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2e2 support goes to India

2e2, which recently bought Morse, is considering sending its support desk jobs to India.

Codenamed 'Project Victoria', the process is due to kick off after 25 July when 2e2 should have finished due diligence with Patni - the company to which it is outsourcing the outsourcing.

Patni will take on 2e2 support staff except for level 1 - about 150 jobs. It's expected the jobs will stay in the UK for three months but that staff will then be made redundant and the work moved to India. So 2e2 won't actually be making anyone redundant itself.

But Nick Grossman, group business development director at 2e2, said the process is far from finished.

He said: "This is genuinely up in the air right now, we're looking at the feasibility of doing it and looking at a range of different blends - numbers could vary and which work we look at could vary.

"This is not a non-serious issue and it's been contemplated for some time."

Grossman said 2e2 is moving to offer more "transformational" projects which require it work with other companies with other skills. He said cost pressure from customers was another impetus and increased pressure to be more flexible in how it responds to customers.

2e2 customers include Pret a Manger, TieRack, Philips ServiceCentre, British Airways voice systems, Nuffield Health, ITV and Remploy.

The company, including Morse, turned over £414m in 2009.

2e2 is privately-owned, it employs 1,500 staff and boasts of 1,000 "customer facing service delivery and IT professionals. Its website says: "95 per cent of services delivered by 2e2's onshore fulltime employees."

Not for much longer, we'd wager. ®