Get More Accurate Outsourcing ROI in Six Easy Steps
February 8th, 2012
By Jerry Durant
Everybody wants ROI from their outsourcing projects. Many (on both the buy and the sell side) claim it. But relatively few have the knowledge or background to calculate it correctly. This not only makes it harder to make good decisions, but saps the credibility of whoever is doing the calculations.
Far too many operations and procurement professionals try to calculate ROI without a sufficient understanding of it.
Nearshore Agile Development Needs to Fix Major Flaw
January 31st, 2012
By Katy Demong
Companies that want to grow their bottom line while saving money by speeding software cycles are turning increasingly to Agile development. But how can companies combine the cost savings of Agile with the economies of Nearshore while protecting themselves from miscommunication and the mismanagement of time and resources?
Got Trouble with Your Outsourcer? Fire Yourself
October 18th, 2011By Robert L. Scheier
OK, that wasn’t QUITE the bottom line in a recent Sourcing Interest Group/ Vantage Partners’ Webinar “Dealing with the Problem Deal.” But experts did say that the knee-jerk reaction — firing the outsourcer – often doesn’t work. Neither does more of what got you into trouble in the first place: More meetings, more reports, more metrics and more reporting.
If Outsourcing is All About Savings, then Show Me the ROI
October 4th, 2011By Randy Vetter, Director, Alsbridge, Inc.
Your CFO walks into your office 18 months after you signed your first outsourcing contract and asks, “What happened to the savings you promised?”
To prepare for this question, hopefully you have created and properly staffed a Vendor Management Office (VMO) function that manages the contract, relationship, performance, and financial aspects of the agreement. But to be able to explain any discrepancies (or even better, avoid them) ask the following questions:
Vendor Responsibilities: What Do You Really Owe Your Clients?
February 10th, 2011
By Ilya Bogorad
There is something unique about outsourcing as a service. I am talking about the level of explicit trust that a client places in the provider by delegating fulfillment of a part of its value chain. Other services and goods procured by organizations are usually never as readily visible to the end customer as the firm’s activities outsourced to a third party, be it handling of payables, order processing or call centre operations.
In my earlier articles here, I wrote about the importance of innovation in outsourcing business and about some best practices for customer retention. Those recommendations are really from the “should do” category and today I wanted to talk about the “must do” stuff. What do we really owe our clients?
Client Restructuring Rather than Buying Caused Recent BPO Decline
February 8th, 2011
"Brazil has the lion's share of contract numbers in Latin America" - Mayo
By Tarun George
According to the 2010 fourth quarter TPI Index released recently, the global sourcing industry is sending us some pretty mixed signals. A sluggish economy, smaller contract values, and firms trying to optimize technologies like cloud all make the services marketplace quite unpredictable.
But there are some key trends that emerged, and we asked Mark Mayo, Partner and President at TPI, to help us decipher the numbers. He explains why buyers are renegotiating contracts rather than signing new ones, why BPO activity is down across the board, and what this all means for Latin America.
No More Big US Outsourcing Deals, Says HCL Technologies
January 26th, 2011HCL Technologies, the fifth-largest Indian IT services provider, posted its best results since the recession began, but also said that the era of big bang outsourcing deals from the US has come to an end.
Indian IT providers had seen a virtual disappearance of deals that generate $100 million or more per year when the recession started two years ago.
Despite the recession ending, such deals have been more or less conspicuous by their absence.
“The United States has moved to phase two of outsourcing,” Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies, said, after announcing the company’s December quarter results.
Like Tata Consultancy Services, the December quarter saw HCLT’s best performance since the recession began, cementing its entry into the post-recession era.
Revenues (counted in US dollars) were up 32.6% compared to a year ago while profits were up 39%.
Even compared to the …
Coming Up in 2011: Integrated Sourcing, a Potent Cloud and More Flexibility
December 30th, 2010By Tarun George
Not surprisingly, as global corporations gear up for what looks to be a strong re-emergence out the malaise of the worldwide recession, there are clear signs that offshore outsourcing will remain a key pillar to helping drive this growth.
But what is going to be different in this rejuvenated economic environment is the offshoring equation will increasingly be based around the level of efficiency built in to the process of services delivered and the ability of providers to fully optimize potent new technologies like cloud computing.
Following is our own take on the major tidal shifts coming to the nearshore/farshore outsourcing industry over the next year.
Outsourcing Contracts: Six Ways to Preserve a Good Marriage
October 11th, 2010
Building better relationships between outsourcing providers and customers is an enduring topic probably because relatively few “marriages” go as well as expected.
Steve Semerdjian, a partner in the New York office of Loeb & Loeb LLP and Chris Nuttall at PA Consulting ran an informative panel discussion last week at the Sourcing Interests Group Leadership Summit on this subject by directing the focus on ways to improve the contractual process. Here are our top six take-aways from that panel discussion:
Six Biggest Mistakes in Outsourcing Contracts
August 11th, 2010
By Steve Semerdjian
While outsourcing has become commonplace in today’s business environment, the contracting process will, rightfully so, continue to challenge even the most senior outsourcing veterans. For instances, as an outsourcing customer, have you ever really looked at how much it would cost to kill a deal and back out? There are undoubtedly dozens of mistakes you and your team can make trying to make an outsourcing relationship work for the long-run. In this article, you will find the six biggest snafus to watch out for.
