Category Archives: Security and Risk

Banking in 2013: Control freaks who just can’t let go face their toughest challenges yet

February 7th, 2013
HFS' Michael Koontz, author of Business Services Outsourcing in Banking and Financial Services: 2013 Market Report (click to view)

Financial services are poised to have a huge year; there will be mergers, systems upgrades, global expansion and new product launches all designed to regain their positions as industry leaders.

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Happy birthday, Dodd-Frank!

July 21st, 2012
Whoever said we were't stimulating new growth for the professional services industry?

Please join us in wishing Dodd-Frank “Happy Birthday.” This is the largest financial reform act in U.S. history, amassing 884 pages when it was finally signed in 2010, designed to enforce the most significant changes to financial regulation in the United States since the regulatory reform that followed the Great Depression.

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It’s a miracle we’re yet to see any BPO/ITO security disasters

July 4th, 2012
risk-security

And have you considered how many people are touching your critical data assets, with multiple providers comprising hundreds of thousands of employees around the globe managing many of your back office business and IT operations? Have you given any thought to what their subcontractors are doing, whether they present any data privacy or compliance risks that aren’t covered by your contract with your primary provider?

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Published today – a blueprint for the industry known as “outsourcing”

June 28th, 2012
Finally....a Blueprint for this outsourcing business (click to access)

Ever wondered what would happen if you locked 41 outsourcing buyer executives in a room for a couple of days, then brought in six of the leading providers to have an afternoon’s discussion? Well, now you can read for yourself, as today we unveil our first Blueprint report for this curious industry known as “outsourcing”.

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Want to keep with the “outsourcing” status quo? Love staring at a spreadsheet all day? Then Blueprint 2.0′s not for you…

June 24th, 2012
HfS50-Boston-final-hfs-blog2

Life been just dandy since you took 30% off your department’s fixed costs, that you’ll never need to do anything much again in your career… except stare at a spreadsheet? Just love keeping those lights on and squeezing penalty payments of your provider? No need to improve anything, because the way your firm does this is just, simply, perfect?
Then you won’t need to waste time with us and leading buy-side organizations from the HfS 50 Executive Council in Boston this October…

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The end of outsourcing as we know it… Part I

May 2nd, 2012
Its-no-longer-all-about-outsourcing

At the end of the day, it’s not all about outsourcing and it’s not all about shared services; it’s about focusing on how to globalize processes, how to transform finance (and other) functions, and how to govern it all in a global business services context. There is no dominant model, it’s more about achieving the right balance across all delivery models to achieve the best business goals. In conjunction with global accounting body ACCA, We spoke to 682 large organizations currently running finance in either an outsourced or shared service framework (or both) – and the results are emphatic: those organizations relying predominantly on outsourced delivery, or predominantly shared services, are viewing their finance delivery performance much more skeptically

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And then there were six… meet the sourcing savants on the seventeenth

April 30th, 2012
The_Services_Savants_Web_debate

ver wondered what would happen if you brought the six most prominent IT and business services savants together for a one-hour debate on the future of the sourcing and services world? Well, wonder no more as this becomes a reality on 17th May at 12pm EST, 5pm GMT

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Flashback kicks the myth of Apple invincibility squarely in the jewels

April 10th, 2012
Because that's where the money is...

YOUR APPLE DEVICE MAY NOT BE AS SAFE AS IT APPEARS…

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In case you missed today’s webcast on Business Platforms, here’s the re-run

March 14th, 2012
Business-platforms

Thanks to Robert McNeill (HfS), Shawn Riegsecker (Centro Media), Paul Roehrig (Cognizant) and Bob Law (HP) for an excellent discussion today on Business Platforms. Here’s the re-run:

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What the passing of SOPA could mean for your business

January 22nd, 2012
walnut-sledgehammer

Friday’s excellent web-discussion involving HfS Research’s Jim Slaby.

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SOPA-thetic: Using an elephant gun to hunt for butterflies

January 19th, 2012
elephant_catching_butterfly

If you were surprised to find Wikipedia offline yesterday, you weren’t alone: many Internet users were unaware of the widespread one-day online protest against SOPA and PIPA, two bills before the US Congress designed to fight online media piracy.

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What are Business Platforms and why they represent the future of outsourcing

November 14th, 2011
"Please mind the innovation gap"... click here to find out what Business Platforms are and they represent the future of outsourcing

The ability to develop some best-in-class processes as “Business Platforms”, whether they focus on horizontal or vertical process clusters, is becoming a real differentiator in the market, as buyers seek more standardized solutions from their outsourcing engagements. The gauntlet being laid out to providers, with these Business Platforms, is their ability to support their clients’ transitions quickly and inexpensively. Simply selling “products” is not the concept of business platforms – it is the provider’s ability to work with their customers to facilitate and support the ultimate business outcomes of managing the processes associated with the Business Platform offering.

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Why outsourcing professionals must stay in touch with the 99%

November 6th, 2011

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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HfS secures the services of Jim Slaby

October 4th, 2011

We’re delighted to unveil a very special talent to the sourcing industry – a respected veteran of the infrastructure security world and now seeking to ply his knowledge and experience to supporting global sourcing environments: Jim Slaby.

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