Phil Fersht will reveal new HfS Research industry findings from its 2010 FAO deal review and present the views and intentions of several hundred HfS research subscribers. Stan Lepeak, Claudio Altini and Rick Bertheaud will give you the low-down from their client discussions, in addition to revealing some snippets from their brand new FAO service provider performance study.

Serious questions are now being asked of the leading service providers jostling for marketshare and position in the BPO business. Some providers are growing frustrated, and beginning to question whether they got their approach to BPO right. And the current speculation over Genpact ‘s future is forcing many of the BPO wannabes to gaze deeply into their navels to decide whether they want to get really serious about BPO. There's been a lot of chest-beating, a lot of marketing, a lot of huff and puff right across the industry... now's the time to see who's really going to step it up.

This new HfS report dives into the experiences and expectations of a selection of today’s most experienced enterprise Finance and Accounting (F&A) BPO buyers, when it comes to achieving innovation. We spoke to a collection of major F&A BPO customers which have achieved some form of innovation as they went through the F&A BPO experience with a major service provider.

In Part II, Ritesh explains the changes in the BPO industry from his perspective - especially the inherent need for providers to align their BPO service offerings with an industry-verticalized approach.

Several people at Infosys have told me that noone spends more time traveling across the globe than the COO for their BPO business... Ritesh Idnani. So when we teed up an interview with him, I asked him how many airmiles he has racked up, and his response was simply "am getting close to George Clooney's character in the movie Up in the Air."

Today, Accenture annouced a significant move to incorporate Ariba's managed services business into its own global procurement and sourcing operations, which adds signifanct category expertise across to both Accenture's existing European procurment operation in Prague, Czech Republic, but also Ariba's onshore services center in Pittsburgh.

Lots of frantic noise this week that Cog has been making romantic overtones to Genpact - with India's press jumping on speculation. Like any other industry observer, you can certainly see lots of romantic potential here - Wall Street's darlings of BPO and ADM tying the knot to frighten the life out of Accenture, IBM, Infosys et al. HoweverI'm afraid this one just ain't gonna happen anytime soon

Mike Salvino - or simply "Sal" to his friends and colleagues, has brought a real air or pragmatism to Accenture, where he now leads the firm's global BPO business. Read Part I of his interview with Horses for Sources.

As the world recovers from recession, the major Indian BPO providers eagerly await a return to the BPO boom, which has paused in the past 18 months as companies have sought to cope with riding out the tough-times. While the bounce-back has hardly been resurgent, BPO is clearly firmly on the corporate agenda and many of the leading Indian service providers are expanding staff, acquiring competitors, and making new marketing plans to widen market share and penetrate new sectors, such as the mid-market.

HfS has teamed with its networking partner, SSON, to present a superior discussion across the world of finance and sourcing, with Jay Desai, one of the buy-side's most respected voices for sourcing governance, Capgemini's own sourcing sherif David Poole, the pontiff of procurement Jason Busch... all moderated by HfS.