Is VAT Destroying your Business Case for Outsourcing and Shared Services?

Noel Cullen, Principal Advisor, KPMG in the UK Many business cases for shared services and outsourcing in the finance and insurance sectors overlook the substantial impact of VAT. KPMG’s experience in working with member firm clients in developing their business cases for outsourcing and shared services is that savings of 20 – 40 percent on [...]

CFOs and the Extended Global Enterprise: Saving Money, Unlocking Value and Bolstering Top-Line Growth

Dwayne Prosko, Director, Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory As CFOs are increasingly chartered with identifying cost savings opportunities without undermining the core finance and accounting (F&A) function, and helping move the company forward while driving revenue growth, a growing number of leading organizations are adopting strategies that leverage a global footprint combined with an Extended [...]

The Need for Smarter SPEED

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 [...]

Which are Better for Finance and Accounting Outsourcing: Multinationals or Indian Providers?

Rick Bertheaud, Finance and Accounting Managing Director, North America Stan Lepeak, Managing Director, Global Research Inquiring minds want to know – is there a quantifiable difference in the service quality between the multinational finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) providers (e.g. Accenture, IBM, HP, Capgemini and Steria) and the rising class of India-based FAO suppliers (e.g. [...]

Positive Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) Trends Revealed in New EquaTerra Study

Stan Lepeak, Managing Director, Global Research Results are in from a new EquaTerra FAO market study and they are very positive, both on FAO delivering the benefits users seek and the performance of FAO service providers. For example, ninety-one percent of all respondent organizations are satisfied with the Finance and Accounting (F&A) services being delivered [...]

BPO and ‘Top 10′ Lists: Caveat Emptor!

Pam Peters, Advisor and Project Director, EquaTerra Human Resources (HR) Practice A “Top 10” label, when applied to business process outsourcing (BPO), assumes a heightened expectation around the level of quality, expertise and technology. The issue is that most of these listings tend to be one dimensional when it comes to the basis of the [...]

What Will Increased Regulation Mean For Outsourcing in the Financial Services Sector?

Tony Rawlinson, Managing Director, Financial Services Advisory (Europe & Asia Pacific) Outsourcing is becoming more and more mission critical for many financial institutions and increasingly important core processes as well as commodity services are being externalised to partners. Given the legacy of the credit crunch and the renewed emphasis on controls and accountability it’s not a [...]

Assurance Reporting: What does the Evolution of SAS 70 to SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402 Mean for Outsourcing Relationships?

Thomas Hall, Managing Director, Contract Negotiations Advisory Third-party assurance reports provide customers of outsourced services with information about the internal controls maintained by their provider’s delivery organization. Historically, the control standards set forth by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in Statement on Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) have been most commonly applied [...]

Is Your Shared Services Organization in a Rut? Think Non-Traditional Services

Bob Cecil, Executive Director, Business and Financial Processes Advisory My last blog – Shared Services: Nexus for Cost Realignment or Exporter of Value?– focused on a Blue Sky Innovation Room session at last month’s Shared Services Week conference on how shared services is perceived, versus how it would like to be perceived by the company [...]

Shared Services: Nexus for Cost Realignment or Exporter of Value?

Bob Cecil, Executive Director, Business & Financial Processes Advisory At last month’s Shared Services Week conference in Orlando, Florida, I had the good fortune to chair the invitation-only Blue Sky Innovation Room sessions, each of which addressed current challenges unique to mature shared services organizations. The discussions among the expert panelists and participants from some [...]