{"id":1009,"date":"2015-08-09T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-09T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/as-a-service-economy-defined_080915\/"},"modified":"2015-08-09T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-09T11:59:00","slug":"as-a-service-economy-defined_080915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/as-a-service-economy-defined_080915\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello As-a-Service Economy, goodbye Outsourcing, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"
When we coined the term “The As-a-Service Economy” a year ago (remember our famous Ten Tenets<\/a> post), we never quite anticipated we were helping define the future model the services industry would adopt for business, technology and operational service\u00a0delivery.<\/p>\n As-a-Service replaces Outsourcing<\/span><\/p>\n We’ve perennially debated the (toxic) term “outsourcing”, long vilified as the substitution of onshore jobs with cheaper offshore people. The outsourcing community\u00a0has continually struggled<\/a> to find new defining terminology, as NASSCOM replaced “BPO” with “BPM”<\/a> and the IAOP has refused to shift from the past, staying true<\/a> to the O word as its core identity.<\/p>\n The reason why we struggled with our identity was because outsourcing, by and large, has really always been about people<\/em>. \u00a0It’s hard to change processes, drive common standards across clients, build a utility model that can be scaled and made cost-efficient, when you’re really just moving work around the world with the goal of getting it done cheaper. And that’s really been the story of outsourcing to-date – service providers battling it out, at varying levels of effectiveness, to deliver people-based services more productively, promising delights of delivery beyond merely doing the existing stuff significantly cheaper and (hopefully) a bit better.<\/p>\n But outsourcing hasn’t failed<\/em>. Only 13% of service buyers in our new Ideals of As-a-Service study<\/a> believe there is no more value to be found in the current outsourcing model. \u00a0Outsourcing is the starting point towards driving out bloated labor costs, centralizing the delivery staff within a service provider, and creating some basic common standards across processes. \u00a0However, it’s not the end-solution for ambitious firms, it’s merely the start<\/em> of the journey towards this future vision of “As-a-Service”.<\/p>\n We also hear a lot of hype about Robotic Process Automation<\/a>, which is another accelerator towards As-a-Service, but like outsourcing, RPA isn’t necessarily the end-solution either \u00a0– many applications have a lifecycle and are replaced over time, and many of today’s processes become obsolete as businesses evolve. RPA merely acts as a further conduit, coupled with outsourcing, to smooth the ultimate journey towards destination As-a-Service.<\/p>\n Defining the evolution to the As-a-Service Economy with Eight Ideals<\/span><\/p>\n The game-changer is centered on today’s services work gradually becoming a genuine blending of people-plus-technology that helps us inch towards an ultimate destination of services value, accessible on-tap, empowering service buyers to focus on proactive value-identification with help from their service partners through meaningful and secure data, enabled by intelligent automation and digital tools… all made possible by smart people working together<\/em>.<\/p>\n So let’s examine the Eight Ideals of As-a-Service, into which we delve in-depth in our new defining report, “Beware of the Smoke: Your Platform is Burning<\/a>“, that canvasses the views, dynamics, aspirations and intended actions of 716 service industry stakeholders:<\/p>\n