Brad L. Peterson, Partner, Mayer Brown LLP
Information security is becoming extremely important in today’s uncertain world. Suppliers have access to your very crucial information. Learn how to protect company secrets in your outsourcing contracts.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Just knowing the objectives you want to achieve by outsourcing is not enough. You have to build a strong relationship. Here’s the story of innovative first steps taken to ensure the Bank had the right partner and that the parties won’t be having any tug-of-war incidents.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Is offshore outsourcing safe in today’s warring world? Here’s what’s happening in India, Russia and the Philippines.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Buyers are often in a hurry to outsource so they can implement their competitive strategies. But cutting short the supplier selection process can result in a failed outsourcing relationship. Here’s how to do it right.
Brad L. Peterson, Partner, Mayer Brown LLP
The first and most important step in developing an effective SLA is to ask the right questions. This article will give you those questions and some background on how to choose the right answers.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Last month Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, was giving a presentation to stock analysts when the ground shook. No, it wasn’t the power of the newest version of Microsoft Office he was displaying. At that moment Seattle, Washington was hit by a massive earthquake which caused billions of dollars in property damage.\x0d\x0a\x0d\x0aProperty owners prescient enough to have purchased earthquake insurance are now rebuilding with the funds they received from their insurance policies. The insurance companies have enough cash on hand to pay off their policy holders because they know how to underwrite risk.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
People are doing wireless today without having thought about it first, and now they have some real problems, states John Stehman, principal analyst with the Robert Frances Group. They can’t even support all the devices they have out there. They have five to seven different devices and the help desk doesn’t even know what some of them are. Wireless technologies are still experimental, and Thomas Tunstall, Ph.D. with KPMG Consulting, believes it’s difficult to know which applications will catch on and which providers will be successful. Wireless technology is changing, coverage is changing, and providers and pricing are changing. Users are trying to decide if applications will have value. To enter this world requires a strategy built on flexibility and minimizing risk; both are best accomplished by outsourcing.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Building for Future Competition and Growth Dramatic technological changes now regularly unsettle our ways of doing business, and this trend promises to wreak even more havoc in the future as technological advances occur even more quickly. Future organizational success already depends on strategies to make companies more agile in their ability to change so that their competitors don’t pass them by. Where will your company be five years from now? Successful companies will have evolved to operate in fresh new, more effective ways. Motivational speaker and author, John L. Mason, advises people that if the shoe fits, they shouldn’t wear it, for they are not allowing room for growth. Companies that don’t change but continue to operate as they do today will become eccentric, for growth and success require change. To stay in the game, executives must decide to stop doing things the way they have always been done, realizing that organizations have limitations and can’t be good at everything. To
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Academic: Professor James Brian Quinn Outsourcing’s New Risks By Beth Ellyn Rosenthal Today, the greatest risk in outsourcing is to not outsource. So says James Brian Quinn, William and Josephine Buchanan Professor of Management emeritus at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. Without outsourcing, companies can’t keep up, observes Quinn. The second biggest risk today is to keep innovation in-house, continues the professor. He calls the idea of assigning all corporate innovation in-house a macho shibboleth. Today, the most successful companies use outsourcing for innovation. He cites Dell Computer and Cisco Systems as leaders in their fields who rely on their suppliers to do the development work.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Bill Bierce is in the catbird seat when it comes to watching outsourcing agreements go south. The founder of Bierce & Kenerson, P.C., a New York law firm specializing in outsourcing and technology law, has devised a lucky list of how to raise the odds on outsourcing success…
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