What will the future bring in terms of HR technology? Jason Averbrook, co-founder and CEO of Knowledge Infusion, and Naomi Lee Bloom, managing partner, Bloom & Wallace, attempted to define that future during the second annual “Great Technology Debate” at the HR Technology Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas on October 4.
Here are some nuggets from the lively 90-minute discussion. N.B: Their sage insights are universal, applying to technology in general.
About HR data and analytics:
Bloom: “We have a bunch of sludge sitting at the bottom of our databases. HR has postponed the inevitable. But now is… Read the rest
It is a Formula One Grand Prix. Crew members are crunching data from the sensors attached to the car. In a single season, a team will burn 200,000 liters of fuel in testing to identify 50 slightly different blends of fuel additives. Subject to predictive and simulated models, the crew should be able to give the right blend of power boosting additives to touch the finish line!
Similarly, your banker, insurer, telecom provider or retail store could be tracking your buying behavior to offer you an optimal product/service mix. With Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and other social media being tracked,… Read the rest
Beans, blueberries, broccoli, green tea and Omega 3-rich fish are all hailed as health super foods. In my book, the competitive commercial sector’s super food is knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). And I’m not talking research here – although research certainly has its value – but analytics, predictive analytics. An increasing number of companies are using it to identify risks and opportunities, determine appropriate price points and ultimately gain a leg up against their competitors.
One highly-publicized predictive analytics initiative was Overstock.com’s May 2011 launch of a competition wherein the team that can improve its recommendation engine by 10 percent or… Read the rest
Today’s harried IT managers and CTOs must support the applications that keep the lights on in the business, find time for IT innovation, AND answer your questions about why you can’t change your password. In many cases, they spend up to 80 percent of the time answering your questions and fixing desk top problems that you inadvertently created because you’re not an IT person and somehow messed it up. (Yep, that would be me.)
Add in Moore’s law and companies discover the desktops they own are almost as outdated as a manual typewriter in just 36 months. Where can they… Read the rest
To me, it’s always good business to do well by doing good. That’s the spirit in which Wipro established its rural BPO program in Manjakuddi, a village with a population of 2500. A large percentage of the 54 employees live in a house with a thatched roof. The village is six hours by car from Chennai.
The mover and shaker behind this project is Puneet Chandra, global head and vice president, Corporate Business Services, who was moved by the work of two institutions:
- The Azim Premji Foundation, whose goal is to educate the girl child in rural India
- Swami
From the start of time, when economic troubles occur, the hardest-hit find a scapegoat. Today, there are many scapegoats. But outsourcing is certainly on the list.
IMHO, American companies that outsource are contributing to that public perception. Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, just co-authored a report entitled “The Moral Measure of the Economy.” One of the findings was that many of the nation’s largest 100 companies refused to disclose the breakdown of their workforce between the United States and other countries. From that he concludes, “They don’t want the public to know how aggressively… Read the rest
Do you remember back when sushi was a new concept in eating in the West? “Raw fish? Why would anyone want to eat raw fish?” But then we sampled it and before long it became so mainstream that you can find a sushi bar almost anywhere. While no where near as ubiquitous as sushi, Infrastructure and Software as a Service (IaaS and Saas) followed a similar path, with initial reluctance lending way to taste tests within a growing number of organizations.
But Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is a very different type of meal. The light eaters – small… Read the rest
Manish Dugar is the new head of Wipro BPO. Dugar takes over at a watershed moment. “The near future features a volatile and dynamic economy. Thanks to technology and scientific advances, geography is history. Now, what happens in one part of the world impacts the whole world,” he observes.
The senior vice president has had a front seat for the growth of offshoring. He was there when it was all about labor arbitrage. His goal: to lead Wipro BPO through the next phase: producing business-based outcomes. Wipro calls this Business Function Outsourcing (BFO). “We are no longer a commodity player,”… Read the rest
Wave 5 of the technology revolution is upon us. (Preceded, of course, by mainframes, client/server, desktops and then the Internet.) Cloud computing is a key component of this new wave.
Contracts, of course, form the bedrock of beautiful outsourcing relationships. How do you contract for cloud services? Are cloud contracts different from contracting any IT service?
In his book “Cloud Sourcing the Corporation,” Ben Trowbridge outlines a list of concerns. He points out that many of the current cloud providers have business-to-consumer roots. “Their current contracting practices place much emphasis on the provider and not enough on the corporate customer,”… Read the rest
While the typical benchmarking clause provides the opportunity to benchmark the services, many clients find third-party benchmarks to be expensive, disruptive and time-consuming. Results may just as likely confirm that a vendor’s price is market competitive, and no savings are to be had. Further, third-party benchmarks by their nature pit client against vendor – making them all but impossible to complete – and risk damaging what otherwise might be a good working relationship.
There is a better way. Clients looking to confirm market competitiveness are increasingly relying on screening benchmarks (often referred to as “pre-benchmarks” or screening benchmarks) that help… Read the rest
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