HfS Research has partnered with ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) to conduct the largest-ever global study of finance professionals to understand adoption trends, experiences and dynamics of shared services and outsourcing for the finance function.
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.
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.
Our new study that covered the intentions and observations of 534 buyers, advisors and providers with their sourcing strategies in the event of a “Double-Dip” Recession reveals one major shift in the industry: most buyers now recognize what their businesses need to improve to drive productivity, they simply are struggling to figure out how to marshall their internal and external resources to help them get there.
Our latest study shows that many buyer executives are, in actuality, in violent disagreement with many provider and sourcing advisor executives that they their business leaders are too “short-term focused”
When we ask them buyers they’re foraging for help and information with outsourcing strategy-making in the coming months, the results are simple: they are turning to whatever sourcing are most easily-accessible and inexpensively-available to them
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.
Organizations have always been wary of outsourcing during recessions. While today it delivers cost-reduction to clients in spades (proven emphatically during our recent state-of-outsourcing study), many organizations have proven, in the past, to push it down the priority-list of radical cost-reduction measures, when they fear for their very existence. However, with the threat of a “Double-Dip” recession very much a grim reality, HfS believes this cycle is likely to be broken.
We asked a cross-section of buyers with significant influence over outsourcing decisions, to reveal the critical attributes they seek in a provider. At the same time, we asked providers what attributes they believe their clients deem critical. And – guess what – their are significant gaps between what clients want and what providers think they want.
What’s driving outsourcing decision-making across the world? HfS Research’s new study on global outsourcing adoption reveals some key regional differences
Earlier this year, HfS Research leveraged its vast network of global enterprises to solicit the opinions of buyers and providers of outsourcing attempting to understand how they view the role and importants of change management for outsourcing engagements. The web based survey was completed by 237 respondents with 96 buyers and 141 service providers.
In the past, outsourcing was still a unique, foreign and scary activity, and it was always easier for buy-side executives to bring in consultants to make their decisions for them – especially as there were so few trusted data-points and information sources widely available in the industry to support decision-making. Executives didn’t want to get fired for making bad decisions. However, today they know they’ll get fired for the wrong decision regardless of who made it – whether it was theirs’ or McKinsey’s
Outsourcing of IT and business process has always been a game for large enterprises, where well-executed large-scale employee transitions have resulted in profitable endeavors for both providers and buyers. But while the large buyers like saving the money, it’s actually mid-market sector ($1bn-$3bn revenues) which is getting a lot more out of the experience
Gone are the days when CIOs demanded their shareholders underpin massive technology investments in ERP and infrastructure. Those investments have been made, and most CEOs intend never again to make capital outlays of that ilk on technology. Enter the Cloud. This is driving a new inflection point in the provisioning of business services, that goes far beyond straightforward outsourcing.
Business users want to accelerate to Cloud Business Services while IT wants to mitigate its many risks. We reach an impasse with both business and IT looking for external support to make their move to Cloud Business Services a reality, and the different type of support both sides want point towards a profound reorganization around Cloud.
Savvy CIOs are developing themselves into Cloud-enablers by honing their sourcing and service integration skills. Our Cloud Business Services study, conducted in conjunction with the Outsourcing Unit at the London School of Economics, contrasts many differing views and expectations from business and IT executives about Cloud business services… however, both sides do agree on one thing—the crucial enablement role that IT executives must adopt to provision Cloud business services.
The Cloud Business Services study we just conducted, in conjunction with the Outsourcing Unit at the London School of Economics, has served up some contrasting concerns that business executives are having versus their IT counterparts: its impact on work culture and it’s impact on the value of the current IT department.
Cloud Business Services are no longer hype – both business and IT executives are buying-into the value Cloud can bring to their jobs and their organizations. The ability to access business applications quicker, faster, cheaper and in a virtual business environment are the major drivers – and it’s the business side of the house which is even more engaged by the potential value that the IT-side.
The move to greater domain-specificity is intrinsically tied to the business utility model of the future, where we are starting to see signs of the convergence of SaaS, Cloud and BPO/ITO models within an engagement structure
When you consider that close to a quarter of mid-market customers will seek their first forays into F&A BPO this year, you know where this industry is headed…
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