Don’t Let Stagnation Kill Your Shared-Services Operation
January 25th, 2012
Speed is of the essence, DeMent says.
By Patrick Haller
Success of a shared-services operation depends upon more than just a good plan and solid execution – like any good relationship, it requires constant monitoring and regular maintenance. Without a serious, ongoing commitment by the CEO, CFO, CIO, and managers throughout the company, shared services will implode. The entire corporate way of thinking has to change.
Staff Reduction: How to Make the Most of a Painful Situation
January 24th, 2012
By Daniel Berthiaume
A crucial aspect of many IT outsourcing and BPO initiatives is internal staff reduction. Despite the cost savings and more efficient operations that might result, few managers look forward to determining who stays and who goes when a department outsources certain functions. But properly evaluating employees in the event jobs need to be terminated is absolutely critical to BPO success.
Nearshore’s 2012 Outlook: Time for Industry to ‘Stand on Its Own’
January 18th, 2012
By Patrick Haller
With 2012 in full-swing, a critical look at what lies ahead for Nearshoring is in order. With a shaky global economy, and some forecasts calling for a sluggish year in IT and BPO sourcing, this is no time to be complacent. Whether it’s building solid skill sets, creating sufficient scale, matching client’s expectations, managing expansion, or doing business amidst social change and myopic political theater, providers have a lot to confront. We tapped some of the leading experts in the Nearshoring space for their answer to the burning question: What is the single biggest challenge you think the Nearshore outsourcing industry faces in 2012?
US Congressional Bill Would Penalize Offshoring
January 17th, 2012
By Peter Ryan
The US Congressional initiative House Resolution 3596 (HR 3596) is the most recent effort on the part of certain US legislators to inhibit the offshore outsourcing of contact center services. However, no matter how sincere the spirit of this and other previously proposed and similarly worded resolutions, Ovum believes such a law would badly hurt outsourcers and ultimately impact the US consumer negatively. Therefore, vendors need to come out swinging against such initiatives.
Insourcing Jobs for Americans: Can It Work?
January 11th, 2012
"Insourcing is a smart strategy right now..."
By Clayton Browne
President Obama hosted a White House forum today entitled “Insourcing American Jobs.” Executives from several companies spoke at the event, all representatives of businesses that have recently made major investments in the U.S. resulting in thousands of new jobs – many of them IT jobs.
Nearshore Nexus 2012: Bigger, Bolder and Coming to Broadway
January 11th, 2012The most exclusive outsourcing event of the year comes to New York City, April 19. Buy-side executives (including vendor management, IT, BPO, site selection and software leaders) are invited to attend.
What is the Real Value of Brazil IT?
January 3rd, 2012Brazil’s value proposition is becoming clearer, now it’s time to get the message across, consistently – Atul Vashistha at Neo Group.
Half of Outsourcing Customers Won’t Depend on Current IT Outsourcers to Manage Private Cloud
December 12th, 2011By Bob Scheier
IT outsourcing (ITO) vendors provide everything from application development and testing to remote management of customers’ data centers. As those customers adopt cloud computing (highly virtualized compute, storage and network capacity provided over the Internet) ITO vendors face both strategic threats and opportunities, according to a survey of 489 business executives conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) this spring.
New cloud competitors include IAAS (infrastructure as a service) vendors such as Rackspace, who sell server, network and storage capacity on an “as needed” basis, as well as vendors such as Dell and HP looking to move beyond product sales to higher-margin services.
Shared Services Deep Dive: Pitney Bowes on Driving Innovation Internally and Externally
November 11th, 2011
By Dan Berthiaume
The concept of shared services, or the moving of like outsourced functions in a company together, is evolving in a way that can provide substantial synergy across different units of an enterprise and allow innovation to spread. Jeffrey Jacobson, VP of Finance/GM for Global Accounting Operations of Pitney Bowes, says shared services is currently “clay in motion” as it moves from a single function to multi-function idea.
Indian IT Outsourcers Don’t Have to Comply with New Privacy Laws
November 4th, 2011Source: CIO
Personal data sent to India by customers outsourcing IT work there will not be covered by India’s new privacy rules, the government announced in late August, and a recent government clarification has come as a huge relief to India’s large outsourcing industry.
The data privacy rules, issued in April, require companies or their intermediaries to get written consent from individuals about the use of the sensitive personal information they collect. But it would have been very difficult for Indian outsourcers to operate if they had to get written consent from every foreign citizen whose personal data moves through India’s vast collection of call centres and other outsourcing operations.
India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued a clarification saying the new rules apply only to Indian companies that collect information from individuals. That ended confusion over whether European and US companies sending data for processing to Indian outsourcers would …
