Yellow pages publisher Dex One is eliminating about 30 percent of its information technology staff and outsourcing work to HCL Technologies, a giant India-based tech services firm with offices in Cary.
A minority of the workers who lose their jobs - nearly 1 in 5- is expected to be hired by HCL, said Atish Banerjea, Dex's chief technology officer. Although the layoffs at Dex are company-wide, the bulk of the workers hired by HCL will be employees at Dex's Cary headquarters and in Morrisville.
It's unclear just how many Dex workers will lose their jobs, because the company isn't disclosing how large Dex's IT department is. Baner jea cited "competitive reasons" for keeping that number confidential. Overall, Dex has 3,000 workers, including 400 in the Triangle.
Workers who lose their jobs will receive severance packages. Those workers were being notified Thursday, but jobs will be phased out over the next few months, spokesman Chris Hardman said.
Dex has been on a cost-cutting binge that has triggered a series of layoffs. It eliminated 475 jobs at the end of last year and 200 jobs this year before the announcement Thursday. Those cuts included outsourcing its internal graphics operations.
Working with HCL will produce "a significant amount of savings," Banerjea said, but declined to provide specifics. The company previously set a goal of cutting its annual costs this year by $140 million.
HCL sites in Cary, where the company has 278 workers, and India will handle the work for Dex. Financial details of the multiyear contract weren't disclosed.
This month, HCL, which generated $3.3 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in March, signed a five-year, $500 million deal with drugmaker Merck that is expected to create at least 100 local jobs.
In 2008, HCL announced it would create 513 jobs in Wake County by 2013. If it meets that goal - and the company anticipates it will - it's eligible to receive $5.07 million in state incentives.
An HCL spokesman declined to say how many workers it expects to hire in Cary thanks to the Dex contract, or how that work will be split between Cary and India. The workers hired to handle tasks for Dex will be full-time workers with benefits.
Banerjea, who joined Dex in January, previously worked with HCL when he was an executive vice president at Pearson, an international media company.
"HCL happens to be one of the top-tier, global IT services companies with a good reputation in the product engineering side as well as the back-office side," he said.
Dex publishes yellow pages in 28 states but is betting its future on new digital, mobile and social media products. Dex has been struggling as its core small-business customers have been hit especially hard by the economic downturn; the shift away from print media also has taken a toll. Revenue for all of 2010 totaled $1.78 billion, down 19 percent from 2009.
In addition to cutting costs, Dex is investing $40 million in new technology and digital advertising products to generate new revenue sources.
HCL figures into that equation as well. The services firm will augment Dex's in-house digital product development teams.
Banerjea said that, especially in the product development arena, Dex's arrangement with HCL is more "co-sourcing" than outsourcing. In many cases that will mean that Dex software engineers will design the products and manage the process, while HCL will do the "basic coding."
Banerjea said Dex has been adding software engineers to develop new products, and will continue to do so despite its arrangement with HCL.
"We're making a tremendous amount of progress," he said. "The first wave of products is coming up for release at the end of June."
Functions being outsourced to HCL include the IT help desk, quality assurance and applications support and development. Those functions, however, will be overseen by Dex managers.
