HP Services chief Philip Attard said the company's relationship with Coles Myer was solid and that the transition to India was proceeding as scheduled.
Attard's comments follow reports in Internet publication The Inquirer last week that Coles Myer may have canned its contract with HP, due largely to the outsourcing of support to India and difficulties in achieving service standards laid down in service level agreements between the retailer and the technology heavyweight.
"There's absolutely no ounce of truth in any of those allegations," said Attard.
However, Attard was unable to comment on how the company's client base had received the move, saying it was too soon to produce reliable numbers on customer satisfaction since switching to the Bangalore-based support operation.
The allegation surfaced amid claims that HP had been forced to re-employ staff it had sacked after outsourcing parts of its support operation to India.
But Attard refuted suggestions that the company had been forced to re-hire staff. Attard said that HP had extended contracts of support staff with particular skill sets that had fallen into short supply due to recent "fluctuations" in client demand.
Attard claimed the situation was "good news" for the company and for its Australian staff.
However, well-placed sources told ZDNet Australia the transition to India hadn't run quite as smoothly as HP claims.
According to one source, HP's call clearing rates at the centre had dropped significantly since switching to the Bangalore operation -- which is run by Digital Globalsoft, a company 51 per cent owned by HP -- due to technical and logistical oversights. The source claimed HP had hired Indian workers to replace Australian workers at a ratio of two to three and that it had not purchased enough bandwidth to support its remote service applications.
The source added that HP had over-estimated the capabilities of the Indian workers, many of whom have advanced tertiary qualifications.
However, Attard said any judgments of its outsourcing partners' human resources based on comparisons of previous staffing levels at its local support operation were immaterial given that the Bangalore operation serves a number of countries, not just Australia. However he conceded that a representative from HP Australia "may have" been charged with the task of recreating the local support operation at the Digital Globalsoft facility.
Attard denied that the operation was facing any bandwidth problems, saying that the support operations' drag on HP's global network resources -- which support some 115,000 users -- was insignificant.
HP is still investigating claims that the centre is clearing calls from Australian clients at lower rates than predicted.
Another smudge on HP's collar is their refusal to withdraw support for industry pariah SCO.
http://news.com.com/2009-1088_3-984352.html
HP should never underestimate the long memories of technical people. Marketers change allegiances with every cheque they receive. Companies have no scruples and no ethics. But technical people will still be there to suggest clients buy IBM or DELL product to run Linux on, in lieu of HP, for many years to come. HP's strategists should take note.
So should Sun's.