IAMR efforts to bring Kolkata industry together

from the latest mtindia newsletter

Ramakrishna Tummala, President IAMR and MD Worldtech will be
meeting with industry majors at Kolkata on Sunday, June 24. He
will be in Kolkata along with his team to commemorate the 1st
anniversary of the Worldtech Center of Excellence. Mr. Tummala has
been a pioneer in the efforts to get the Indian MT industry to grow
in dialog. He formalized his efforts with the industry in
Hyderabad at a meeting in July 2002 where Dr. Amit Chatterjee, SM
of MTIndia came and shared his understanding of the need for such a
forum at local, national and international levels. IAMR was formed
with 20 leading companies. Raghu Vasu of Transdyne, Ravi Chandran
and Srinivas Manne of ElicoBPO, Subhorup Dasgupta of Worldtech,
Venkateswar Rao of Vasavi Prosoft, along with the principals of
VasantScribe, CKAR, and other leaders took IAMR forward to become
an effective and formal networking platform for the industry.

IAMR activities have included training in HIPAA compliance, career
destination seminars by Peter Preziosi, AAMT, sharing best HR
practices, sharing best training practices, evolving uniform
recruitment and recognition systems, sharing vendor data and other
relevant data, sharing technology, workshops on yoga, art of
living, personality development and ergonomics, workshops for
senior and middle management, cultural events & sports events,
seminar on hedging foreign exchange risk by Nagesh Pydah of Bank of
India.

In a telephonic interview, Mr. Ramakrishna said that the two
challenges that the Indian MT Industry faces is lack of uniform
standards and availability of trained manpower.

"The danger of poor or erratic quality of service provided is one
that would adversely affect the whole industry, most so the leading
players who invest heavily in implementation of quality policies
and processes. The industry has only recently been able to shake
off its image as a low cost but high risk (in terms of accuracy of
transcripts and security of data) offshoring destination and we
need to do all we can to prevent the India MT brand from being
tarnished." he said.

"Uniform training, certification and compensation coupled with good
HR practices are keys to successful retention. The two words every
CEO dreads are attrition and poaching. The only way out is to
increase the quality of entry level MTs and to invest in training
and retraining. In the context of a 40-rupee dollar,
non-sustainable costs need to be addressed urgently in order for
all
of us to survive and profit. Career aspirations and earnings need
to be judiciously matched to create a win-win situation for the
business as well as the workers."

for more go to http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/MTIndia/message/207