I remember 2003 and 2004 because that’s when most companies I interviewed about outsourcing arrangements started talking in earnest about “taking a partnering approach” to get more value from outsourcing. Since 2006, many have talked about their successes in partnering. But here’s the reality; they were only partial successes.
Partnering helped them get through the transition phase easier and helped them try to resolve challenges in a win-win manner; but when the business situation changed and thus impacted the buyer’s savings or the service provider’s margins, most of them still hit a wall despite the partnering approach.
There were foundational
Procurement outsourcing is maturing. Buyers in the first wave outsourced primarily transactional-rules-based activities, with labor arbitrage in low-cost countries being a key benefit. As those relationships mature, buyers look to their providers to create additional value beyond labor arbitrage. I talked with two Infosys BPO executives, Srikrishna Koneru, Global Sourcing & Procurement Outsourcing-Solution Design Head, and Rajiv Gupta, Geo Business Manager, about procurement/sourcing trends, how Infosys is helping its customers move up stream and capture more value, and about how Infosys’ Joint Innovation Board benefits customers.
Q: How does the value proposition differ in “sourcing support” compared to “procurement,” in… Read the rest
With outsourcing being used for ever-more complex services, there are more variations and risks that could impact intellectual property, particularly when outsourcing product development or research and development (R&D) functions. I spoke with two attorneys, James Nelson and William Russell in the New York office of Venable LLP, who frequently counsel clients on intellectual property and outsourcing matters and asked them to share some insights for buyers of outsourced services in these situations.
Q: There are so many companies that don’t use third-party consultants or attorneys anymore because they have experience in outsourcing and have a center of excellence or… Read the rest
I worked with a potential client whose five year infrastructure outsourcing contract was coming up for renewal in six months. They were struggling with whether to move ahead with pricing that their provider had offered them (with some negotiation, of course) or whether to step back and examine what the going market rate was for the services being provided. The big question was really this: “How do you know you are getting a competitive price?”
There are two ways to solve that: 1) Get a “competitive benchmark” for the specific services you are outsourcing, and/or 2) “Test the marketplace” with a… Read the rest
Congratulations to Francisco d’Souza, president and CEO of Cognizant! The South Asian MBA Association recently named him “CEO of the Year.”
Cognizant is enjoying double-digit growth, ranking among the top outsourcing companies in India, and was added to the Fortune 500 this month.
D’Souza took the helm at Cognizant in 2007 as one of the youngest CEOs in South Asia. He’s no stranger to awards and accolades. Business Week ranks him as one of the world’s most successful immigrants; he also received the Economic Times Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2005.
Don’t you just hate having to say “I should have paid more attention to that”? Here are four news items that caught my eye, as they bode strongly of trends that will change the outsourcing pulse.
Pay attention to these trends now and start planning for them in your future outsourcing strategies — or you’ll wnat to kick yourself later for not having done it sooner.
Trend #1. U.S. and UK banks are currently reducing the number of service providers they use, narrowing them down to two or three providers with whom they have a high level of… Read the rest
As companies increasingly turn to software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for their monthly subscription-based pricing model and business agility benefits, HR recruitment tools are a focus of SaaS software development companies and venture capitalists funding them.
Two SaaS recruiting tools to be aware of: Evolv and PeopleMatter.
Evolv is science-based talent intelligence software that goes beyond job-matching according to skills. It matches applicants to job types based on behaviors, motivation, and workstyle. The company claims its SaaS tool reduces attrition by 20-30 percent and improves operating margins by 20 percent. Its $15.75 million in VC funding will be used to expand to global markets.
PeopleMatter was launched in September after acquiring the software assets of Columbia-based Acadia… Read the rest
Research firm Forrester reports TCS received the overall highest customer reference scores among the 19 service providers it evaluated for its recent report, ”The Forrester Wave™: Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing, Q1 2011.”
Assessed on 36 criteria in three categories (current offering, strategy, and market presence), TCS was ranked as a Leader for global IT infrastructure outsourcing.
Almost as fast as a wink – that’s how quickly word spreads on Twitter. And everyone’s doing it – you’d have to have been under a rock, so to speak, not to know of the tweets covering the Royal Wedding (2.7 million social media mentions) and of the even bigger stats on tweets about the death of Osama bin Laden.
But did you know that there’s a hedge fund now using tweets to predict market movement? Research by two universities says the emotions expressed about companies tracked through tweets will predict market movements up… Read the rest
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