Research & Insight

Function

Flying High in Close Formation

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

In the world of travel reservations bookings, no name is better known than Sabre. It processes 40% of all reservations made in the world and links travelers to travel suppliers through more than 210,000 computers at travel agencies, airports and businesses. Nearly every airline in the world relies on outsourcing solutions and services from Sabre.

New Dairy Product Enters Asia-Pacific Market

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

A Scottish surgeon had a vision of being able to improve the health of people in Hong Kong by supplying them with cows’ milk kept free from contamination. To that end, in 1886, he and five Hong Kong businessmen incorporated Dairy Farm and imported a herd of dairy cattle in order to lower the price of milk, thereby increasing profits for company shareholders..

Prescription for 24/7 Uptime

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Years ago, many organizations had software systems that were ‘nice to have.’ In today’s world, though, we need systems to help us compete in the marketplace more effectively. Software systems now have a major impact on our business and enable us to produce higher revenues, higher income, and higher market capitalization…..

Supplier’s Services Silhouette BPO Trends

Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer

Two current trends driving the growth of business process outsourcing (BPO) are the trend toward outsourcing of packaged software applications and the trend for end-to-end hosting management of those applications. Within BPO’s segment of the outsourcing industry are such critical, non-core functional transactional processes as payroll, payroll tax services, and benefits administration.

Keeping Intellectual Property Under Wraps

Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer

During an outsourcing agreement the vendor becomes polluted with what is considered to be very proprietary intellectual property, says Gene Slowinski, director of strategic alliance research at the graduate school of management at Rutgers University. When a vendor works with a customer in an outsourcing relationship, the customer tells the supplier many things that are protected by patent, information protected by trade secrets, and vital company knowledge that is retained by the employees within the corporation. The customer and its new business partner the vendor must discuss these issues or it can be very damaging to both sides.

Integrate the Best-In-Class Provider or Control the Single Integrator

Dr. Eelko L.P. van Leeuwen

Outsourcing changes are usually linked to developments in the computer industry. In the past, mainframe operations have been the dominant way in which a company runs its information technology (IT). So consequently, outsourcing has drifted towards farming out entire computer centers. With more decentralized operations, such as LANs and WANs, the possibilities of selective outsourcing has become reality, opening the door to multiple vendors and the outsourcing of different environments. This leads to the question of whether to choose best-in-class providers or single integrators.

International Outsourcing: The Legal View of What’s Different

Bill Bierce

International outsourcing involves complexity and risks not found in typical domestic outsourcing. These risks are cultural, political, financial, technological, managerial and legal. Ultimately, these multiple international risks show up in the process of drafting, negotiating and enforcing the contract. Freedom of contract varies according to the governing laws and attacking the legal issues requires initiatives from the beginning.

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