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Omega: a strategic swim across recession tide

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

BANGALORE: It was just like an epidemic outbreak. All of a sudden the 'R'-word became the catalyst of a global fear psychosis. Not many could find it easy to withstand this tsunami, leave alone crossing the mighty ocean of economic disaster.

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However, bad times are the times for innovation as well. Omega, a provider in health care administrative outsourcing services, is one such company that is bringing out new tools to tackle recession in an innovative and efficient way.

Purushottam Reddy, head, finance, Omega, claims that the company has managed to shore off the recession. “As a matter of business prudence and routine, the company has taken some steps toward cost cutting, including revision of existing vendor/supplier contracts. Printing costs for most training and HR needs has been frozen and instead soft copies are being circulated to trainees as every employee has a desktop.”

The company has saved up to 25 per cent in the printing and stationary front, he said.

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Travel in between their operating units in Chennai and Bangalore has been reduced to a great extent as the company has started using video conferencing technology for meetings. Also, the company-provided transportation routes have been optimized and this has resulted in some cost reduction as well. Over all, Omega has saved up to 15 per cent on travel expenses.

A third shift has been introduced to obtain optimum utilization of office and resources. In the third shift there has been 45 per cent of saving when compared to moving in to a day shift in a new location.

Omega has also started video conferencing for employee induction programs and other meetings.

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"Recently, many of our Bangalore management team had to address a Team Lead induction schedule at Chennai. Except a couple, all others stayed back at Bangalore and used the video conferencing technology and successfully completed the session,” said Reddy.

“Here we saved substantial amount of costs in terms of flight tickets, accommodation, local transport, and more importantly the time. Moving forward, we will increasingly use video conferencing as an alternative to travel across our operating units.”

In order to meet certain clients' TAT requirements, a few employees work on the weekends but were spread across different floors of the building and none of the floors were full.

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They have started implementing "Virtualization of their systems" so employees could work from a single floor thus saving air conditioning, lighting, and administrative man power. Through the implementation of virtualization the company has saved up to 10 per cent.

The green front



The power saving initiatives have also helped the company in the green front. As part of daily routine, they have strictly directed all their employees to switch off the computers at the end of their shift and weekends. They have introduced an online appraisal system which would save printing and stationary costs to a great extent. Through power saving initiatives, the company has reduced power usage by up to 15 per cent.

Also the expense on local telephone calls has been brought down by around 30 per cent.

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For the Employees



But Omega makes it sure that the cost-saving measures do not affect the employee confidence. The company conducts monthly entertainment events to make Omega a fun place to work. Recently, as a mark of appreciation to all tenured employees, they celebrated the Golden Brick award ceremony in a big way and recognized all the employees with more than three years of service.

They still continue to give attractive gifts to all newly married employees. The company claims that since its inception five years ago, Omega has allocated budgets for their annual outing.

Also it continues to offer a lot of continuing education and development focused programs for employees at all levels, through its Learning and Development organization.

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Recently it entered into a one-year contract with Crestcom International, to conduct a customized 'Bullet Proof Manager' training for their line managers and supervisors.

Purushottam added, “Looking at these measures, we, employees get a feeling to voluntarily save for our company which in turn will help us in future. In other words, when the company gets better and so do employees…”

Every company is sure to go through repetitive cycles of boom, slowdown and recession. Maybe it's just time to redo some economics lessons!

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