Another month, another great Outsource Talks webinar… This week it was my profound pleasure and privilege to welcome Vested’s Kate Vitasek, KPMG’s Don Ryan and ‘Art of Procurement’ host Phil Ideson to the Outsource Talks sofa, where the hour fairly flew by in a wonderful discussion of sourcing business models, GBS, challenges facing CPOs, “two-tier” procurement profession
Vast forests of digital trees have been sacrificed to the topic of sourcing. While the incessant stream of white papers, articles, blogs, tweets and posts we’re bombarded with are certainly helpful, don’t they all start sounding the same after a while?
Sourcing and procurement (S&P) leaders continue to reference efficiency, effectiveness and continuous improvement of operations as a high priority. Most will admit that continuous optimisation is not a destination, rather a journey that has become increasingly complex. Today, an agile S&P organisation that effectively aligns with the needs of the business is critical to establish. S&P organisations want to embrace accelerated decision-making, improve productivity and spend visibility, and implement tighter controls for supplier performance.
The result of the EU referendum will undoubtedly have a profound and long-lasting impact on the entire UK population and is likely to be something that is truly generational. Whether we voted for Remain or for Leave, however, Brits now have to assess where we are and how we maintain our position in the global economy.
It was a rainy day in Goa, India and I had just got back to the hotel in the evening after meeting customers. As I walked through the corridor of the hotel I saw a lot of people from the Middle East sitting at the lounge and enjoying a drink as they chatted and gazed out over the Arabian Sea and the rains. I asked the lobby manager as to why so many people came in from the Middle East during monsoon times. He smiled and told me that his hotel marketed what they called “Monsoon Tourism”.
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If cooperation in client and outsourcer relationships is so highly prized, why is it so difficult to achieve?
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.
For all the many successes of outsourcing, it’s not all sweetness and light… As promised a couple of weeks ago, here’s another installment of our Top Ten series featuring some of the most outstanding, damning, incendiary (and at times remarkably poetic) insults from the global outsourcing community. The more sensitive amongst you should look away now…
As it’s my first column of 2016, a belated “very happy new year!” to all Outsource’s readers around the world. I hope the old year ended wonderfully for everyone, and that 2016 has started superbly on all fronts. As many of you will now be aware, the turn of the year has seen some rather gigantic developments here at Outsource.
