Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

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

It isn't a technology play

Posted: 07/11/2016 - 20:01

Business services are usually at the core of organisational endeavours, structured to build and manage a variety of workflows and dependencies in a concerted manner. The end goal for all such services is the smooth functioning of an organisation, built around some strategic goals usually manifested in revenues, growth, competitiveness and shareholder value. Over the course of more than two centuries, industrial advancements – enabled through scientific and technological innovations – have assisted with building and sustaining complex workflows, products and services.

Is there really such a thing as a bad deal?

Posted: 07/01/2016 - 19:50

I can recall being on vacation in Hong Kong with my wife as we were walking through the famous shopping district in Mongkok. Here you can buy Class A imitation goods of leading brands at far lower prices than the real brand and few would ever know the difference. Or, if you are like me, you will negotiate (aka: haggle) for an even better price. As I plied my finely honed negotiating skills on the unsuspecting merchants, the price kept getting lower and lower. My wife would say, “Stop, stop already” and she would eventually walk away in embarrassment.

Looking at outsourcing through a crystal ball

Posted: 06/21/2016 - 20:10

Throughout the last ten years of my career as part of Capgemini’s BPO unit I have seen digital innovation transform our personal lives exponentially in terms of smartphones, streaming services and access to real-time information updates. The natural consequence is that we now expect the same level of responsiveness, quality and dynamic interaction in our professional lives as we’ve become accustomed to outside of work. This has resulted in a plethora of changes in terms of what is expected from outsourced services

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.

Battle lines in the sourcing world

Posted: 04/13/2016 - 20:14

The sourcing industry can be thought of as a harbinger for new ideas, technologies and solutions that much of the developing world wasn’t privy to toward the end of the millennium. Of course, the type of explosive growth this industry has created is old news. The good side of this story was in its ability to create millions of jobs for young people in many of the developing nations struggling with economic growth in the face of older industries and lack of sustainability.

Q&A: Chip Wagner, Alsbridge (Part 1)

Posted: 04/11/2016 - 20:36

Chip Wagner is the CEO of Alsbridge, one of the world’s leading sourcing advisory organisations. At a time of significant challenges for advisory firms the world over, Alsbridge is enjoying a purple patch with very healthy growth being reflected in a wave of expansion and key acquisitions. Outsource’s editor Jamie Liddell got together with Chip to discuss the advisory landscape and Alsbridge’s growing prominence within it – and to get the inside track on some very interesting recent developments within his organisation…

Right place, right time: the growth of the cloud contact centre market

Posted: 04/02/2016 - 02:35

Cloud-based contact centres have taken off in a big way. With business process outsourcers (BPOs) needing flexibility and scalability to respond quickly to changing conditions, the cloud is best placed to enable these desires.

The latest research from the Cloud Industry Forum has found that 46 per cent of UK-based organisations use cloud-based contact centres today, a figure that is expected to increase to 68 per cent over the next few years. These results confirm the value of cloud-based contact centres and their ability to transform customer service and engagement.

Shrink an agile business case

Posted: 03/11/2016 - 20:56

There is a fiction that suggests that business decisions are made on purely utilitarian grounds. Psychologists have shown convincingly that people value the avoidance of loss far more highly than capturing gains. There are many and significant implications for those seeking to implement change, particularly in an agile environment.

The Agile Manifesto

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

Posted: 02/19/2016 - 20:56

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:

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