Category Archives: Procurement, Engineering & Supply Chain Outsourcing

Sal’s six stages of sourcing: BPO’s Generations

Mike Salvino is Group Chief Executive, Business Process Outsourcing, for Accenture

The BPO industry has been going though an incredible evolution since the first major deals was cast, barely more than a decade ago, that it’s high time we took stock and take a good look at the phases – or generations – through which our industry has progressed. And there are few people who have lived and breathed these generational shifts more closely that Accenture’s BPO leader, Mike Salvino.

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Smackdown: Where is BPO going?

Like a typical extended family at Thanksgiving, the buy family and the sell families cussed and discussed about the trends and challenges buffeting BPO. They passed the peas and offered some pretty unbridled opinion and insight.  Click to download the highlights

One of the highlights of 2011 was that great web-debate on the Future of BPO where 1,100 people across the globe dialed in to hear from our buy and sell families. Here were the highlights…

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Infy procures Portland to soup up its sourcing

Do you procure this australian as your lawfully wedded category specialist?

InfosysBPO has made its first substantial investment in the sourcing and category management space, picking up the lead Australasian provider Portland Group for $37m.

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If you were too hungover to join our predictions webcast, here’s the replay and the deck

View-our-predictions-replay

In case you missed our joint webcast with Ed Caso of Wells Fargo Securities on Friday, fear no more, as here’s the replay

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IBM embellishes its B2B commerce empire… by acquiring Emptoris

wedding-dress

Emptoris’ well-regarded user interface and strong brand recognition among the procurement crowd make it an idea mate for IBM’s technology-driven focus and market leading procurement BPO capability. While the integration of Sterling, DemandTec, and Emptoris will take some time to become “smarter commerce”, there will be some immediate upsides.

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Announcing the HfS 50 Sourcing Blueprint Sessions

HfSBlueprintSessions

This is going to be a defining two-day working session for power-brokers of the outsourcing industry, where leading buyers of both ITO and BPO services will confront today’s critical issues impacting outsourcing, to establish a Blueprint for the industry in 2015. And this time, we will have a vendor/buyer face-off session where leaders from six of the major service providers will join the debate.

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As InfosysBPO reaches the $500m mark, is it ready for the big-time?

InfosysBPO is now a major BPO contender in the global marketplace, having quietly gone about building its BPO business streams since its inception via the buyout of FAO provider Progeon, exactly five years’ ago and expects to reach the landmark of $500m in revenues this year. HfS has always been encouraged by the firm’s approach to developing both horizontal and vertical BPO services, and its focus on leveraging its IT heritage to augment its value proposition. Infy is by no means the biggest player in the BPO business nor does it want to be, but it has been able to establish itself as a smart and very respected player in the BPO business.

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Don’t miss today’s web-debate – The Future of BPO

Are you ready for our next installment of HfS’ Live and Unfiltered series, broadcast live infront of the HfS Research community?

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Capgemini collects Vengroff Williams to slip into third spot for global Finance & Accounting BPO

Capgemini has made a major move towards strengthening its position in the global F&A BPO market by today acquiring Vengroff Williams and Associates – and leaping to third in the market share spot for F&A globally

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Why outsourcing professionals must stay in touch with the 99%

Governments are very capable of passing measures very quickly to restrict outsourcing if things get really bad – and they won’t have any choice if the 99% demand it. All outsourcing stakeholders – buyers, providers and advisors – need to focus, more than ever, on helping organizations approach outsourcing as one supporting component of a holistic solution.

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Double-Dip Dynamics, Part II: The new tenets of outsourcing – process standardization, global flexibility and better technology

What is motivating buyers to outsource in this current climate? While eliminating cost is still is a huge fundamental, buyers are even more focused on achieving greater flexibility to scale their global operations as a prime motivating factor. Clearly, many executives are getting more experienced and skilled at driving an sourcing initiative, and are confident they can use the endeavor as a change agent to promote and implement much-needed change in their businesses.

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Here is The BPO Resource Center: breaking new ground in research, learning and debate

Today, we have launched The BPO Resource Center that’s geared to become THE one-stop shop for anyone seeking to learn more about Business Process Outsourcing – without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege.

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Genpact drives a Nissan into HRO

Genpact has been working with Nissan for more than six years, providing finance and accounting, procurement, customer service, supply chain and analytics services. So adding HR services seems a natural extension of these services – even though Genpact has limited client experience of multi-process HRO.

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The undisputed facts about outsourcing, Part 8: Industries experiencing secular change have more aggressive outsourcing plans

Those organizations being impacted by radical, fundamental shifts to their very industry economics, are more prepared than ever to admit they need to look outside of their current organization boundaries to keep their business operations cost-competitive. Simply-put, secular change crystallizes options for businesses and the outsourcing planning process often becomes more clear-cut as a result.

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Get sourcing in Sydney this September

HfS Research’s Phil Hassey will be welcoming Dawn Evans, President and CEO of our partner SIG, to Sydney in early September for a terrific event—SIG’s Sydney Regional Roundtable on September 7 and 8

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The healthcare payor BPO situation in 2011: Will Reform shatter a complacent industry?

Despite the value health care payors provide their customers, payors’ processes are complex, manually intensive, and prone to error. One consumer’s visit to the hospital generates substantial legal paperwork, complex approval processes, coordination of benefits with other insurers, and a blizzard of bills, notices, and follow-up calls that require months to resolve. This post elaborates on the new HfS Research report on the current state of healthcare payor Business Process Outsourcing.

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Meet The Don of BPO (Part 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of the Don Schulman interview, where he talks to us about whether shared services are really dying, the changing role of advisors, and where he sees the BPO industry moving in the future, and what he means by “verticalizing the horizontal”.

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HfS welcomes Jyoti Banerjee to educate the services industry on why today’s top businesses are also the top sustainability performers

We’re seeing hard evidence that today’s most successful business are also the better sustainability performers. So what can we do to encourage business leaders to be sustainably-smart as they redefine their global operations strategies?

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Meet The Don of BPO (Part 1)

As IBM’s Donniel Schulman’s reputation and influence in the BPO industry has grown in recent years, we’ve finally persuaded the chirpy New Yorker to share some of his story since IBM entered the BPO industry via its 2002 acquisition of PwC Consulting

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Meet the sultan of strategic sourcing

While we were having some in-depth discussions with Microsoft’s CPO, Tim McBride, it became apparent how important niche specialist BPOs, such as Alpar’s firm Denali, are to the global sourcing mix for many organizations. So we thought we’d take a few minutes to have a discussion with Alpar about the future of the procurement function and the role of the CPO.

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