2009 is going to be remembered as the year of cost-containment. Most client discussions are not very sexy – it’s largely about cost, as opposed to innovation or revenue generation. McKinsey recently revealed 70% of its current client engagements are cost-reduction focused, only 30%focused on revenue-generation (the opposite of a year ago).
I strongly believe our businesses, while being diligent about cost-containment, must use this opportunity to make fundamental changes to their business operations in order to emerge more profitably in the future. Simply ripping away cost elements and failing to improve access to global corporate data and processes, is a massive wasted opportunity to be more competitive over the long-term.
I wrote recently about how the lay-off culture that has afflicted both the US and UK in recent years, where many firms treat their labor as a variable cost that can be scaled-up or down at will, depending on the next quarterly forecast. I cannot stress enough the damage this can cause to businesses as the economy recovers. One common theme that has dominated discussions with business leaders recently has been their surprise at the amount of visible cost they have been able to take out of their businesses as they move from a revenue-generation to cost-containment strategy.
It’s not solely the cost of labor that is highly visible – it’s the costs of technology, travel, infrastructure, real-estate etc. that can often be easily driven-down in a desperate business climate. Less visible are costs associated with poorly-integrated business processes and procedures, of dated analytical tools, of ERP systems incapable of supporting global process templates, and so on.
Focusing too heavily on labor take-out polarizes a corporate culture on visible short-term quick-hits as opposed longer-term innovative strategies that will ultimately help the company become more productive and profitable. Doing things the same way as before, but with less resources, is a slippery-slope to corporate failure in this environment. The same slippery-slope scenario applies to outsourcing, where companies fail to drive any business transformation, and simply focus on the quick-hit of using low-cost labor.
And whether or not a firm outsources IT or business processes, its operations leaders should be examining how to make these processes more efficient, and how they can span global business units more effectively. This short-termism causes a general stagnation where anything that causes change to peoples' roles and responsibilities scares them. Our recent survey shows “business disruption” as a major impediment to outsourcing. I read this as “fear of change”:
Fear of disruption holding back outsourcing
Outsourcing in a tough market is a powerful lever to drive business transformation, improve workflows and associated technology, provided it is managed with process innovation as the ultimate goal. Yes, it often involves some layoffs, but never as many as when companies go through downsizing exercises with no other goal in mind other than cost-reduction.
Operations executives are capable of driving change into their processes, their technologies, their own roles and their employees' roles, but many of them are simply not incentivized to flirt with change. They are so scared of what change means to their job security, they opt for more of the same, normally with less resources or staff to do it.
Ultimately, if companies fail to shed this stagnation mentality, they will become increasingly uncompetitive globally, if their competitors embrace global sourcing models to drive out excessive cost and improve their global business operations.
So what do we take from all this? Simply put, short-termism drives negative and anti-innovative corporate behavior. Business leaders need to find ways to develop their management talent more effectively to cope with change and disruption.
While the onus on firms today is to drive out as much cost as they can from their businesses (close to four-fifths view cost-reduction as the primary driver for outsourcing), other factors are becoming crucial for companies’ planning as they evaluating outsourcing business models, notably globalizing their businesses more effectively, re-engineering business processes, and accessing expertise from service partners.
If there's one thing this recession taught us, it is how integrated global economies and markets are today, how businesses need to adapt to move in and out of diverse regional markets, and how they must make rapid decisions to invest or divest global service / product lines in order to prosper. Read more over at Think Global…
SincePart I of the Francisco D’Souza interview, I’ve been assured Frank has improved his golf handicap. Now he’ll discuss his views on how ITO service providers can differentiate themselves, the convergence of IT and BPO solutions… and a few other tidbits…
PF: How can ITO providers differentiate themselves in today’s market? Is it by vertical focus, or other elements?
FD: Given the extraordinary pressure that clients are under, I think that the key to differentiation is to focus on how to make clients’ businesses stronger. Rather than focusing on technology, process or methodology, I think providers need to really understand a client’s business drivers and then sell and deliver solutions that further those business objectives. As I said before, clients are facing both cyclical and secular pressures. As a result, depending on the client, their objectives of outsourcing will be very different. Some clients seek to improve efficiency or effectiveness. Others are looking to use outsourcing as a enabler of innovation. Still others are looking at outsourcing as a tool to gain access to the best talent in the world – regardless of where that talent is located. And of course, given the significant secular changes we are seeing, many clients are looking to outsource as a way to enable agility and transformation within the organization.
Against this backdrop, I think providers can differentiate themselves in a number of ways. First, vertical knowledge is key – you have to understand your clients’ business in more than a cursory way. Second, you need a world class, tightly integrated global delivery system – just having scattered delivery locations around the globe is no longer enough. Third, you need to have a full range of services and an organization that has the ability to put bundles of services together in creative ways to craft tailored solutions for clients – the old thinking of outsourcing “towers” is somewhat limiting in that it tends to consider outsourcing as a series of silos. Finally, consultative relationships with your client are critical – in today’s world, providers that rely on contracts and SLAs as opposed to consultative relationships don’t find too much success.
PF: How about BPO – how do you see this market developing, and are you seeing the worlds of BPO/IT coming closer together? Can you see more of the IT-centric service providers such as Cognizant developing more BPO-centric services?
FD: I think that the case of IT/BPO coming together is extremely strong. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying (maybe controversial) that BPO which is based solely on labor and process is not a sustainable model in the long run for most business process areas. The evidence of the synergies that can be unlocked when ITO and BPO are combined together is compelling. We have demonstrated this synergy in many cases and we continue to push the envelope on delivering IT/BPO synergies through automation of processes and also through development of common tools and platforms that we can share across multiple customers.
PF: And finally – you have had a very notable rise to prominence in the outsourcing industry over the last decade. What advice would you impart to ambitious executives today hoping to achieve success, especially in light of the economy?
FD: Focus, focus and focus. It’s been the simple mantra at Cognizant from the start. First, we focus on doing a small number of things – and applying all available resource (talent, management, finances) against those things. Our strategic plan is as much about the things that we will NOT do as about the things that we WILL do. Second, we have a relentless focus on serving the customer. In our culture, the voice of the customer is always the “true north”. And finally, focus on execution – the best laid plans are no use if you can’t execute against them…
PF: Frank, thanks so much for sharing your views with us.
Francisco D’Souza (pictured center, March 2007) is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Technology Solutions.
Observing the rise of the new wave of service providers over the last few years, the one that has scared the living daylights out of all of the incumbents is Cognizant.
Now a $3bn company with deep footprints in the world'slargest global financial institutions, consumer businesses, manufacturing and healthcare organizations, Cognizant can no longer be considered an upstart. It's now part of the industry elite; quietly and cleverly aligning its value proposition to the post-recession era. As CEO Francisco D'Souza points out, we're in a time of not only cyclical change, but also secular change.
I've had the pleasure of talking with Frank a few times over the last couple of years and have been impressed by his high-energy, thoughtful and common-sensical approach. I was even more surprised when I received emails from an "FDSouza" on the Horses… took a couple of times for me to realize who this guy was. To cut to the chase, Frank is one of the youngest IT and BPO industry leaders of the modern age, having risen through the management ranks of Cognizant to assume the role of President and CEO at the beginning of 2007 when the company was announcing its landmark Kimberly-Clark engagement. And when Frank isn't busy hacking his way around the local golf course, or playing with his kids, he managed to find some time to share some of his views of the global sourcing industry with us…
PF: How are your customers at Cognizant approaching ITO today? Do you see any marked differences since the days before the economic downturn?
FD: The years prior to this recession were years of growth, profitability and relative stability in the industries that we serve. The economy, the geo-political environment, our clients’ industries, their business models and their technology architectures were all relatively stable.
Now, we see clients grappling with change in many of these elements. This is not just a time of cyclical change resulting from an economic slowdown; this is also a time of secular change, where many of our clients are realizing that their businesses – and supporting technology environments – have to be rethought and changed. In many instances, these secular changes are being driven by technology advances. For example, Media companies are facing pressures to keep up with the demands and revenue generating opportunities an increasingly digital world presents. The digitization of the media industry has very little to do with the recession and is all about change in technology.
So what does this mean for ITO? We see clients approaching ITO simultaneously based on cost and on innovation/transformation. The cyclical challenges I spoke about are driving clients to look to ITO (in particular global sourcing) as a means to reduce operating costs, become more efficient and more effective. At the same time, clients realize that the fastest way to become healthy quickly and to capitalize on the secular changes taking place is to transform and innovate. And therefore, an equal number of our clients are seeking fundamental transformation and innovation as they look to enter ITO arrangements.
PF: What developments in the technology world are getting you excited today?
FD: I get most excited by technologies that have the potential to have significant impact on our clients’ businesses. These are some of the areas that I’m tracking carefully:
Web 2.0 Collaboration Technologies and Telepresence –I’m excited about these because, in my view, they demonstrate the ability to create a step function change in the productivity of knowledge workers. Some years ago, we developed a platform called Cognizant 2.0 for our own use within the company. We designed C2.0 to solve the problems of managing work and managing knowledge in teams of highly distributed gold collar workers. What we have found is that C2.0 (which incorporates many web 2.0 technologies) has substantially improved our overall effectiveness. I believe that our example is readily extendable to many businesses and process areas with high concentrations of knowledge workers.
Cloud Computing –Much of the discussion around cloud computing has focused on infrastructure on demand. Of course, Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and others are taking cloud computing well beyond the infrastructure layer. I think one of the most interesting cloud services is the Amazon Mechanical Turk which is trying to create a model for services on demand. Overall, I am following cloud computing closely because cloud will drive a complete re-think of client’s IT and operations cost structure. Over time, cloud will allow us to variable-ize cost structures and continue to drive cost out of “context” activities and into “core” activities. Of course, cloud computing is still early and issues such as access, security etc. still weigh on the minds of clients. But like with all technologies, these issues will be resolve over time.
Enterprise Analytics – Over the years, organizations have invested in technology to support business decision making within business units or functional areas Enterprise analytics is all about deploying enterprise-level, heavy-lifting analytical algorithms on data that cuts across business and functional silos. This is an area of convergence that I am really excited about — the emergence of an integrated analytical value chain that encompasses unstructured data management, text mining, business intelligence and text analytics. I think that this integrated space will create a new capability for organizations — the ability to go beyond traditional data warehouses and mainstream BI and ultimately lead to true organization-level analytics. This will provide business leaders with the ability to not just obtain individual line-of-business views and to achieve vertical integration, but to also increase the overall analytical footprint of a company across structured/unstructured data and achieve true horizontal scalability.
In Part II of this interview, Frank will discuss his views on how ITO service providers can differentiate themselves, the convergence of IT and BPO solutions… and a few other tidbits.
Francisco D'Souza (pictured) is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Technology Solutions.
One major service provider that has quietly – and very effectively – grown its US presence over the last couple of years is HCL. And behind the scenes is a very classy guy, Debashish Sinha, who pulls the strings across its US sales, marketing and operations units.
Anyone dealing with HCL these days is always glad to have Debashish around (despite the fact he organized their last industry event in Orlando). Prior to HCL, Deb has consulted for both Conscient Partners and NeoIT, in addition to being Gartner Group's principle analyst for IT services and sourcing. And when he's not comparing the subtle nuances of Malbecs or flying planes (not simultaneously, I assure you), he has some excellent views on the effectiveness of 6-sigma methodology in a sourcing environment. Over to you Deb…
About four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei noted that “We must measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured,” a philosophy now embodied in the well-tested axiom “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
So how about managing the Sourcing cycle? How do you actually measure Risk, or Internal Readiness, or even effective Governance?
One potential option could be to use Planning for Six Sigma tools to “make measurable what can’t be measured”. After all, it’s still one of the most prominent approaches for managing by measurement.
Outsourcers frequently use 6-sigma Quality Management tools to manage execution of BPO or ITO contracts. Can’t it be translated by buyers to the pre-engagement process as well? The six-sigma approach does have some special advantages – not only is it strongly focused on process management & improvement, it forces thinking around process control. Since outsourcing initiatives are long-term programs, an effective feedback mechanism, and a process for managing evolution of the program, can be critical to its success. Most other sourcing methodologies fail to consider this need upfront.
A brief, brief primer on 6-sigma
For the glassy-eyed – 6-sigma is the statistical definition of deviation from a mean. It signifies less than 3.4 defects out of a million opportunities. Implying, quite literally, that if there were a million things that could go wrong in a sourcing process, the rigor of Six Sigma will ensure that no more than 3.4 of them do.
There key principle to understand in the six-sigma methodology is that you can only control output quality by focusing on it root causes and managing those. In other words, if you’ve controlled all the major input and process variables, the output will take care of itself. In order to do that, the six sigma methodology requires you to go through the following steps:
a. Clearly identify all the elements (input or process) that effect output;
b. Develop a measurement framework for analyzing the causal relationship between those elements and the output;
c. Prioritize the elements based on the level of impact on the output quality;
d. Put in place a system for managing the highest priority elements; and
e. Develop a feedback loop to continuously measure output in case variations begin to show, or process changes are required.
That it. Simple, isn’t it? Yes, there are all kinds of other things like VoCs, CTQs, Pareto Charts, etc. that we can go into later if anyone’s interested. But the above really covers all the fundamental principle.
In the real world, while the statistical relevance of six-sigma is limited, the concepts and approach can actually be quite effective, if properly adapted. Let’s take the example of managing Internal Readiness (IR); clearly, a critical element in managing an effective sourcing relationship, and among the more common causes for an enterprises’ inability to get their sourcing initiatives off the ground.
Internal Readiness is the degree to which an enterprise has the necessary organization and technology capabilities in place to enable a successful outsourcing program.
The first step in developing the framework is to understand the variables. Internal Readiness can be separated into two categories, each defined by a number of key attributes.
1. Organizational Readiness – the ability of an enterprise to manage change resulting from an outsourcing initiative. This will include, among several others:
? Executive sponsorship
? Clarity of vision
? Stakeholder buy-in
? Familiarity with cultural diversity
? HR issues (redeployment, severance, re-skilling), etc.
2. Process/Technology Readiness – or the ability to manage the performance of the outsourcing initiative. For example:
? Requirements documentation
? Process for managing distributed teams
? Methodologies/sourcing management platforms
? Change control systems
? Quality control processes, etc.
(This is by no means extensive list).
The next step is to create a measurement technique to analyze IR. A simple, yet effective way used to measure and analyze Internal Readiness could be through an ‘Internal Readiness Index (IR Index)’ that scores each attribute on its maturity or completeness on a scorecard.
For example, assessing Executive Sponsorship could be based on a checklist:
Attribute
Index Question
Yes/No
Executive Sponsorship
Does the initiative have an executive sponsor?
Is the sponsor directly impacted by the initiative?
Are objectives for the initiative tied to compensation?
With each attribute scored, the sourcing team can pretty clearly tell if the organization is ready for to engage in a significant outsourcing initiative, or if not, what gaps need to be plugged before going too far into the initiative. Enterprises with a low readiness on either axes should seriously reconsider their outsourcing initiative. In other cases, identifying the gaps and developing mitigation plans to execute over the subsequent phases of the sourcing cycle will go a long way in ensuring a smooth transition into the outsourced environment.
Interested in diving deeper into this morass? Leave a comment, or email me. I’d love to hear from you.
Debashish "Cruise" Sinha (pictured) is Vice President and Head of Marketing at HCL America, Inc. He has 18 years’ experience in IT Services Sourcing, working as a practitioner and advisor to large enterprises, service providers, and government entities across the globe. Before joining HCL, Debashish was Founder and Partner at Conscient Partners LLC, Managing Director for Global Advisory at neoIT, and Principal Analyst for IT Services & Sourcing at Gartner Research.
I never knew that one day I would get to co-host a webcast with the great John Hagerty, but tune in on June 18th at 2.00pm ET to hear about Transforming the Global Finance Function in Today's Economy. Click here for full details, or register directly here. And like everything else here, it's FREE FREE FREE.
John is a true legend in the analyst world, where he delivers insights in the world of finance transformation, performance management and corporate governance. He could also convince Newt Gingrich to vote for the communist party in 2012. In addition to the great "Hags" and myself, you'll also get to hear from Joe Spears, senior finance executive at eBay, and Dominick DiPaolo, BlackLine Systems.
John Hagerty (pictured) is Vice President and Research Fellow for AMR Research. He is the recognized worldwide authority in business intelligence and enterprise performance management. This picture also reveals the wear and tear of the analyst life -:)
It's easy to get excited with high-growth markets, but supply management BPO's different.
While the market has grown exponentially, and a 30% increased expenditure last year is eye-opening, the nature of these engagements doesn't give me confidence that this market will sustain its growth trajectory unless customers think beyond short-term labor arbitrage, and service providers introduce significant process and technology enhancements to the early adopters to help them optimize their delivery. This "lift and shift" model could well result in customers losing more than they save. Read more at Think Global.
When you try and quantify the impact social media is having on industry, it's actually quite alarming how dangerous this medium can be on our lives and our careers.
We discussed the impact of blog culture over a year ago, but the speed by which social media has crept into our daily activities, already dates many of the opinions expressed back then. The information world has altered radically, and this economic environment is accelerating the speed of change.
As an analyst in global services industries, my job is to get across insight and opinion to as wide an audience as possible. A couple of years' ago, if I'd produced an article or report, I'd probably send it out to about 100 people… that was the extent of the audience with which you would typically deal, and you'd rely on your firm's marketing department to disseminate press releases and media advisories to drive more eyeballs to your craft.
Now I'll put out a couple of tweets and likely blog piece to a network of literally multiple thousands to capture attention. Within hours, the word is out and people will either react quickly with their comments, or choose to ignore it. For example, the April Fools' Day blog post Obama to ban offshore outsourcingreceived 18,000 web-hits within a 24-hour period, while a more routine industry piece Wipro and Oracle partner to blow-up the BPO delivery modelstill managed 4,000 eyeballs within hours of being published. Clearly, catchy headers get attention, but more importantly, it's the delivery of information which is changing the game. So where I could, in my past, comfortably manage my network of 100, it's now an insane group of thousands right across the globe.
So what should you read into all of this? Basically, we're deluged with a massive overload information and have to scan selectively data to extract the points we need. We're all getting Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) whether we like it or not, as information is thrown at us from blogs, tweets, emails, websites, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
So who's at risk?
Media: People are becoming incredibly selective about visiting media websites these days. The days of pulling people to media-sites are over; it's about pushing information to willing audiences. Tier 2 media publications in the past could easily convince advertisers to spend money with them – now it's a lot harder. Most sell-side firms are much savvier at understanding how to attract eyeballs to their wares. Some tier 2 media publications barely get a few web-hits a day in today's industry – and it's getting worse for them. They need to pull people to their sites, and can't expect to sit pretty, waiting for people to magically stumble upon their content – regardless of how good it may be. Most media sites which fail to drive compelling content through social networks, will not be around this time next year.
Analysts and Consultants: Executives want to know the low-down on industry occurrences the day they happen. They also don't have anything like the time or patience to read more than 500+ words on a topic. While there is still a need for seminal reports that evaluate vendors and markets, the general commentary and analysis of topics and events as they happen has completely changed. Analyst firms which cannot get their reaction out to industry quickly are wasting a lot of their own time and resources. The same applies to consultancies which have traditionally relied of quality white papers to excite prospective customers about their skills and experience. No-one has time to read entire papers these days, so consultants need to use smarter channel to get their qualities to market.
PR firms: No-one opens press releases these days… unless they're compelling. Moreover, many firms today find they can deliver their own press release info by pushing the news out to interested people via social networks. And it costs them nothing. Some PR agencies charge over $1000 to distribute a press release and manage the follow-up. I'd be surprised if many smart firms still followed that practice today. Hence, PR specialists need to push their clients' news to targeted influencers in social networks, with the hope they will relay the information to their massive networks in turn. The old way of doing things is quickly dying, and many PR agencies which fail to live with the chance will fall by the wayside.
Service Providers: The traditional means of influencing markets and creating awareness are dramatically changing. Ultimately, service providers need to influence their prospects and those people influencing them, and shrinking marketing budgets are driving them to make smarter and bolder investment decisions. Getting shorter, sharper messaging out to market is key, and the influencers are changing too. Targeting consultants and analysts with powerful social networks is increasingly important, in addition to using smarter PR vehicles that micro-target the right audiences. Most buyers today simply want to know who's out there who's working with firms like them – and whether they fit the bill. Hence, marketing messages that are more direct, better targeted, and to-the-point are paramount. Long-winded sales presentations and lengthy brochures / white papers are a thing of the past.
So what's the solution? While disruption is clearly hurting the majority, opportunity is opening up for the smarter minority. The key is to go with the change, cut down on the verbiage and source the new channels and influencers that reach your audience. You might well be surprised by the speed of the change…
If the Queen was handing out honours for outsourcing, then “arise Sir Kevin” would be a likely outcome. However, unless Accenture can grant him a British passport, even their PR heavyweights may struggle to pull that one off.
Kevin Campbell is a legend in the outsourcing business (I refrained from saying “the Tiger Woods”…), having begun his career with the old Andersen Consulting business in the 90’s before making his name as the COO of Exult, the protagonist of HR BPO, where he because synonymous with many of the early multi-process BPO deals for clients such as BP, Bank of America and International Paper.
Upon Exult’s sale to Hewitt in 2005, Kevin found himself returning to his roots with Accenture, where he how has been elevated to overseeing the firm’s entire $9.2 billion global outsourcing business, when he’s not watching re-runs of the Packers and terrorizing his kids.
I managed to catch-up with Kevin recently, and was surprised to hear he’s a regular visitor here, so convinced him to share some of his views on the industry with us…
PF: We’ve been through a tremendous development in the world of both ITO and BPO over the last decade. What, in your opinion, has worked, and what hasn’t?
KC: No matter how far this industry evolves, the common denominator for success is a business case that works for the customer: a good business case backed by a solid solution that delivers. And each deal has to be good for both the provider and customer, so if you are an outsourcing buyer and the price seems too good to be true, you will likely live to regret it. Providers need to be disciplined in bidding and know when to walk away from an opportunity. Often times, service providers are known more by the deals they walk away from than the ones they do. “Getting better” over time is also critical. The customer has to be a wise buyer of outsourcing services and the provider needs to become more productive during the life of the deal. Lastly, something I don’t see enough of is the focus on defect-free delivery. ITO and BPO both run most efficiently and effectively when they are free of operational errors and defects. And providers must not forget to eliminate any variation in the quality of their services nor lose sight of the impact it has on their client’s business as while SLAs might be green, the client won’t be happy.
PF: We’re clearly at an inflection point in the industry as the fog lifts from this Great Recession. Do you see companies approaching outsourcing any differently? And which areas of outsourcing do you see developing in the near/long term?
KC: Today’s economic environment presents a great opportunity for outsourcing to accelerate in the marketplace. Outsourcing is fueled by change and one thing companies can’t do today is just stand still; they need to adapt and do things differently. And I’m not talking about incremental change—it is big, fundamental change, both from a business model perspective and the use of emerging technologies such as cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Particular industries which will likely embrace such change include banking, insurance, healthcare and most of the direct-to-consumer businesses like retail and telecom. And the whole mindset toward outsourcing will evolve as the challenge that comes with the word “Outsourcing” is the prefix “out”. In the future, we’ll see companies creating new capabilities or new markets and they will just make sourcing decisions based on which provider can deliver the relevant services and it won’t be considered as sending something “out”.
PF: What is your definition of innovation within outsourcing and are we really seeing it in today’s engagements?
KC: Innovation is doing something that stretches the boundaries of what has been done before or does it in a much less-costly way. For example, it could be a simple application of technology to a people-oriented solution. It might be collecting data and presenting it in a meaningful way so people can act, or it could be identifying a way to drive cost out of a business process or using BPO in a new functional area.
The Group Chief of Outsourcing at Accenture, Kevin Campbell gestures during a press conference in Bangalore
PF: You coined the phrase “Bundled Outsourcing” a few years’ back…Do you really believe we’re going to see a strong inter-linkage between IT and BPO service delivery in the next three years?
KC: The concept was—and still is—absolutely right. People cannot afford nor are they capable of effectively managing all the relationships they have with different vendors. Perhaps what we should do now is add the word “sequential” in front of bundling. “Sequential Bundling” is something we are seeing more and more frequently. This is where a customer continues to do more with a provider based on a successful relationship and positive experience. Will we see a return to one-vendor days? No, but I believe we will see people continue to move to two to three strategic providers across the majority of functions and toward business process sourcing.
PF: What is your opinion of the emerging locations, such as the Latin countries as nearshore hubs for US-driven ITO/BPO engagements?
KC: We’ve had a strong presence in Latin America for years and have thousands of people doing work for domestic clients. We have recently seen acceleration in the use of Latin America for both Spanish and North American clients and we expect an increasing leverage of Latin America to deliver services.
PF: Do you see China playing a more influential role in delivering ITO/BPO services in future?
KC: Yes. We’ve had an outsourcing presence in China for several years and the time and environment is now right to accelerate the use of China for ITO and BPO services. Chinese companies understand the imperative to leverage its large labor resources and improve their talent needs. This will in turn make them more competitive and force international competitors to be more creative in their talent sourcing strategies.
PF: Are there other sourcing locations you believe have a pivotal role to play?
KC: The Philippines will continue to play an important role. We began using the Philippines to deliver outsourcing work back in 1990 and it is now the second largest node in Accenture Global Delivery Network providing a full range of services globally including AO, IO and F&A, HR and Customer Contact BPO, as well as industry-specific services to utilities, telcos, airlines, insurance and health and life sciences companies. Other locations that deserve more and more consideration in the future include Vietnam, South Africa and Russia.
PF: How do you see the service provider landscape playing out in this market?
KC: I think the cycle of innovation, growth and then consolidation will continue. Will we ever see the volume of new companies being founded that we saw during the late 90s or early in the decade? It’s unlikely, but there will always be people who feel they have a better ‘product’ to offer and believe they can disrupt existing providers. However it is very difficult for a small company to grow and go against the big, major players. Eventually, the extensive resources of large providers allow them to narrow the competitive advantage, and then on-going investment, stability and financial strength force market consolidation.
PF: Which providers will emerge stronger / weaker, and do you see a lot of consolidation moving forward?
KC: I do see consolidation going forward and think we could see some interesting combinations. Today’s economy will play a role in shaping the outsourcing industry and force companies to look more closely and critically at their current business models. Those with a broad set of interlocking services will fare better as they will have the most to offer clients in terms of operational efficiencies and business impact.
PF: Do you see more integration between software vendors and services providers as opposed to services providers buying each other?
KC: Service providers and software vendors operate on different business models and I don’t see them co-existing in significant ways over the long haul. Now that doesn’t mean we might not see a service provider buy a software company, or more providers using software as a service, but I still believe strong alliances are more sustainable.
PF: And finally – you have had a tremendously successful rise to prominence in the outsourcing industry over the last decade. What advice would you impart to ambitious executives today hoping to achieve success, especially in light of the economy?
KC: Thanks. If you make sure you have great people on your team and work with great clients, the rest will take care of itself. Any personal achievements and successes are due to having great mentors; great clients who are often time also friends; and being fortunate enough to lead the most talented teams on the planet.
PF: Thanks for sharing your views with us Kevin
Kevin Campbell (pictured) is responsible for Accenture’s global IT and BPO outsourcing business, which provides application, infrastructure and business process services to more than 650 clients globally.
2009 is going to be remembered as the year of cost-containment. Most client discussions are not very sexy – it’s largely about cost, as opposed to innovation or revenue generation. McKinsey recently revealed 70% of its current client engagements are cost-reduction focused, only 30%focused on revenue-generation (the opposite of a year ago). 
One major service provider that has quietly – and very effectively – grown its US presence over the last couple of years is 
When you try and quantify the impact social media is having on industry, it's actually quite alarming how dangerous this medium can be on our lives and our careers.
