The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry continues to evolve, propelled by developments in technology; in some circles, its name is changing to IT-enabled services industry. The genesis of the industry, in terms of its global service delivery (or offshoring) model, was tightly bound to its promise of up to 40% cost arbitrage, which created a “lift and shift” or “same mess for less” type of activity in the marketplace but, nevertheless, resulted in growth of the industry as buyers slowly embraced the model.…
Next Generation BPO: Portend of Trends
Insourcing: When Does it Make Sense to Bring Services Back Home?
While outsourcing continues to grow at a solid pace each year, a number of companies have needed to insource a part of their formerly outsourced services portfolio. The drivers behind these decisions include: a CEO-mandate to change corporate sourcing strategy, a way to remediate a troubled outsourcing relationship, or a healthy look at an old sourcing decision to find the right mix of in-house and outsourced services based on current business goals.…
Without Cost Arbitrage, Will the BPO Industry Grow in the India Domestic Market?
The fact that cost arbitrage almost single handedly led to the growth of the global BPO service delivery (a.k.a offshoring) industry is the least of the reasons for embracing outsourcing within the domestic market of India. Prima facie, cost arbitrage appears infeasible as most service providers have a dominant presence in large cities with steel glass buildings and a well-compensated workforce.…
Implications of SAP’s Ariba Acquisition on BPO – Details are Still Cloudy
When SAP, the enterprise application software company, announced yesterday that it agreed to acquire Ariba, the procurement and supply chain world took note. Ariba is the leading procurement and e-commerce solution in the marketplace, with an enviable install base. As the giant in the ERP market, SAP has competitive transactional procurement capabilities.…
New Tools Available through Cloud Security Alliance Membership
Earlier this month, ISG joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) as a corporate member. Here’s a description of this organization:
“The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.…
Avoid “The Big Mistake” in Building your Outsourcing Business Case
While an outsourcing transaction can be a powerful tool to improve business operations and financial performance, it can prove counterproductive without a sound business case. This is especially true if a company lacks effective governance. The process of preparing and negotiating an RFP is already complex and stressful. Add time pressure, lack of transparency and poor planning, and you may end up making “The Big Mistake”—a business case that looks good on paper but, in reality, leads to higher costs.…
Traditional Analyst Research vs. the Tip of the Spear
Are you looking for insights on vendors and products within a defined market, or are you trying to solve a business problem specific to your unique requirements?
If you’re looking for insights into vendors or products, analyst research like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Forrester’s Wave can be extremely valuable resources. However, if you’re looking to solve a complex business operations problem specific to your unique requirements, you’re going to need a broader and deeper set of tools.…
Managed Payroll: Is It Managing You?
USA Today recently reported that more American workers are suing employers for overtime pay under federal and state wage-and-hour laws. This should come as no surprise since the “Great Recession” squeezed employers’ bottom lines, meaning fewer employees do more work. However, overtime, compliance and other payroll issues are usually not rooted in malcontent by the employer.…
Capturing Real Value from Your Captive Operation
In the prevailing economic uncertainty, organizations continue to scrutinize their service delivery models to find opportunities for improvement. Captive operations have been integral to the service delivery models of a number of large global organizations, delivering services from basic back-office data management to specialized knowledge services like R&D and engineering.
Consider the following Top 5 key tactics to ensure ongoing operational success and long-term viability of your captive operation:
1.…
IT Financial Management: the More Things Change…
Last week’s IT Financial Management Association (ITFMA) conference in San Francisco marked the 25th anniversary of the association dedicated to professionals involved with the financial management of IT. Conference attendees came from a variety of industries and government organizations with some attendees travelling from as far afield as Africa.
After the conference, I reflected on the fact that, despite monumental shifts in technology over the last 25 years, the fundamental issues facing IT financial management professionals haven’t really changed. We may be talking now about Cloud instead of CICS, and Tablet PCs rather than Time Sharing, but the financial challenges of today’s CIO are similar to those faced by the Data Processing Manager 20+ years ago.…
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- Next Generation BPO: Portend of Trends
- Insourcing: When Does it Make Sense to Bring Services Back Home?
- Without Cost Arbitrage, Will the BPO Industry Grow in the India Domestic Market?
- Implications of SAP’s Ariba Acquisition on BPO – Details are Still Cloudy
- New Tools Available through Cloud Security Alliance Membership
- Who Will Source The Sourcer?
- Continuous improvement and innovation in services agreements – making it really work
- SIG Conference: Day 2 – eSourcing Insights and BPO Innovations
- Desktop Support While Outsourcing
- Can pure play BPOs or ITOs stand alone in the long run?
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Ranon Obel: I agree to this point that time can either be enem...
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Secured Loans: You've quite rightly highlighted the strength of ...
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Cynthia Hollandsworth Batty: The end of the outsourcing contract and renegotiat...
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Allan Hviid Jensen: I first got involved with offshoring in 2003. I wa...
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