Jeri Lykke, Senior Manager, Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory A few years ago, I observed the following discussion during a Human Resources outsourcing (HRO) transition and implementation status meeting. The client described significant issues with the initiation of User Acceptance Testing, detailed relevant associated risks and asked that the project’s status be changed to Red. [...]
Nico Boot, Executive Director Europe and Asia Pacific Most organisations make the mistake of drawing up new contracts based on negative experiences in the past. A better way to determine the appropriate option when a contract comes to an end is to carry out the final annual review of the sourcing strategy, look ahead at [...]
Stan Lepeak, Director, Research, Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory Often buyers have viewed global sourcing as a series of discrete options and capabilities (e.g., internal services, shared services, offshore captives, business process outsourcing and information technology outsourcing (ITO)) rather than a continuum of integrated service models. This is similar to the legacy perspective of viewing [...]
Cliff Justice Stan Lepeak Business success today is predicated on working both faster as well as smarter. Advances in information technology and telecommunications, as manifested in the Internet, highly complex enterprise software systems, and process automation, have helped enable organizations to work increasingly faster and on a global scale. In many respects, it is working [...]
Dave Kirk Stan Lepeak Call centers, whether supporting internal staff or external customers and prospects, are a functional area that in most user organizations could benefit from greater standardization and economies of scale. Like many business activities, contact centers have often grown in loosely managed and uncoordinated ways. This seems especially true when the centers [...]
Lee Ann Moore Large-scale organizational changes, such as mergers or acquisitions, offer significant opportunities for improving profitability and cash flow through optimizing the delivery of internal operations. Yet many organizations become overwhelmed with the amount of data, decisions, and deadlines they face during mergers, divestitures, or layoffs. How can operations be optimized in times of [...]
Rick Bertheaud Need to revitalize your internal brand for shared services? Trying to move beyond transactional processing? Many shared services centers (SSCs) are at a crossroads. Some, a few years in, are trying to reinvigorate their brand as enthusiasm fades. Others are mired in high-volume transactional work that isn’t relevant when performed flawlessly and is [...]
Stan Lepeak, Managing Director Global Research Two tenets that underpin the pervasiveness of computing and the Internet are that access to more information and user empowerment are always good things. First the personal computer, then the Internet, and now powerful hand-held devices and social media services are “empowering” users to access corporate computing systems and [...]
Vicki Phelan, Managing Director, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Practice with Stan Lepeak, Managing Director, Global Research The first blog in this series assessed the key drivers for the increased adoption of pharma research and development outsourcing (RDO). The second analyzed the benefits buyers seek from RDO efforts. This third and final blog in the series [...]
Lee Ayling, Managing Director, UK Information Technology Advisory In an outsourcing relationship it’s not uncommon for there to be pain points or situations where expectations and delivery are not aligned. Today, EquaTerra is advising organisations to invest their energy in tackling these issues to maximise the value of a contract rather than considering ending a [...]
