Transformation

Life Lessons: Rick Sturge

Posted: 04/11/2017 - 03:51

Rick Sturge is EVP Business Development at Firstsource Solutions, with over two decades' experience in outsourcing and business transformation. We turned to Rick for the latest in our Life Lessons series - and received lessons aplenty...


What has been the single most significant development to impact your profession or area of business during your career, and why?

Man and machine: the future awaits

Posted: 04/06/2017 - 03:05

Statistics are a lot of fun, and contentious too. Yet they permit us to remain fairly grounded. Let’s start with the obvious. From self-driving vehicles and semi-autonomous robots to intelligent algorithms and predictive analytical tools, machines are increasingly capable of performing a wide range of jobs that have long been human domains. A 2013 study by researchers at Oxford University posited that as many as 47% of all jobs in the United States are at risk of “computerisation”.

Is RPA a roadblock to digital transformation? What CIOs need to know

Posted: 04/04/2017 - 01:46

Robotic process automation (RPA) is all the rage these days, and with good reason. Software bots that replicate the way humans perform repetitive, rule-based tasks are driving significant cost savings and productivity increases. For as little as $10,000 a year, an enterprise can implement and maintain a bot that performs the routine work of five to ten people. Moreover, RPA can deliver a wide range of business benefits such as improved data collection and accuracy, auditability and compliance.

The future of retail outsourcing: Amazon versus Walmart

Posted: 03/28/2017 - 07:17

Wow! Isn’t it amazing how quickly things change? In the early 2000s, the very pinnacle of outsourcing was Walmart. Walmart didn’t outsource its own operations. Instead, it made history by working with offshore suppliers, introducing American consumers to low-cost Chinese goods. Consumers fell in love with the low prices, and Walmart grew to 14,000 stores, becoming the biggest corporation in America.

Paul J. Zak: doing the math on trust

Posted: 03/28/2017 - 06:47

Paul J. Zak is answering age-old questions about the evolutionary and scientific - actually neuroscientific - basis for identifying and establishing trust. For example, why do people trust each other in the first place? Is there a natural inclination to trust? Does location and/or ethnicity matter when it comes to trust? What does this mean for businesses and their employee relations?

The tip of the infosec iceberg?

Posted: 03/21/2017 - 08:12

Recent stories by, amongst others, the BBC detailing large, well-organised and presumably very profitable scamming organisations targeting UK TalkTalk customers have hardly helped the already-lowly reputation of offshore contact centres - but may unfortunately be only the tip of a perilous iceberg.

Outsourcing realities: What business executives need to know

Posted: 03/07/2017 - 07:26

Congratulations! It’s been three years since you decided to outsource accounts payable. Or, accounts receivable, or customer care, or payroll, or HR, or procurement, or any one of a dozen business process functions typically outsourced, in part or in full. You’ve finally stabilised operations, established consistent market standard processes, addressed the fears from the field, started realising those projected savings, and convinced IT that it is possible to improve response time without creating a horrific security breach.

OPINION: Design thinking should be life-centric…

Posted: 02/28/2017 - 08:20

As the drone flew over the factory in North Carolina and captured pictures and videos both inside and outside the factory, little did the company whose factory was being photographed realise that their practices would be questioned. Here is a factory that processes pig meat. The way the factory is designed is to optimise the number of pigs and the weight of these in order to get maximum production out of it. So, what is wrong with all this?

The future of outsourcing: through 2017 and beyond

Posted: 02/07/2017 - 10:00

This year will see the BPO industry transform itself in a multitude of ways, meaning that businesses must adapt or face the prospect of falling behind their competitors. With a month of 2017 already behind us, what can we expect to come to the sector over the course of the rest of the year – and beyond - in terms of new services and advances in the technology at the heart of the industry?

Q&A: Raleen Gagnon, ManpowerGroup Solutions

Posted: 01/20/2017 - 03:19

Outsource got together with Raleen at last October's SIG Summit in Carlsbad, California, to hear about some of the key developments in the global labour market - and how procurement departments need to refine their approach to procuring people...


Outsource: Raleen, let’s begin with an introduction… Can you tell our readers what you do at ManpowerGroup?

Digital strategies without the hype: fundamentals for effective implementation

Posted: 01/20/2017 - 00:42

Undoubtedly, digital has huge potential: to fundamentally transform the business operating model; to unlock the “impossible challenge”; to greatly accelerate change; and to intimately connect a company to its customers in real time. However, digital can also expose a company’s inner contradictions, reveal hidden pockets of poor performance, and even lead to perceived core capabilities being seen as critical weaknesses.

Black swans - and the price we're paying today

Posted: 01/17/2017 - 00:20

The sourcing industry has so far had a spectacularly wonderful run. Twenty-five years of constant change, dynamism, technical competencies; business-aligned, people-centric, and bottom-line focused; intrinsically able to deliver on all promises made. As with any journey, bumps and roadblocks are expected. Navigating them painstakingly has created heroes of many an organisation, spilling over benefits into the developing world, and capital markets.

Regulating outsourcing creates surprising vendor opportunities

Posted: 01/04/2017 - 08:42

During the election, Donald Trump said that he would stop work from leaving America, and would tax offshored products at 35%. Weeks before Trump is sworn in as President of the United States, he is hard at work wheeling and dealing with American corporations. Will these deals tell us about the “Trump Plan” for outsourcing? Let's dive right in and see!

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