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.

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

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.

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".

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?

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

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.

We talked with Microsoft Chief Procurement Officer, Tim McBride, about his procurement execution and BPO experience as part of a case study in a paper entitled "The CPO in 2011: The Toughest Job in the Global 1000".

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

HfS Research's "State of Outsourcing 2011" study of 1335 industry stakeholders, conducted with the Outsourcing Unit at the London School of Economics, points to a marked turnaround in outsourcing intentions as global economies reach a period of sustained (albeit limping) recovery. For many organizations today, clearly the short-term counter-recessionary measures have been executed through to fruition, leaving business function leaders under renewed pressure to seek out new operational strategies for driving out cost and improving global effectiveness.