Why today’s business leaders must collaborate, not compete

Posted: 05/12/2016 - 20:41

“Eat or be eaten” – for centuries, this “law of the jungle” was the law of the business world, too. Beating the competition delivered power, money and influence. From the Square Mile to Wall Street, survival of the fittest meant there was only room for one victor at the top. The digital revolution changed this. Measuring success in today’s business world is no longer by the job or task performed for money. We value successful leaders for their contributions to the world as a whole and the manner of its making. What we do and how we do it matters.

Live Wires #5: Good robots and bad robots

Posted: 05/10/2016 - 20:28

Who are Blue Prism? The company isn’t yet a household name, but in automation circles it is something of a trailblazer. They actually coined the term “robotic process automation” back in 2012, and the early evangelists of RPA (such as HfS and Ovum) rapidly seized on Blue Prism case studies as the first signs of something new stirring in the world of automation. Live Wires caught up with Pat Geary, CMO at Blue Prism, to understand who they are and where they are heading.

Cloud delivery options for call centres: understanding their business implications

Posted: 05/09/2016 - 20:09

Forty-seven years ago, J.C.R. Licklider had a vision that the entire world could be connected through an “intergalactic computer network”, allowing users to access programs and data from any site, from anywhere and at any time. Today, this vision has evolved into a reality, and echoes similarities to what we call “cloud computing.”

Hunting unicorns: why clients need internal alignment before whipping their service providers

Posted: 05/07/2016 - 05:35

Something seems to be fundamentally broken in the outsourcing world. The C-suite is not happy with their legacy service providers and 77% want a change, as demonstrated by HFS Research, while lower down the organisation only 27% of middle management agrees with the C-suite and wish to see any change in the service provider. So, how do we explain such an apparent large disparity between the C-suite and middle management?

Robots: a possible solution to the UK's National Living Wage dilemma?

Posted: 05/07/2016 - 05:18

2016 has presented the British labour market with some of the most worrying forecasts and challenging new laws the country has seen in a long time.

Halfway through March, George Osborne announced the Office for Budget Responsibility’s GDP growth forecast, which highlighted that the UK economy will grow more slowly in the next five years than previously expected. The reason? The OBR forecasts a rather worrying reduction in productivity.

The digital transformation journey

Posted: 05/06/2016 - 19:59

Business leaders and technology executives are deluged by the rhetoric about disruptive digital technologies coming of age, companies and whole industries going digital.

Maturing and new technology tools, combined with rapidly changing technology usage patterns of businesses and consumers, are forcing a rethink, even a re-imagination of what companies can do. Obviously there are leaders and there are followers, with every success story probably preceded by unsung failures.

Q&A: Eleanor Winn, SIG & Outsource

Posted: 05/06/2016 - 19:52

Outsource: So, Eleanor, welcome on board – at last! You are of course already a well-known figure in the space – and more familiar now to the SIG audience following your appearance at last month’s SIG Summit in Florida – but for those few of our readers to whom you’re still an unknown quantity, could you give us a bit of background on who you are and your career thus far?

Live Wires #4: Meet the RPA family

Posted: 05/06/2016 - 19:50

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a new type of software that acts as a virtual workforce. It is the hottest ticket in the already hype-fuelled world of automation, and some would say that in the next two to three years it is going to become an integral part of your operations – whether in-house, shared services or outsourced. But who is driving RPA? And if the future is RPA, who is going to make it happen so quickly?

EMEA outsourcing is off to strong start in 2016: ISG

Posted: 05/04/2016 - 01:50

We’ve just published the latest Outsourcing Index from Information Services Group (ISG) (which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with an annual contract value (ACV) of €4 million or more), and found that the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region got off to a strong start in 2016, with double-digit growth in both contract value and volume, reaching €2.25 billion in the first quarter, an increase of 19 per cent over the same period in 2015.

The Mosaic: seeing the bigger picture (Part 3)

Posted: 04/28/2016 - 03:59

After lunch, the group assembled back in the conference room. Most spent some time reading through the poster on the wall, looking for more clues to help them improve.

“Ready to get started,” I said, as the group grabbed their seats.

“On to people,” Tyler announced, with a tone indicating he could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Yes, on to the ‘People’ column in the mosaic. Just as we defined who your key customers are, we need to define the key positions and roles in your company.”

How outsourcing HR can give access to world-class capabilities

Posted: 04/26/2016 - 20:15

The term ‘world class’ has become so commonly used that it has lost some of its impact and Holy Grail magic. In our highly connected workplaces and social lives, we can access knowledge, expertise and insight from people we will never meet, and choose our heroes and role models from a global panoply.

‘World class’ is no longer about having global experience, or confidently operating in an international context, because on some level, most people are doing that on a daily basis, even if it’s only through following celebrities on Twitter.

Design thinking: a way forward for the outsourcing and offshoring industry

Posted: 04/22/2016 - 20:30

A look at the picture below shows that design thinking is all about starting with the customer and ending with the customer. This really sounds like very old wine in a new bottle. But, please do remember: a lot of very old wine actually tastes really good.   The offshoring/outsourcing industry has grown significantly. However, the industry still struggles to show the value-add - and more so prove that it is adding value to its customers.

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