The HR Outsourcing Rush

HR outsourcing is arriving. The HR department, long considered a cost center, performing back end tasks, has had to re-orient and re-engineer itself in line with the demands of the emerging e-conomy. It has had to take on the role of a business partner, which performs core HR functions that have a direct impact on the revenue building capability of the company.
Makes me wonder, considering that these would be outsourced to Indian BPO companies, what would the skills necessary to the HR SMEs in these BPO organizations? No people contact, no strategic thinking...just operational process related stuff...the Maintenance Expert role according to Ulrich's HR role matrix :-)