Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
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 Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Outsourcing Center assembled a panel of industry experts to discuss the changes in outsourcing contracts and pricing models over the next two to five years. Their insights reveal buyers and providers will approach outsourcing initiatives differently than in the past. Q. Outsourcing pricing models and contract vehicles have evolved over the past few years. How …
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
A service level agreement (SLA) plays two important roles in an outsourcing arrangement. It sets the stage for the service provider’s accountability, and it is the major factor in determining the price of the service. The buyer of outsourced services can achieve a comfort level that it’s getting what it pays for if it regularly …
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Industry media, especially over the past two years, often points out that a significantly high number of outsourcing arrangements do not deliver the promised cost savings due to “hidden” costs associated with managing the relationship. This is especially true, the reports state, in outsourcing relationships with an offshore delivery component, where administrative costs increase due …
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
After buyers and service providers begin working together, they find aspects about each other and the relationship they hadn’t anticipated and planned for or issues about which they had mistaken assumptions. Outsourcing Center surveyed 64 buyers on what caused those issues and how to successfully address them.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Talecris was a spin-out. The new company had a drop-dead date to separate its IT systems from its parent. This was a complex challenge with much risk. Three weeks after the cut-off date, Talecris faced a business challenge that easily could have put it out of business. Together the partners weathered the storm.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
When this outsourcing relationship started, Grupo Posadas was a hospitality provider in Latin America. Today, it has transformed itself into a services company with multiple revenue streams in a variety of vertical markets. Grupo Posadas formed four new companies based on the platform it created with Oracle On Demand.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
How important to the value proposition for an outsourcing initiative is the service provider’s domain knowledge specific to the buyer’s industry? Many buyers report that the provider’s expertise in a particular business process ranks higher in importance than industry expertise when selecting a service provider. But there are situations where industry knowledge is crucial, especially …
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Getting from A to Z (from the current state of outsourcing relationships to the future state of how relationships will need to work in order to bring about the outcomes that buyers demand) is not an easy path, and some providers will fall away during that journey. In addition, cloud computing changes the entire picture. …
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Unilever Europe has 80 factories in 24 countries. The division used 18 ERP systems and hundreds of different finance processes, which led to high costs and varying reliability. IBM turned the organization upside down. This contract is groundbreaking in the FAO BPO sector in Europe in both size and scope.
"*" indicates required fields