Advisory

Walk a mile in your BPO provider's shoes

Posted: 08/05/2016 - 19:54

Organisations that enter business process outsourcing (BPO) transactions inevitably experience challenges with BPO providers – often resulting from unmet expectations, difficult transitions and erratic steady state delivery. While it is reasonable to expect the value promised by a provider to be delivered quickly and consistently, walking a mile in a BPO provider’s shoes can help buyers understand the typical challenges BPO providers face when taking over execution of business processes from their clients.

EMEA As-a-Service boom contrasts sluggish traditional outsourcing activity

Posted: 07/23/2016 - 02:52

We’ve just published the latest ISG Index, which includes – for the first time – a view on the growing As-a-Service market. Whilst combined second-quarter ACV in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market fell by 18% year-on-year to €2.2 billion, the new data reveals record growth of the As-A-Service segment, contrasting the sluggish activity in traditional sourcing.

Sunshine, happiness and webinars

Posted: 07/21/2016 - 09:55

The summer sun blazed down upon London today, a raging nuclear inferno of staggering power – yet it was as a mere birthday-cake candle when set alongside the brilliance of the panellists on this afternoon’s Outsource Talks… Yes, today saw the fifth episode of our webinar talkshow, and if my introduction might be considered just a fractionhyperbolic we were nevertheless treated to a feast of outsourcing opinion and insight, wit and wisdom – and a few chuckles – which made for a fantastic hour’s listening and, overall, a very worthy addition

TBM: from measurement to a core business function

Posted: 07/09/2016 - 09:53

IT reaches far and wide within organisations, particularly in the case of large enterprises, but it can be difficult to understand exactly what it does and how it is having an impact, especially when it comes to measuring return on investment. Enter Technology Business Management (TBM).

Simply, TBM provides an end-to-end view of the delivery of IT, capturing how both resource and cost are being consumed by the business. This facilitates more informed conversations around IT spend and helps demonstrate IT’s strategic value to the rest of the business.

Avoid or Approach Those Who Purchase?

Posted: 06/03/2016 - 19:57

Another rainy trip up north, I thought to myself, turning on the windshield wipers. A recent phone call from Anne, the head of global purchasing, requesting my participation in reviewing some ideas to build stronger partnerships with their inside-outsourcing service providers (IOSPs), was the reason for the trip. Over my forty years as an IOSP, I’d become very cynical and prejudicial towards purchasing departments. As an IOSP to the auto industry, I’d witnessed countless purchasing initiatives resulting in bankrupting IOSPs due to a complete lack of foresight.

Culture gaps in a shrinking world

Posted: 05/17/2016 - 02:23

In so many ways the business world is smaller and more accessible in the modern era – a place where even tiny online companies can trade globally, where people travel for work as a matter of routine and where businesses become international by outsourcing tasks across all seven continents.

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.

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?

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