While reducing cost is typically the primary benefit of outsourcing, you also want an outsourcing agreement that allows you to realize your immediate and long-term delivery needs, provides contract flexibility and ensures that you receive maximum value for the money you will be spending. To meet those objectives, pay careful attention to the five “gotchas” [...]
Most companies that outsourced a portion of their finance and accounting (F&A) functions in the early to mid-2000s generated great savings but are probably overpaying now for the service levels they are receiving. More than $2 billion dollars of outsourcing contracts will expire in the next 12 months, and sourcing buyers need to be prepared [...]
A recent CIO Roundtable sponsored by Alsbridge, Inc. resulted in several breakthroughs on adopting and implementing cloud computing. Every IT executive in the room had two things in common: (1) a driving need to explore and leverage cloud solutions and (2) lack of a clear way to validate the cloud offerings in the market and [...]
Ben Trowbridge responds Technology is great when it works. What does a buyer of cloud services do when something goes wrong, creating a service disruption? That question became a reality for users of Amazon Web Services on April 20. Its Northern Virginia data center suffered a service outage for its hosting service at 10:41 p.m. [...]
There’s no shortage of methodologies and advisories on best practices and risk mitigation strategies for the transition phase of outsourcing relationships. Even so, many buyers encounter situations they didn’t foresee when structuring their arrangement, which cause costs to rise and delay time to value. Outsourcing Center studied these types of situations by surveying companies nominated [...]
A good cultural fit is one of the most important hallmarks between a successful and unsuccessful outsourcing relationship. Cultural fit assessment is far less structured than defined processes that help you quantitatively evaluate the service provider’s solution, capabilities and pricing. To decide whether your company and the service provider will have a comfortable cultural fit, [...]
Ask 10 buyers of outsourcing services for their keys to success in communicating with their service providers, and you’ll hear 10 different answers because, of course, the effectiveness of communication depends on the individuals involved. Some will also say it depends on whether they’re communicating about day-to-day operations, conflicts or opportunities. Others will comment that [...]
At the point where outsourcing service providers or their customers have a conflict that will result in a monetary loss to either party, they’re walking a fine line. If they manage to resolve the issue with a mutually beneficial solution, their relationship will be even stronger than before the conflict. If not, the party that [...]
Globalization has increased the level of competition; businesses need to be highly flexible, scalable, nimble, and responsive to customer demands. Businesses need a new set of capabilities to remain competitive. However these capabilities cannot be acquired cost-effectively in the traditional manner. There is need to go beyond and leverage alternate solution deployment and service delivery [...]
Organizations that turn to outsourcing to achieve their business objectives first develop a business case that includes such components as cost savings and avoidance objectives, business value benefits, and risk assessment of potential negative impacts. But what happens when the initial business case stops working because of unanticipated impacts? Both a Deloitte Consulting study and [...]
Outsourcing is no longer a risky undertaking; it’s a mainstream business strategy. However, despite the strong adoption, many outsourcing relationships continue to fail. This white paper takes a look at what drives outsourcing success and presents detailed information about six key success factors. The paper cites findings from studies of such firms as Gartner and [...]
Outsourcing a help desk can appear to be an easy strategy for reducing cost and improving service levels. However, there are significant challenges and pitfalls that can erode the return on investment. The top challenge is partnering with the right vendor. This white paper pinpoints the 11 biggest mistakes that companies make when choosing an [...]
Business process as a service (BPaaS) is emerging to be a BPO game-changer reminiscent of Software as a Service (SaaS) a decade ago. Specifically, BPaaS is adding arrows to organizations’ outsourcing quiver in how they approach their finance and accounting and other back-office functions. “Businesses that leverage traditional outsourcing deals are looking to move off [...]
Innovation is the lifeblood of entrepreneurial companies such as Inherited Health™, an online resource for information about health risks, but it’s also imperative that such companies deliver new products to the market in a short time frame and at the lowest cost. Those were the business challenges – along with having only a handful of [...]
Outsourcing Center asked leading outsourcing service providers about their predictions as to the biggest changes that will impact outsourcing buyers over the next five years. Their answers clearly point to a need for buyers to alter their thinking about how, when, and why they engage with providers of outsourced services. Extreme performance requires elasticity Joanne [...]
New delivery models, new pricing models, service providers’ new marketing strategies, moving up the value chain to intellectual arbitrage, new technologies, real-time customer interaction, globalization, and new standards and regulations – these factors set the stage for risks for buyers of outsourcing services in the next two to five years. (Read Forces of Change Shaping [...]
Outsourcing Buzz Blog Outsourcing Alert