Most people I speak to can't wait for 2009 to be put to bed. People suddenly awoke to the realization that everything they have grafted so hard to achieve in their lives could be seized from them, because their economy had failed them.
Like everything else in this world, we always wait until its too late before taking drastic action, and 2009 epitomized this reactionary mindset that dominates so much of our society.
However, I did want to sign off from 2009 with a dose of realism… fancy phrases such as "New Normal", or "Preparing for the Recovery" only wash when they attempt to address the question: "How the blimming heck can we radically change our attitudes and actions to save our children from economic and environmental disaster".
But what really gets my goat is that we keep on making the same mistakes over, and over, and over again. One can only hope that the lessons of this year will have broader ramifications than simply learning how to bail out banks and save our stock market from total collapse. Somehow I doubt it; 2009 was just the beginning of the realization that our short-term mentality has to change, but we will – alas – likely need to endure another bout of pain and hardship before we'll eventually do something about it. We got off too easy this time and somehow managed to paper over some pretty cavernous cracks.
For example, the same "boom/bust" cycle seems to be kicking back in. Wall St. realized it was too important to fail, and the taxpayer footed the bill. Now it's starting all over again… the stock market is rising despite uncertain economic conditions and continual rising unemployment. The environment continues to be destroyed and our governments can only (again) paper over the cracks. We've never seen a global response to saving our wealth like this, so why can't we do something to save our world for our children? It seems that as soon as we stabilize our stock market and our house valuations, all is well in the world again.
Many of you will recall the emotional rhetoric from earlier in the year when there were calls for fundamental change. There was a sudden realization that this time it was too late… the cracks were too wide to cover… they were becoming as wide as the growing distances polar bears need to swim to find food. Like the polar bear, many of us thought that this time we would start drowning without sight of dry land.
However, our children's' tax burden has saved the day - they have paid for the excesses of today, while we can go on doing things as we were before. All this talk of a New Economy. All sounds good, but without a real change in attitude and a focus on curing long-term ills, we won't really change. We just keep papering over the cracks.
However, some good did come out of all this. For the first time, world leaders came together and acted quickly to salvage a potential disaster. They now know our collective fates, both economically and environmentally, are intertwined. And they should now have worked out better ways to get things done in the future.
While it's likely going to entail more pain, at least we've made some progress at dealing with global issues. Our businesses are now global, our economies international, so now at least our problems are global too… let's cling to the hope that 2009 marked a turning-point in how we stop papering over cracks and start rebuilding a more robust infrastructure where cracks won't keep appearing and getting wider and wider…
The picture above represents an ice sculpture from the Ice Bear Project - a polar bear sculpted out of ice, with a bronze skeleton inside. This was created in Kongens Nytorv Square, Copenhagen, Denmark, close to where nearly 20,000 people attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during December.
Have you ever had such an irresistible request? Well… here's your chance to tour the exquisite delights of the picturesque tree-lined New York suburb, with its manicured lawns, fine eateries and state-of-the-art museums, where you can enjoy the famous hospitality of the jovial, friendly local folk who'll make you feel right at home, shrouded in luxury and fine local culture.
However, sight-seeing in paradise, drenched in lovely winter sunshine, isn't all you can look forward to during this visit of a lifetime… you can also make a sneaky detour to the Global Services Conference, where you can mingle with the hoi-polloi of the services and outsourcing industry, at Jersey City's sumptuous Hyatt Regency hotel on 28-29 January.
And if you enjoyed last years affair, this one promises even more. "Even more?" I hear you ask… yes – even more. Included in this year's line up are Juia Santos, who heads WW outsourcing strategy for J&J, the lovely Linda Tuck Chapman, my boyhood hero Jay Whitehead (yes – he's back!) and some crazy blogger unveiling the survey results from the New Normal in Outsourcing Delivery Survey of more then 1000 key executives in the outsourcing industry.
Anyway, readers of the Horses can enjoy their usual discount by registering at the following link and inputting the discount code "HFSSPL" in the box that says "source code" :
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE 2010 GLOBAL SERVICES CONFERENCE
I look forward to meeting many of you here in January 28th…
If there was a Nobel Prize for industry analysts, this guy walks away with it – he's super cool, talks a good game, and has done very little beyond, well, be super-cool and super-smart… and with a French accent to boot. So today, I thought we'd give IDC's Sebastien Ruest the chance to prove there's a bit more substance behind the snowboarding, hockey-stick-wielding playboy façade đ
Sebastien's proving IDC's nearshore model by leading it's global services research from Canada, and developing a solid reputation in the industry as one of the industry analysts who "gets it". So I thought it time to grab a few minutes with the dude himself…
Phil Fersht: Sebastien, firstly, what are the main issues youâre hearing from your clients these days? What are the main contrasts between now and before the economic crash last year?
Sebastien Ruest: Maybe it is the cynic in me but I don't think the economic crisis has affected or changed what the main issues are inside organizations. I think the economic crisis was the equivalent of a worldwide game of musical chair where the music has been on "pause" for 9 months and participants have been in state of suspended animation, waiting for the music to start again. The business logic is no different, but I think this time around the jukebox have fewer songs. I think the contrast this time is that CEO/CFO are less willing to fund long term projects have a immediate and visible impact on the organizations and I think that projects like Mobility or E-Workplaces or Enterprise Wide ERP, have been the most impacted by this attitude.
Phil Fersht: Whatâs âshiny and newâ in the services world now weâre finally coming out of recession, or has a lot of the sexiness been drained from the industry, and itâs all about cost-containment these days? What glimmers of light do you see on the horizon that can get us excited again?
Sebastien Ruest: I have been talking to many companies since January about their IT & Business Priorities and an interesting thing that comes out of this is that: besides cost containment, being the number one priority, the focus of many is the improvement in asset utilization or Portfolio rationalization. And this new philosophy, driven by Business leaders, is impacting both IT & Business Services. Why is optimization so important? Because they are still plenty of older technologies in place inside organizations layered together in spaghetti like fashion and although they are stable, they are not optimized for competing in the emerging business climate. Fix them first, before you suggest upgrading. We could call this new approach "Techno-MacGyver". On the other hand, Business leaders are facing this "Crisis of Complexity " with the proliferation of devices, applications, connections points, etc. Optimization becomes really important for them in order to deal with the emergence of "newish" technologies and business models (such as Cloud Computing or Web 15.0) and the ongoing presence of older, established technologies that are not easily displaced or replaced.
Phil Fersht: I was an analyst until the recent past, and my biggest frustration from many of the service providers, was that several were struggling to say anything different. It was as if a script had been developed on what to offer and how to sell it, and there was no leeway to do anything different⌠only a few seemed capable of setting themselves apart. Is anything different happening in this post-recessionary market? Do you see the âmen being separated from the boysâ in the coming months?
Sebastien Ruest: Yes and no. First, there has been this weird dichotomy that Service providers have had to deal with. On the one hand, the economic crisis gave everyone with some buying or sustains power the ability to displace weaker players or the ability to acquire skills and capabilities that were not previously financially available. We have seen it between Dell and Perot, Xerox and ACS, moving up the Services value chain and numerous others within specific regional or industry niches. But will that be the pay off? The dichotomy is that do you spend to gain, or do you cut/save to survive?
I think that in the coming months will be critical for players with limited portfolios, Unless many more projects get funded, players that are not migrating their portfolios away from traditional outsourcing, or from Fixed T&M and toward the componentized delivery models that break down services into smaller, shorter and more manageable contracts, we may see the consolidation of many more players.
Sebastien Ruest (pictured) is responsible for leading IDC's global research in the Services & Technology marketplace. He also heads IDC's IT service benchmark practice and works with vendors and IT users to measure the efficiencies and cost-effectiveness of service delivery. Prior to joining IDC, Mr. Ruest had close to 10 years experience in corporate strategy, sales & marketing and research at IBM.
Join us for Part II where Sebasten shares his vision for Cloud computing and how it will become integral to the services and outsourcing industry.
Remember our mystery blogger who evangelizes on best practices for vendor management? Well that mysterious individual has challenged me to a predictions dual this morning (gasp), where he /she said "I'd be willing to wager a drink on who gets a higher percentage right. After all, I didn't bet on England in the World Cup, so I'm pretty optimistic :)" We'll see about that sunshine…
"After testing outsourcingâs shallow waters, companies new to outsourcing will cliff dive into the deep end without further investment in governance, only to find that pool parties should be supervised by a lifeguard and that the pool is more shallow than they think."
Agree 100%
"Allow me to coin a new term, Vendor Management Organization Outsourcing (VMOO), which also has an easy to pronounce verb version: to âvmooâ or âvmooing.â In 2010, the big outsourcing companies, like Accenture and IBM, will begin to market VMOO solutions. They will explain the incompetence of vendor management organizations (which, I have argued, should not exist), link this incompetence to itâs competitorâs performance, and build the case for managing other vendors for companies. In 2010, someone with a moderately complex, underperforming vendor portfolio will will outsource their VMO â leaving a vendor to manage their vendors and clients. The skeptics will call it a lobotomy."
Hmmm… not too sure about this one. While it could make sense, most sourcing executives will prefer to remain in control of a messy multi-sourced relationship than offload to another party and admit they're struggling. Might start to happen more in 2011 when some CFOs wise up to the fact that their sourcing managers aren't doing the job well enough.
Cloud computing is at its hype cycle zenith. However, for non-core processes, it simply makes sense. HRO, FAO, and Procurement are all prime areas for cloud computing. Companies struggling with justifying capital expense related to purchasing and customizing these systems will seek solace in cloud computing models and vendors in this space will begin to provide software as part of their solution.
Financial systems in most companies simply have to extract too much legacy back-end data to make this financially viable - although it's a great concept. Think it may take more time than a year, but it's definitely the future. HR and procurement? For standard apps such as payroll and indirect procurement, most definitely.
Anyway, thanks mystery person for taking the time to share your views, especially when noone knows who you are -:)
So here's the eagerly-awaited second part of the Lowell Williams experience, where we decided to give him 30 minutes of fame. Over to Equattera's HRO mega-star with the handbrake firmly in the off position…
Phil Fersht: Lowell, weâve had a lot of talk on here about âPlatform BPOâ, where clients essentially take on a standard SaaS-delivered platform, supported by business processing services delivered by a BPO provider. How do you view these âon-demandâ business services? Isnât this just a win-win for the software providers, with limited value for the BPO provider? How can service providers differentiate their offerings in this type of model?
Lowell Williams: As mentioned above, many HR and IT executives
can no longer justify large capital outlays for classic license and install platforms, nor are they willing to commit the operating capital to maintain such systems. A number of smaller, more flexible, and less ready to customize providers is already discernible in this market space, such as Workday, Northgate-Arinso, Caliber Point and recentlyâ Xercsâ (our temporary trade name for the combination of Xerox and ACS). For SaaS to work, however, client companies need to realize that customizations will not be possible to any great degree. SaaS is a truly one-to-many model, and the burden of all customizations will fall back on the client company. In addition, allowing any substantial customization or personalization will degrade the cost curve and performance as well. Not all companies can accept that reality. Embedded in many of our HRIT systems today are routines and programs that we believe give us competitive advantages in employee treatment. If we are going to make SaaS work on a wide scale, we will have to find a way to take those custom elements out of the HRIT system. The largest pure SaaS model today is Workday, and it has just over 100 customers, many of which are not in transition to full service yet, so we have a very long way to go on SaaS. We are also a long way off from being able to compare the Total Cost of Ownership of a classic platform such as SAP with an SaaS model provided by SAP.
Phil Fersht: Are clients getting better at governing BPO these days, or are you seeing them making the same mistakes over and over again? Can service providers do more to help their clients govern sourcing engagements better?
Lowell Williams: Generally clients are refining their approaches to governance, although many of them still try to scale a model that was appropriate for the governance of a health or savings plan to a large scale HRO transaction involving multiple countries. Not enough clients use appropriate toolsets, and thus the client team gets bogged down in building spreadsheets and crunching data rather than automating that function and concentrating on structural trends and major developments in building better relationships. The early promise of best practice flow through outsourcing is still a largely unrealized ambition. While some best practices are actively promoted by the industry, those practice improvements tend to be what is beneficial to the providerâs margins or cost structure. There is very little convergence of academic HR work on best practices and improvements with providers or their clients. For instance, I can only name one or two HRO providers that have a functioning advisory council on HR best practices, and we are missing a major opportunity to develop truly grounded, researched and articulated HR practice appropriate for an outsourced or shared service HR environment. Best practices are as much as a part of governance and relationship management as costs and service level performance. If providers truly want to be partners, governance has to become more about a better mutual mousetrap than about reporting on call center statistics.
Phil Fersht: And finally, whatâs next in this strange world of outsourcing? What do you see happening in the next decade? And how will the economic crisis change executive thinking with global sourcing in the long-haul?
Lowell Williams: The new Flat Earth Society will become the dominant mindset. We will have to globalize the sourcing of talent as the OECD nations face the retirement or partial retirement of the Boomers. Visa practices, cross cultural training and learning to segment work tasks around the globe are the dominant themes of the next years in HR services, and for that matter in finance, IT and procurement services. Work flow must be globalized, and the race will be to those companies that master best performance for best price in serving themselves and their customers. You asked earlier about legal service outsourcing. Why should we pay to draft patent claims in Washington, DC when we can get the same services in Cape Town at 1/3 the price? Why should be use actuarial services in Chicago for our pensions when we can buy better services in Kiev or Hyderabad and for a better price? Our corporate production and growth engines must use better work flow, better task sourcing and smarter global sourcing models to direct work to service centers that reflect best site/best service/best practice and best value As executives look to their competitive future, this crash has reminded them that competition for mindshare and walletshare is never-ending, and they must retool their organizations to compete though astute sourcing and shared services on a global basis.
Phil Fersht: Thanks for your time, Lowell. Everyone here will love reading your views.
Lowell Williams (pictured above) brings 30 years of international HR, HRO and HRIT expertise to his role as EquaTerraâs executive director for global HR services. Before joining EquaTerra at its inception, Lowell was an HRO executive at TPI, executive director at Exult, vice president for global HR at Bull Information Systems, and senior vice president and general counsel at Elf Aquitaine. He is very engaged in economic and labor policy, active in religious affairs and local community.
Firstly: my apologies to everyone for hopping on the perennial "Predictions Bandwagon". One may as well say "Stop press everyone, I'm just such an important smarty-pants you should listen to ME ME ME!" As Newt Gingrich told us earlier this year: "There is not one living being that can accurately predict the outcome of this crisis, all we can do is continue the dialog and the answers will slowly unravel".
Secondly: we've conducted two major studies with outsourcing buyers globally this year (and am currently sifting through 800 responses – and counting - from our current industry study). While we can evangelize, prophecize, pontificate and sermonize, nothing can substitute for real data on what everyone is currently doing and planning to do. We have the platform here to do that, and I personally thank all of you who took a little time out to share their views, actions and intentions.
And Thirdly: I'm just such an important smarty-pants you should listen to ME ME ME!" So maybe I can help with the unraveling?
i) CIOs and CFOs will be uniquely challenged to avoid becoming "Cartoons of the Recession".
Simply put, when there's a serious recession in the works, the job of the CIO is relatively simple – cut costs and squeeze your suppliers using whatever means are at your disposal. CIOs rarely get fired in this scenario, unless they somehow messed up the cost-cutting.
Their real challenge is when we emerge from the recession; the spotlight is firmly on them to deliver value. They are, quite literally, drowning in options, and it's a major challenge to convince their peers they are capable of driving new business value into the organization. CFOs will be similarly challenged by the fact that they are going to have to prioritize investments versus cost-containment initiatives, exacerbated by the realization we're moving into a period of drawn-out economic uncertainty, and not the classic economic recovery-cycle. Their options are as tough, if not tougher in this "New Normal". Outsourcing is one key component to help crystallize these options – driving out cost, while creating new avenues of possibility. The CIOs and CFOs who "get" sourcing will be in the driving seat.
ii) Labor arbitrage will continue to dominate outsourcing, but the smart providers will be focused on providing consultative value to their clients.
Most new outsourcing contracts are still dominated by customers which have got lots more room for maneuver with labor arbitrage. Sadly, this will continue to dominate most of the deals in 2010, and we'll see the tiresome cost-per-FTE price battle continue.
When you consider that 75% of service provider staff for ERP development and support are still onshore, there's a lot more wiggle-room for new and existing clients to cut costs through lifting-and-shifting work offshore. With commodity services areas such as ERP software development and maintenance, and transactional accounting processing, it's getting harder and harder for service providers to command higher price-tags in this New Normal.
Those providers proving operationally-efficient and cost-competitive to win this labor arbitrage work today, will find themselves in a strong position to push higher-end business transformational services in the future, because they will already be present within clients delivering operational work. They need to demonstrate they are capable of learning their clients' businesses, in order to move up the value chain to take on more consultative work. Those providers which only focus on providing cheap body-shopping for commodity services, will get usurped from the market quite quickly. Worst still, not many of the leading providers are likely to acquire competitors which only have a transactional skill-set and low-value client relationships.
iii) Sourcing advisors will increase their influence in the market.
As the analyst business consolidates, many business leaders are looking further afield for inspiration, validation, data and advice. Especially in the sourcing world, where the best advice is often coming from those living the experience in the field. Our forthcoming survey results will reveal this is happening. Business decision-makers today need advice that can be made available in personalized models from experts that can deliver it. The smart advisors are going to be those which can adapt and scale their experienced talent seccessfully in a semi-customizable model.
iv) We'll see at least two mega-mergers among the service provider-base.
We'll see a couple more mergers on a similar-scale to Dell/Perot and Xerox/ACS. Expect at least one involving a traditional incumbent and an Indian-HQ-ed service provider, and at least one other between one of the pure-play BPOs and an IT-centric services provider.
v) BPO will rebound to have its strongest-ever year.
2009's been a somewhat damp-squibb for mega-BPO deals, and while we've seen a lot of small-engagements and a few captive buy-outs, a lot of BPO decisions were delayed due to the crisis. As expected, ITO's been the first to emerge strongly from the recession, as this is the most mature market where deals are transacted fairly quickly today. However, for many companies, especially those which have already outsourced much of their IT, the next wave of obvious cost-savings are to be found in BPO areas.
As our soon-to-be released new survey is revealing, transactional finance and accounting BPO will have a resurgence in 2010, with additional interest in management reporting, and we'll also see a fresh wave or HR outsourcing, which has been quiet for a couple of years now, with new uptake in payroll, benefits admin and recruiting outsourcing. Procure-to-pay outsourcing is poised to accelerate, but we are unlikely to see muchrenewed traction in strategic sourcing services. We'll also see renewed focus in the analytics space across several verticals and horizontal areas.
vi) Cloud will emerge, but its definition and concept will get diluted and confused.
Yes, Cloud is the future and a major game-changer, but - like everything else in the IT world - the definition and meaning will get diluted and confused (remember SOA, EAI, CRM, E-business etc etc). The winners in this game will be those providers which can articulate exactly what Cloud means and how companies can start evaluating Cloud-based delivery models. Cloud will become closely intertwined with outsourcing, and we're already seeing many service providers developing their Cloud-strategies.
vii) The speed of change will become frantic and frightening for many.
While in the good ol' pre-crisis days, firms could take time over major (and sometimes disruptive) business decisions, companies today are having to make them much more quickly, and move much more aggressively to execute on them. This is particularly relevant where outsourcing is concerned.
As we've seen in the past few months, many of those sourcing decisions that were delayed during the first half of the year, quickly came to fruition recently, as firms realized economic armageddon has been averted, and it's time to roll-out the new corporate agenda: quickly and aggressively. 2010 will not be a year for the timid, and we'll have a lot of frantic people trying to grapple with outsourcing - we'll see more political pressure, more negativity, more case-studies, more value propositions, more momentum and more energy than we've seen yet in this crazy industry.
viii) And finally…
I predict England will win the 2010 World Cup. Now you know how accurate I am -:)
One of the advisors which has really made a strong move in the sourcing business this year is Alsbridge. Much of that has been down to its strong track record with clients, but its also made some canny investments to augment its advisory services. One of these I've had some exposure to is ProBenchmark, which has been running some excellent webcasts looking into how pricing trends and dynamics in IT services.
I caught up with CEO Ben Trowbridge the other day, and he wanted to let us know about a webcast ProBenchmark is running next week – you can register here. Plus – for all you cheapskates… its FREE (Wednesday 10th December at 2.00pm EST).
Anyhow, I managed to drag Ben away from a hunting outing for a few minutes to pose the following questions:
PF: Which IT services have fluctuated in price the most?
Ben Trowbridge: While pricing for most IT services is still in a downward trend, Server and Storages prices dropped dramatically throughout 2009. They declined most rapidly between Q1 and Q3, but in Q4 we are seeing deceleration of this trend which we expect to stabilize by the end of Q1 2010. For pricing intel on 2009 trends and the year ahead, you can attend our webinar on December 10th?
PF: Pricing fact or faux: Are we getting the same service mix?
Ben Trowbridge:Thatâs a great question. The fact is that prices are dropping and the economic downturn has truly been a catalyst â but buyers are getting less âbang for the buckâ than expected. Example: vendors are disaggregating services and creating component-based service structures. When you add the components back to original configurations, the savings are much less than promised or expected.
PF: What do clients need to do to âstay on topâ?
Ben Trowbridge: Understanding both market dynamics and details of your service structures is critical for success. Itâs not enough to know the pricing trends and expect an X% reduction in the cost of your contract â you have to get into the fine print and match components to components and configurations to configurations. Most companies now use benchmarking throughout the contract term in order to truly match services to reduced market prices.
For once I am stumped for a title. The one man who had successfully escaped my previous attempts to feature him has finally been caught. Either his career has nose-dived and he's now desperate for some publicity, or the "Horses" now gives that 15-minutes of fame people so badly crave. I hope it's the latter -:)
Yes – we have the one-and-only Lowell Williamsin a two-parter…
Lowell, quite simply, is the most respected practitioner in HR Outsourcing. Not only has he spent many years as an actual HR leader, he also worked for the "original" HRO provider Exult, moved into the sourcing world with TPI, before joining Equaterra in 2004 to head their HRO advisory practice. He has been responsible for many HRO engagements – and he has somehow survived to tell the tale. He also became the HROA's "Person of the Year" in 2008… an honor only bestowed to the most lovable scoundrels in the outsourcing world. So without further ado…
Phil Fersht (PF): Lowell, firstly, what are the main issues youâre hearing from your clients these days? What are the main contrasts between now and before the economic crash last year?
Lowell Williams (LW): We have survived the worst of the crisis, and clients are beginning to plan for the medium term. We are entering the still dangerous waters of post-crash recovery and stabilization, but most executives are no longer poised on the windowsill while updating their designation of beneficiary forms. As they approach having to slim down selling, general and overhead costs, company executives are again turning to shared services and outsourcing, but they are very anxious to have the most rapid payback and to minimize capital outlay. This has led to an explosion of interest in Software as a Service (SaaS) which is a phenomenon not unlike the new Obama national health plan. Everyone is talking about SaaS and software sellers and providers are announcing new alliances and products constantly, but we cannot say that there is a large volume of experience with SaaS out there. SaaS, outsourcing (especially to cost advantaged areas) and shared services are the dominant themes of the post-apocalyptic world.
PF: Youâve been such a consistent figure in the world of HRO over the years, since its early days.. Will we ever see a return to the glory days of end-to-end HRO deals, or is it all going single-process now? What related areas to HRO are we beginning to see developing (for example legal work / compliance)?
LW: If I were willing to sing a tune here, it wouldnât be âGlory Daysâ but I wouldnât turn to the first stanza of Joan Baezâ immortal ballad on aging either: âToday thereâs no salvation; the band has packed up and gone . . ..â HRO deals involving 45,000 employees, transition of 15 countries and outsourcing of 15 processes all on a Big Bang cutover date are things of the past. There will continue to be large transactions, but the phasing of transitions and the clustering of related processes and geographies arelogical maturity indicators in this business showing that providers have learned to temper their own ambitions for revenue and to resist client demands to do illogical and highly risky things. One evident process cluster is Core Processes, such as payroll, employee data management, call center, and HRIT. A second cluster groups Human Capital Processes, i.e.,performance, learning, succession, employee development and deployment. The clustering of HR processes with limited geographical footprints for each transition wave is a healthy way forward, and many top tier providers have already converted to this model.
PF: Do you see the more HR work being conducted offshore in todayâs climate?
LW: Yes, the inexorable trend is to do more process work offshore. In EQ we track offshore service work using the Advantaged Cost Ratio ⢠Index. This index measures the total percentage of services from low cost service areas, such as the Philippines or India, to the total cost of services from all geographic service points for a given client. Outside of limited call services and highly technical areas of benefit and equal opportunity compliance in HR, there is no reason why low cost, stable shared service centers or outsourced service centers that are offshore should not be used. Offshoring is a dominant element of this business and it will continue. There is no economic or political reason to retard or halt the process of offshoring services. Offshoring does impose on clients an absolute need to audit performance and capacity, to ensure that data recovery and business continuity procedures are in place and tested out and to be aggressive in ensuring that systems are backed up and that service centers are located in stable areas with good infrastructure. We believe that some service center developments, including outsourcing centers, have been too opportunistic and have not reflected careful political risk assessment. Political risk and stability of workforce are more important than cost comparison, and those factors should take on an increasingly important role in the choice of service location over the next several years.
In Part II, we will discuss platform BPO, something about governance… and some of Lowell's predictions for the future in our strange little world…
Firstly: my apologies to everyone for hopping on the perennial "Predictions Bandwagon". One may as well say "Stop press everyone, I'm just such an important smarty-pants you should listen to ME ME ME!" As 
As our soon-to-be released new survey is revealing, transactional finance and accounting BPO will have a resurgence in 2010, with additional interest in management reporting, and we'll also see a fresh wave or HR outsourcing, which has been quiet for a couple of years now, with new uptake in payroll, benefits admin and recruiting outsourcing. Procure-to-pay outsourcing is poised to accelerate, but we are unlikely to see muchrenewed traction in strategic sourcing services. We'll also see renewed focus in the analytics space across several verticals and horizontal areas.
