Telecom | Outsourcing Center

IT Takes a Seat

Chris Pryer, Business Writer

Managing the infrastructure of information technology is critical to federal government agencies. The maintenance and operation of tens of thousands of desktop computers, the software that drives them and the networks that connect them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can be likened to the proverbial millstone tied around the neck of government agencies. Outsourcing the management of these computer seats often can combat this drain on resources, saving both time and money.

Buyer Beware

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

Buyer Beware: Nine Ways to Protect Your Interests – Outsourcing experts have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Here are nine rules of the road to increase the odds of outsourcing success.

Prepared to Answer

Chris Pryer, Business Writer

Customer service is a term that rolls easily off the tongue of almost every corporate mogul you hear interviewed or quoted these days. They talk about the fierce competition they face in their chosen industry and that the distinguishing factor that separates the leaders in their field from the also-rans is how they service their customers after the sale. In the remote environment of eCommerce, it can be particularly difficult to maintain a satisfying relationship between the buyer and seller, whether it’s B2C or B2B. This has spawned a whole new generation of companies that specialize in helping other companies manage interaction with their customers over the Internet. Ziptone is such a company.

Managing the Liability Bogeyman

Chris Pryer, Business Writer

CH2M Hill is an international engineering company that serves municipal governments in the areas of water and wastewater management, energy, telecommunication, environment and nuclear management, transportation, industrial facilities, and a host of umbrella services. To say that CH2M Hill is adept at managing risks is like saying monkeys are adept at climbing trees. Neither could survive if they weren’t.

The Big Picture

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Solutions for Public and Private eMarketplaces “Major multinational companies will buy software solutions,” says James Hatcher, vice president of business development for ECNet. “But when you go to the supplier base, only 10 percent of them will buy software. So what do you do with the rest of the guys? An eMarketplace needs to scale …

Nobody Does It Better

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Quickly growing. Unlimited potential. Unpredictable. Each of these words conveys the business environment in Russia today. Global executives eye developments in the world’s largest country and speculate on each aspect of the emerging business scene.

Cinderella Syndrome

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

An enormous impact on a company’s profitability comes from its procurement or purchasing process. Some companies are starting to recognize the impact, but most — particularly midsize or small companies — still treat this important process as though it’s unimportant. But, like the fairytale Cinderella, someone needs to do the onerous chores around the castle. Particularly in lean times when an economy is slowing, executives must pay more attention to the possibility of saving millions of dollars in this area.

Wireless Billing Complexities Crave Outsourcing

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Current communication providers will need to revamp their system to handle billing processes for wireless services. Thomas Tunstall, Ph.D., at KPMG Consulting LLC, explains that the revenue streams that have come from voice will increasingly shift to data. Traffic from applications data traveling through the Internet will be usage based, rather than minutes based.

Getting a Handle on Purse Strings

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Because of its poor position with respect to costs (three years ago), the bank hired Peter Donald, an outsourcing veteran with noted success for the City of Melbourne. ANZ wanted him to identify outsourcing opportunities and to apply his prior successful principles in implementing outsourcing for the bank. Donald recalls that this departure from conservative thinking sparked internal challenges. Although the bank had decreed that something had to be done about its costing structure, there were degrees of tension among management when it came to identifying which opportunities might be selected. The opportunity identified was the bank’s procurement — its sourcing function — because it was not providing the level of strategic importance to the bank that was desired. We spend just under $1 billion Australian dollars per year in Australia and New Zealand (a total of about $1.5 billion worldwide) on a whole range of items from telecommunication to stationary, from technology to marketing and travel,

Sorting Through the Rubble

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

New vendors around every corner. Mega deals. Dead dotcoms. And even some fallout from Y2K. They littered the year 2000 battlegrounds in the outsourcing arena. Gartner Dataquest’s Bruce Caldwell, senior analyst-outsourcing, recently completed reports and forecasts from his company’s surveys of end user wants and needs in the world of IT. He says the turmoil in the IT services marketplace this past year was a factor in a dip in the IT services revenue that had been forecasted for 2000.

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