Navy is Outsourcing, Wal-Mart? The Outsourcing Weblog

According to Bob Cringley, the U.S. navy is busy outsourcing its IT offshore. He also compared it with Wal-Mart, which is three times larger. Source: Wal-Mart.com [...] Read More


Outsourcing: What it Means to Outsourcing Employees The Outsourcing Weblog

People who are now working with call centers or other types of BPO-related business are the ones who are currently reaping the advantage of outsourcing. Before, these people were unsure of their future because their country's economy was not stable thus causing them to fear their stability over their work. Aside from that, fresh graduates from these countries also believed that they have no future because of the lack of [...] Read More


Unilever Signs 7 Year Contract with IBM for financial transactional services outsourcing The Outsourcing Weblog

Unilever has signed a seven-year contract to outsource key parts of its financial transactional services to IBM. Under the agreement, IBM will provide financial services such as Purchase to Pay, General Accounting and Bill to Cash. These services will be delivered from IBM centers in Portugal, Poland and India. The outsourcing deal covers over 20 European countries and will be implemented over two years beginning 2006. Cost savings from this [...] Read More


Wal-Mart CEO says US contagion spreading Sox First

Is this the canary in the coal mine?In another sign that the effects of the US subprime crisis have spread globally, Bloomberg reports that global business air traffic fell 0.4 percent in June, the biggest number in 13 months.Adding to that are the thoughts of Wal-Mart chief executive officer, Lee Scott, who told the Financial Times that there are signs the US contagion is spreading into global markets.""It started in [...] Read More


Wal-Mart Promises to Promote Women. Do you Believe Them? Bizinformer

BusinessWeek had an article last week on Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke's promise to promote women.Seeking to counter Wal-Mart's image as a company that sells mostly to women yet is overwhelmingly run by men, new Wal-Mart (WMT) CEO Mike Duke pledged at the company's annual shareholder conference on Friday, June 5, to boost the retailer's commitment to developing female leaders by launching a "global women's council."Just 27% of Wal-Mart's senior managers [...] Read More

In a recent article published on the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network, Susir Kumar and Suresh Ramani of Intelenet were asked about the trends that they are seeing in the BPO industry.

Mssrs. Kumar and Ramani reported that they were seeking a number of significant changes in both the pace and manner of deal structure during the economic difficulties of 2009. These include a greater focus on near-term savings, more aggressive price negotiations, more "buy-outs" of entire departments and they are being asked to bear the risk of implementation and redundancy costs more frequently.

On the other hand, they have reported that this new pressure on price has provided an opportunity to better control the way work is done, as they have had some traction in convincing clients that the client focus should be on outcome, not process. Given the economic stresses, this makes sense, although one must question whether there will be a greater loss of relevant institutional knowledge in client companies.

Like any stress, the recession of 2008-09 has altered the way business is being conducted. The long term ramifications remain to be seen - as do the long term financial savings.

In a decision that will likely shake up the service provider community, and may embolden aggrieved customers, particularly those in the UK, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) won a 200 million pound verdict against EDS (now a unit of HP) in a litigation that found that EDS was deceitful in pursuing the contract.

What is particularly interesting is that the agreement had a 30 million pound limitation of liability. Deceit, however, was apparently an exception to the contract (most U.S.-based contracts contain "willful misconduct" exceptions, too).

Morrison & Foerster's London Partner, Alan Owens suggested that sales organization will begin to drastically change their tactics in response to this verdict - although I wonder whether that change will be a more transparent bidding process or, alternatively, bolstered contractual protections.

Offshore outsourcing sees continued rise The Outsourcing Weblog

According to a research by sourcing advisory company TPI, offshore outsourcing will see more growth as more than 80% of large companies plan to increase their offshore outsourcing activities. The research which surveyed 100 senior UK executives showed that 81 percent of companies plan to increase offshore outsourcing over the next three years. Conversely, only 4 percent of the respondents believed that offshore outsourcing would see a decrease in activity. [...] Read More


GoToMeeting: Offshore Collaboration As It Should Be The Outsourcing Weblog

Offshoring entrepreneurs have a wide range of free collaboration tools to choose from. There are weblogs, instant messengers, email, among a lot of other things. However, these methods may not be the most flexible or even secure means of getting a message across... and when it comes to networking many users at a time, they can even be totally useless. The fact is, you just don't look through the free stuff [...] Read More


Banks Expected to Continue Offshore Outsourcing Growth The Outsourcing Weblog

A recent study conducted by Deloitte points out that the spending rate of banks for offshore outsourcing is expected to grow in the following months. The IT budget of banks in the US as well as in other countries would grow because of their business strategy in outsourcing IT-related functions. Aside from that, the banks which participated in the said research study revealed that they can save up to 40% [...] Read More


Offshore Vs MNC - Outsourcing Applications in NA The CIO Weblog

Forrester has a report titled "The Forrester wave: North American Outsourcing Applications - Q1 2007" we had covered this report in this post about a month ago, recently i came across the presentation on the report and found a couple of interesting slides attached below for your reference, Source: 1 Prashanth Rai  [...] Read More


Bundled Offering Business Process Outsourcing + Information Technology Outsourcing The CIO Weblog

Recently came across this report by TPI on the budling of BPO+ITO, this is a trend that is increasingly become very popular, one example was the merging of Infosys's BPO division Progeon into the main IT Services business. When you think about the this from a different perspective, the whole budling concept can probably be termed as "on+demand business function"....We are truly moving into an OnDEMAND world. Your thoughts? The key points [...] Read More

In a recent article published in EMS2007, Eric Miscoll, of Charlie Barnhart & Associates, discussed the health of the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry. EMS is a mature business that has seen tepid growth, due to overcapacity and a slow, but steady, move toward bringing some high level manufacturing back in-house.

Growth forecasts for the EMS industry are weak - between 0% and 7.8% for the next three years, primarily due to the issues described above. The article argues that, until there is a new "killer app" (i.e., a new, innovative product), a reduction in capacity or a modified focus on customer interest, Mr. Miscoll doesn't see general growth in the industry.

One of the other criticisms Miscoll has of the industry is their focus on tweaking their value proposition rather than bringing real innovation to their business model. As I have learned from BPO, it isn't clear whether customers want innovation - or are willing to let outsourcing partners profit from innovation - so there may be external constraints here.

In fact, I would suggest that the article be read by all in outsourcing, regardless of industry. While the timing of the underlying issues may differ by industry segment, the issues themselves remain constant - maturity, capacity, customer service and innovation. Outsourcers of all stripes must continue to address these issues to sustain growth in the sector.