based firm, with large global delivery centres in India, reported a 7.8% sequential growth in revenue to $1.6 billion (around Rs. 7,890 crore today).

This included about $8 million in revenue from the company’s recent acquisition of CoreLogic Global Services Pvt. Ltd. But even after adjusting for that, growth stood at 7.3%, with incremental revenue of $108 million. This is only the fourth occasion on which the firm has reported incremental revenue of more than $100 million. The fact that IT outsourcing companies are still setting these records shows increased uncertainty in the global economy hasn’t hit the industry yet.

A file photo of Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt Ltd, a leading global IT and business process outsourcing services provider at their offices at Old Mahabalipuram Road, Chennai. Last month, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and Infosys Ltd had reported a sequential increase of 4.7% and 4.5%, respectively, in revenue for the September quarter. In TCS’ case, volume grew by an impressive 6.25%, while Infosys reported a 4.5% rise in the same. These are healthy results, especially coming at a time when global companies are facing increased pressure because of the uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment. But as IT outsourcing companies have been pointing out, customers are better prepared compared with the slowdown in 2008-09, and haven’t cut back on IT spending. Cognizant’s chief executive officer Francisco D’Souza said during the post-earnings analysts’ call that the pipeline of orders is strong and that clients aren’t slowing decision-making. Application development revenue grew 7.5% sequentially, indicating that discretionary spending by clients continues unabated. Revenue grew by 5.3% in constant currency terms in Europe, despite all the trouble in the region.

According to Cognizant, the outlook remains strong in the near term. However, due to the traditional slowing of demand in the three months ended December (when clients go slow on new projects just before finalizing the budget for the new year), the revenue growth forecast for the quarter is unexciting at 3.7%. This includes about $15 million of revenue from acquisitions, adjusted for which growth is expected to be even lower at 2.7%.

This seems to have put off investors as well—Cognizant shares fell by more than 2% after the earnings were announced, extending the drop in valuations in the past three trading sessions. But the company may well end up beating its forecast and, as it has pointed out, the December quarter has traditionally been a soft quarter due to the holiday season. What’s more important is how these companies are likely to fare in 2012. Cognizant says that clients’ IT budgets are likely to be flat or marginally up next year, and that the shift towards increased outsourcing will continue. This agrees with what most IT companies have been saying. However, in the past, IT firms have been slightly behind the curve when it comes to predicting a slowdown in demand. Investors will do well to discount the bullishness in the industry to some extent.

Via LiveMint

The business process outsourcing model continues to evolve. Capgemini talks with us on its fourth-generation BPO projections. Business process outsourcing, more commonly known as BPO, has seen its share of innovation since its mainstream acceptance in the mid-90s. Capgemini’s Steve Rudderham got involved in the BPO market from the get-go, as the outsourcing guru worked for General Electric in India, and was one of the first people on the scene to witness outsourcing’s potential. “A lot of companies in IT and consultancy saw the need to start the outsourcing drive to leverage this global talent,” Rudderham, Vice President of Client Engagement for Capgemini, said. “Not all the best people in the world are within the United States and Europe; there are some very bright individuals in Asia and South America as well.”

Advantages of BPO

From that realization, business process outsourcing was born. It started slowly, with first-generation BPO consisting of “lift and shift” operations, which included data entry services. Second generation business process outsourcing focused more on continuous improvement, and evolving BPO’s breadth to include multilingual services. Third generation BPO added visibility and communication to the equation as service providers look for ways to continue to add value to the outsourcing function. And that’s where we are at the moment. Naturally, fourth generation business process outsourcing is just around the corner, but where exactly will that road take the industry? “Projecting out, what we’re seeing is an increasing shift to greater verticalization in the back office,” Tony Kelly, Business Development Director of BPO for Capgemini, said. “Clients are looking for an industry-specific flavor to their horizontal processes.”

Fourth generation BPO will further utilize technology across its fields and will focus heavily on analytics, Kelly went on to say. Both Capgemini managers predict that we’re far from witnessing the end of the outsourcing drive, as belief in BPO is at an all-time high. “One of the major things that I’m seeing now is the confidence in the industry,” Rudderham said. “If you go back to the late 90s, when we were in that position of trying to market and sell outsourcing, there was a lot of nervousness around outsourcing, and putting jobs and operations in a foreign country. “The confidence came up, however, and people understood that they actually had a country like India that had an incredible mass of talent. That transformed the industry.”

How to Start Outsourcing Business

Rudderham’s BPO operations for General Electric in India, for example, started off with basic data entry. Within three years, many people in Rudderham’s initial workforce held master’s degrees, and were doing modeling for insurance companies in the U.S. and Europe. The talent level is, and will continue to be, there. The challenge is now on outsourcing providers to continue to find value in their processes to combat rising labor costs.

“Interestingly, as we shift from third-generation into fourth-generation BPO, the pressure is on the service providers to add the value,” Kelly said. “We’ve moved from a more even balance between people, process and technology in the value proposition. “The winners in the BPO game will develop their own global process models and increase their use of technology to add value to their service, which will offset the rising cost of labor.” Finding the right processes and utilizing cutting-edge technology is easier said than done, and it will likely take several years before fourth-generation BPO reaches its potential. In the meantime, outsourcing professionals find themselves in an enviable position, as companies looking for ways to cut costs and drive efficiency often look to outsourcing as a means to an end.

“It’s fair to say that as economic times have got tougher, we’ve been experiencing some of the best growth years,” Rudderham said. “The outsourcing growth models are focused on operational efficiency and productivity, and improving back office operations. It’s a very attractive business model.” Kelly says the contrasting economic situations between the Western and Eastern economies put BPO in an interesting spot for the future. “There’s a very interesting dynamic between each half of the world, with one side trying to do things more efficiently and the other side trying to catch up,” Kelly said.

Via SupplyChainDigital

The use of online searches/directories as a short-listing method ranked at the below the aforementioned in the list reported screening methods– a fact likely due to many pharma and biotech companies remaining somewhat skeptical of the credibility of online search tools. However, this reported perception appears to contrast the prevalence of industry-specific groups on websites such as LinkedIn, which focus on creating a message board-like search-and-discover approach to partnership opportunities. These groups are useful for conveying capabilities and contact details, but since the information often derives from CROs and CMOs directly, there is little in the way of unbiased assessments.

Additionally, information provided on websites is often vague and poorly delivered. In this respect, Nice Insight itself provides a more tangible solution. Quarterly data is derived from thousands of pharma and biotech executives in outsourcing-facing roles, and is analyzed and organized to give unbiased intelligence on 300+ CROs and CMOs, including customer awareness (CA) and customer perception (CP) scores relative to the market. Not only does this provide this group with insight into their performance relative to peers – and thus the opportunity to improve, it is equally an invaluable tool in helping Big Pharma and biotech companies to screen and select prospective partners. Beyond awareness and perception data, peripheral features available to users of Nice Insight continue to be enhanced. Survey data indicated the perceived value in attending trade shows as a well-established and popular means of evaluating and connecting with prospective partners. Therefore, Nice Insight recently introduced a lead generation tool that helps CROs and CMOs to connect with pharma and biotech executives that have indicated that they are seeking outsourcing partners. These individuals are not included in the panel of executives that provide feedback to our quarterly research in the CRO/CMO report.

For Q4 2011, Nice Insight will also offer a Trade Show Tracker feature for CROs and CMOs featured in its company index. This will offer a comprehensive list of shows that each company is attending in 2012, including booth numbers, which will help users to plan their trade show-based screening for the year much more effectively, as well as being another facet in the objective to connect both groups more effectively. When it comes to online tools for CRO / CMO selection, it is important to realize that they are not meant to replace the human element in consultancy and referrals, or the traditional value of trade shows. Good screening tools should be regarded as a valuable first step in the vetting process that can distill key information and narrow down potential partners, thereby optimizing the other methods employed and reducing costs.

Via PharmPro