Time to talk Talks

Posted: 02/25/2016 - 22:37
Author: Jamie Liddell

I always find it gratifying when a dormant project is resurrected: it means that effort already exerted (perhaps a while beforehand) has not after all been wasted, and that what seemed a good idea at the time continues to seem so some time down the line. With this in mind, I’m delighted to announce the (re)launch of our Outsource Talks webinar series, our attempt to bring the “chat show” format to the outsourcing space.

Three CIO imperatives – and three ways to fund them

Posted: 02/23/2016 - 03:27
Author: Homan Haghighi

CIOs today face a number of front-burner issues that either didn’t exist or barely registered on the radars of their counterparts in 2000. Yet at the same time, the more things change, the more things stay the same. One imperative today is to deliver business agility and competitive edge through technology, specifically through the effective application of analytics and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to predict and rapidly respond to business requirements.

The Delivery Engine: rediscovering lost lessons on corporate governance

Posted: 02/19/2016 - 20:59
Author: Ron Wiens

Over the past 40 years something extraordinary has been happening in organisations. The staff and management who populate them have been getting progressively smarter, at least when measured by their education, ongoing training and number of books read. Paradoxically, the organisations themselves seemed to have become dumber.

Live Wires #2: RPA is eating the old outsourcing business model

Posted: 02/19/2016 - 20:56
Author: Paul Morrison

In our quest for robotic process automation (RPA) enlightenment, we will come across a lot of speculation and hyperbole on the way. In such a young industry this is perhaps inevitable, but on this journey we will try to separate the wheat from the chaff and pick out real evidence as much as possible. Let’s start as we mean to go on:

In-house or outsourced transformation: which is best?

Posted: 02/19/2016 - 20:48
Author: Howard Spode

In this article I examine the question of whether an in-house or outsourced approach is best when transforming business support services such as HR, procurement, customer care, etc. So for example an organisation might ask itself: “Should we establish a robotic process automation (RPA) regime in our accounting operation or should we get a business process outsourcing (BPO) provider to run our accounting for us, which would include the deployment of its RPA regime?”

“Making it formal”: how structured development plans drive technology transformation

Posted: 02/17/2016 - 21:23
Author: Anna Morris

Recent research by the UK’s Tech Partnership into the views and opinions of 1,600 employers across the UK concluded that economic growth is being put at risk due to skills gaps in the tech workforce. Employers reported significant problems in recruitment, with 42% of those recruiting tech specialists saying that they were constrained by ‘hard to fill’ vacancies.

Building service capability

Posted: 02/17/2016 - 03:40
Author: William Hooper

The concept of “capability” has long been used in strategic analysis to establish defensible leadership. What are the capabilities that are being established by leading service providers and customers? How do you assess the difference between hype and substance?

Outsourcers in the UK: not too big to fail...

Posted: 02/13/2016 - 09:22
Author: Peter Hill

The Commercial Court ruling in BT Cornwall Limited v Cornwall Council and Others is a sharp reminder that if an outsourced service provider does not provide the service it has promised to provide, to the standard it has promised, it should not expect the customer to allow the contract, however large and multi-faceted, to continue. Put another way, the customer is almost always right.

Inhuman scale: Big Data, the Internet of Things and the AI revolution

Posted: 02/10/2016 - 23:53
Author: Gareth Stokes

Of all the jargon and buzzwords beloved of IT professionals – “the cloud”, “SaaS”, “web 2.0” and an infinity of others – “Big Data” is the most alluringly easy to misunderstand. Whilst big data systems do entail a large volume of data, the real benefits come from the speed (or ‘velocity’) of accumulation, and the array of different types of data (or ‘variety’) that are collected and analysed.

Saving money through outsourcing HR and payroll

Posted: 02/10/2016 - 10:03
Author: Marc Bishop

HR is one of the most commonly outsourced functions, as it involves both complex and time-consuming tasks. Outsourcing HR services can have a positive impact on an organisation, effectively saving money whilst simultaneously increasing the quality and efficiency of the company’s HR and payroll. Outsourcing results in more final output but requires lower input costs than in-house HR.

Privacy Shield: a new regime for international data transfers

Posted: 02/09/2016 - 01:43
Author: Adam Rose

The basis upon which European businesses are able to send personal data outside of Europe – and, especially, to the United States – has recently been the subject of intense scrutiny and negotiation between the EU Justice Commissioner and the US Department of Commerce. The outcome seems to be that EU businesses are allowed to send data to the US, but it’s useful to understand the background and what has been agreed.

Two very different things set the backdrop to last week’s EU/US agreement.

Live Wires #1: Why, Robot?

Posted: 02/06/2016 - 00:05
Author: Paul Morrison

Automation is unquestionably the flavour of the month in business chatter today. Robotic process automation (RPA), and a storm of other smart automation approaches like Artificial Intelligence, are being pitched and perceived as the NEXT BIG THING, akin to the emergence of outsourcing some 30 years ago, and offshoring 15 years ago.

Artificially limited: liability for machine intelligence

Posted: 02/03/2016 - 22:53
Author: Gareth Stokes

Anyone with even a passing interest in technology will be well used to the claim that a particular IT system – some combination of hardware and software – is “clever technology”. Similarly, synonyms for intelligence have been appended as a prefix or suffix by every IT vendor’s marketing department to add an extra sparkle to their latest technology.

Pages

Subscribe to Future of Sourcing RSS