The Outsourcing Blog..."Horses for Sources"

Everything you need to know about Supply Management BPO (but never dared to ask)

Folks - we're staging a webinar entitled "Supply Management BPO: Why Business and Technology Transformation is Critical for Long-Term Success". 

The Kraft of Outsourcing: Learnings from Lee Coulter (Part III)

And finally… the last tranche of our three-part interview with Kraft’s Lee Coulter. Here’s Lee’s take on attributes service providers need to demonstrate, and some advice for budding sourcing executives today…

PF: Lee, when evaluating outsourcing service providers today, what attributes should companies look for? What should they try to avoid?

LC: That is a really big question and not one I am sure I can answer in less than ten pages. Every engagement is different, and the basic dimensions of suitability are: service scope, service quality, service cost, cultural match, the leadership teams, partnership capability, and risk. Assuming that you have providers capable of doing the job and meeting the objectives, then it is about the team and the commitment to true partnership (a topic for another day). These two things lead to a measure I use… confidence. So you would score the providers

The Kraft of Outsourcing: Learnings from Lee Coulter (Part II)

During  Part I of Lee's interview, he talked about the development of the global sourcing industry and how companies were now approaching sourcing strategy in today's economic climate.  In more Blackberry-smashing style, Lee goes on to discuss his theory of "innovation" within outsourcing relationships, and delivers some tips on how operations leaders can improve the performance of their service providers (without resorting to baseball-bats, water-boarding or enforced transition workshops at Epcott).

PF: Lee, what is your theory of "innovation" within outsourcing relationships, and are we really seeing it in today’s engagements?

LC: I have a pretty simple theory of innovation. We aren’t seeing it today because most of the clients today didn’t buy it. Somehow we believed that

Conference alert: Shared Services Week

Folks - it's challenging cherry-picking which events are worth going to this year with everyone cutting back on the travel costs, but one you should definitely have on your calendar is IQPC's Shared Services Week, where I am hosting their F&A BPO session entitled Going Beyond the Letter of the Contract: Deriving Business Value From Your F&A BPO Experience, where I will be joined by my industry BPO friends Graham Russell (Astrazeneca), John Transier (Unilever), Mike Monaghan (Wells Fargo) and Sunil Narang (Level 3). Check out the session at 3.35pm on March 24th. 

And even if you can't make the week, you can still catch the highlights here, with the Horses being the official blog for the show.

IQPC have offered Horses readers a discount offer: 2-for-1 Special – Bring a colleague FREE when you purchase a main conference pass at standard pricing.  Reference code IUS_HFS_#1 to receive this discount. *Open to end-users only.

So why attend?

*A focus on quick wins for your shared services organization, with highlights on meeting short-term immediate gains and cutting costs without jeopardizing service levels

*An expert speaker faculty, including 4 Chief Economists, to demonstrate how to use survive the economic downturn and come out stronger on the other side

*Easy-to-customize conference experience: Choose between 7 tracks, including HR Transformation, Sourcing, Talent Management and Blue Sky Innovation Room, 3 Master Classes, 4 site tours and 16 workshops

*Expanded Exhibition Hall, networking opportunities and an exciting new year for the Annual Shared Services Excellence Awards.

4 Chief Economists will be speaking

Gregory Miller, Chief Economist, Sun Trust Banks
Brian Fabbri, Chief U.S. Economist for North America, BNP Paribas
David Wyss, Chief Economist, Standard & Poor’s
W. Michael Cox, Chief Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

For more information, please contact: Kim Vigilia, IQPC || Ph: 212-885-2753 || kim.vigilia@iqpc.com || www.linkedin.com/in/kimvigilia

Horses outsourcing predictions for 2009

Yes, it's that time again folks, when analysts and other industry wannabe needle-movers come up with some profound verbiage that they think gets everyone excited for a few days, and hope no-one re-reads in 6 months.  Well... I occasionally do some research in my spare time, so here are some thoughts on what we can probably expect to see happen (just don't bookmark this page and hold it against me):

Low-hanging fruit outsourcing with immediate cost-savings will be strong.  As we discussed and surveyed here, it's areas where enterprises can streamline initial costs over a contract and get an immediate impact on the bottom-line.  That's bread-and-butter application outsourcing, high-arbitrage BPO areas such as F&A and vertical-specific analytics (that KPO stuff).  I am also expecting increased adoption of procurement BPO models as increased procurement and supply management work is moved offshore, and buyers can benefit from labor arbitrage to underpin the transformation costs that have held back adoption in the past. 

Now the election is over... what about outsourcing?

Not many people are better-placed to debate the thorny issues of outsourcing and government policy than my old friend Glenn Davidson.  Glenn is synonyous in the public sector world with issues relating to human resources strategy and broader outsourcing strategy, having been one of the founding members behind Equaterra's public sector practice that was launched in 2005 and now a major part of their business.  Among several commercial roles, Glenn previously served as one of Accenture's key executives behind their early forays HRO post their e-Peopleserve acquisition, and prior to that as a chief of staff and communications director to a Virginia governor, as the Commonwealth’s chief federal lobbyist and as a legislative director to an Ohio congressman.  

With so much heated discussion regarding the policies President-Elect Obama is going to deliver regarding the USA's future stance on offshore outsourcing and public sector contracting (which we touched upon here), I asked Glenn to put together some of his thoughts on where this will lead... over to you Mr D:

Mumbai events test appetite for offshore

My esteemed colleague at AMR Research, Dana Stiffler, who works with me in our Global Business and Outsourcing Services practice, has compiled some thoughts about the recent atrocities over in Mumbai, which we wanted to share with you, discussing the impact on the offshore sourcing industry... over to you Dana:

India's financial markets, including technology company stocks, bounced back admirably following last week's terror attacks in Mumbai.

Investing in the right vehicles for change

This whole automotive situation is a microcosm of the broader issues facing the crumbling Western economies in this crisis market, and these issues require significant surgery to our very corporate DNA.  And outsourcing and globalization are right at the heart of the issues. 

Outsourcing provides an enabler for businesses to change, but ultimately we have to be put in a position where we have to change our corporate DNA and stop clinging to the inefficient ways of the past.  That time is now upon us and we need to embrace new ways of working, and new ways of doing this smarter.  And if it's fear that is driving us, some short-term panic, some short-term hardship, is a small price to pay to find new avenues of growth and value-creation further down the road.

And that doesn't mean businesses should go out and find outsourcing providers to save them a few dollars today, for the sake of making a quarterly target. 

Smarter and smaller: banks bank on BPO

I am delighted to introduce a long-time industry friend, and one of the pioneering executives in the world of financial services BPO:  Michael Koontz. 

Michael has spent most of his career (14 years, in fact) helping steer Wachovia's BPO strategy, where he led over 130 transitions, managed over 1000 SLAs, over four countries and three service providers.  He also served as Wachovia's CFO for Banking Operations.  Michael recently made his first foray into service provider world, leading the financial services vertical for up-and-coming BPO and KPO service provider Aditya Birla Minacs.  

Michael is sharing his views with us on where he sees the banking sector going with its BPO strategies - namely a further sell-off of captives, service provider rationalization, growth in regional markets, and also the smaller banks opening up to BPO contracts.  Over to you Michael:

    What we are seeing in the financial services sector is nothing less

Wipro brews Brazilian BPO

Wipro has continued its aggressive surge into the BPO world by announcing plans to open a BPO delivery center in Curtiba, Brazil, to service it new client, AmBev, the South American bewing giant, and subsidiary of global brewing giant InBev.  InBev recently had its merger with Anheuser-Busch approved to create a global beer monolith - not a bad industry to be developing your outsourcing business, in this economy (to quote a CIO at a major brewer recently: "we love the good times, but we REALLY LOVE the bad times"...)

Following on from Capgemini's agreement to take over Unilever's South American BPO operations, we are clearly seeing signs - as we discussed last year - that Latam countries have great potential for delivering BPO services, such as finance and accounting and HR, in addition to supporting IT engagements (particularly with the legacy development skills that have sprung out of the Latam financial services sector).  This latest development further augments the discussions that the leading outsourcing providers see Latam as a major addition to a global delivery framework, especially when you consider the investments Accenture, Genpact, IBM, Infosys, TCS and others have also been making in Latam resources.

Moreover, this announcement follows on from several major recent BPO wins from Wipro, which has been performing a stellar job taking on multi-tower BPO services for a number of global clients across finance, HR, customer care and some industry-specific domains.

Can flagging industries be replaced by BPO services?

I had a distressing conversation regarding the future of the US automotive industry today with a guy from Detroit.  Their main concern these days is the widely-speculated acquisition of Chrysler by General Motors. 

The expectation is that if GM buys Chrysler, it will only retain the Jeep and Minivan businesses, close all the other Chrysler plants, and lay off 75% of Chrysler's engineering staff, for a direct loss of 90,000 jobs - not including ~6x more jobs at suppliers -  throughout North America. If no merger happens, one or more of the "Big 3" will go bankrupt, resulting in a total loss of all jobs - more than 120,000. One of his neighbors is putting his house on the market tomorrow, anticipating losing his job soon. Several other friends and neighbors expect to lose their jobs by the end of the year.

 

This reminds me of the situation in the UK in the 1980's when

Why not build a shared services infrastructure to support the banking sector?

With the US Treasury yesterday making an initial $125 billion stock purchase of nine beleaguered financial institutions, it makes me think seriously about how these colossal investments also could be deployed to create new jobs, better technology investments, and more efficient support processes. 

Our recent survey shows that many financial institutions are ready to grab the low-hanging fruit of outsourcing offerings, where they can make quick cost-savings and transition costs are offset by arbitrage.

However, while outsourcing clearly has its benefits, what about the

Expect a phrenetic Q1'09 for outsourcing activity in the banking sector

More on the recent survey we ran (to which many of you contributed) on the immediate outsourcing intentions from the beleaguered financial sector.

     The financial services sector has held back from many outsourcing opportunities in recent years through a stubborn resistance to change and a fear of losing control over non-core business processes.  However, with this current tough financial climate, executives have little choice but to embrace global opportunities that afford both short and long-term cost-savings, access to process acumen and new technologies. When we delve deeper into the new survey data,

Is the day of the offshore financial services captive in terminal decline?

The current financial crisis is driving many of the leading financial institutions to sell their Indian captive operation to third-party service providers, typified by Citigroup today offloading its Indian banking services operations to Tata Consultancy Services for $505 million. Most of these offshore captives were established in recent years to cater for growth in the financial services sector, and with the current climate, many of them have little choice but to sell them off.

I was having an interesting discussion just yesterday regarding Securities/Capital Market BPO (back office operations of Investment Banks, Asset Managers etc.).

Cash is king again as M&A activity in outsourcing hots up

We've been talking a lot about consolidation in the outsourcing industry and when/how/if it will happen.  We can debate for hours the strategic benefits of service providers of adding niche competences, industry specialization, process acumen and global scale, and whether they should merge, acquire captives, or grow organically through client acquisition to achieve this.  However, the financial crisis is creating a compelling event to accelerate M&A between service providers. 

The amount of consolidation we're seeing in the financial sector, which is likely to have knock-on effects into other industries, will drive new client needs for global sourcing models. Many clients are worried about making large initial capital investments in outsourcing engagements - especially ones which have complex transition and transformational needs, hence those service providers which can help streamline these costs over the course of a contract will be successful. Complexity, disruption and increased globalization drive change, and outsourcing is one vehicle that can help many companies reach a global support infrastructure quickly.  Hence, those service providers with the global scale, competency and financial resources to deliver this quickly will be the winners in this market.

While this industry has ramped-up beyond the wildest expectations over the last 5 years,

A stateless multinational mindset

The recent article on Poland certainly stoked up some creative discussion about sourcing BPO locations.  And none more so than from Ratnesh Mathur, a BPO guru from India, based in Central Europe.  Ratnesh has worked in the "outsourcing temples" of Citibank and Infosys, in both India and Europe, for over 17 years. These days, he spends his time traveling to lesser known places in India and Europe, and, when not traveling or working on his upcoming book on Indoeuropean linguistic/cultural links, you can seek his blessings on outsourcing advisory work in India & Europe, through social networks like Linked-in.  Anyway, I thought Ratnesh's recent contributions warranted a full-posting:

When selecting a BPO location inside the European Union and in India, its useful to first segregate the City-level metrics from the Country(EU)/State(India)-level metrics and then quantify relative-importance of each metric vis-a-vis others, specific to your unique need: 

• Country(EU)/State(India) Metrics- BPO/SSC Set-Up time; Visa/ Work Permit Requirements; Subsidies/Government Incentives; Labour Laws; Tax & Accounting Laws; Political stability
• City Metrics- People (Labor Pool size / Education - Graduate skills/ Location attractiveness for Senior Foreign Hires/ Understanding of US & Western European cultures/Languages) ; Infrastructure (Real Estate, Telecom, Light/Heat/Water etc) ; BPO/SSC Competition; Travel links with key Client sites

Poland: More than "just another" BPO location

I received a very interesting synopsis from a senior executive at one of the major global IT-BPO providers on the subject of Poland as an offshore delivery location.  From my own personal experience, Poland has proved to be a first-class location for high-quality, multi-lingual support, particularly for BPO functions such as finance and HR.  No wonder providers such as Accenture, ADP, Capgemini, Genpact, HCL, HP and IBM have all made significant investments there, in addition to many captive centers that have been established there in recent years. 

Siddhartha makes some excellent points, most notably that Poland is simply not an "alternative offshore location", as its value-proposition is not driven by scale and low-cost, but by highly-motivated and educated staff, and is a proven first-class hub for multi-lingual European language support. He also makes a bold assumption that Poland has the potential to be challenging the unique expertise of a country such as Israel, as Poland possesses far more potential that simply being a BPO / shared services location. In many instances, clients have not found significant cost savings using Polish delivery resources - they have used them because of the value and quality they bring to a global delivery model.  Over to you Siddhartha:

Are vendors and advisors getting too cosy?

We completed our survey looking at the world of third-party sourcing advisors this week, with the high-level results being discussed by my friend Ed Nair, over at Global Services Media. 

One of the key takeways, which I wanted to share with you, is the importance of the sourcing advisor / vendor relationship.  Of the 114 advisors who completed their section of the study, almost half of them revealed they frequently get business through their relationships with vendors.  We always knew that vendors refer advisors in certain client instances, but not to this extent:

Sourcing advisors - your opinion is valuable

We've had some pretty spicy debating this year about the role and importance of third-party sourcing advisors.  In addition, we've had lively discussion on the boutique advisors which are proving to be an active low-cost channel for many buyers.  As part of my ongoing research into this market, I am very interested in what today's buyers and providers of outsourcing services are experiencing with the sourcing advisor medium.  Please take a few minutes to add your opinion here. And yes, you can remain anonymous if you prefer.

The Evolution of Captive and Outsourced delivery models for business processes: what is the right option for your company?

We are privileged to showcase the following incisive article from my good long-time friend Graham Russell, who leads Global Transaction Processing for pharma giant AstraZeneca.  Graham has been a long-established and respected authority on shared services and outsourcing for many years, and is one of a rare breed of executives who has had many years of experience managing both models.  I can't think of many other people in the industry more qualified than Graham to discuss the merits and shortcomings of both captive and outsourced delivery models.  Over to you Graham:

Birth of captives

Once upon a time, global and pan regional companies operated as a collection of single country businesses. Their back-office financial support was organized in the same way, with processes and systems being developed at a local level in each country. In the eighties, new global companies such as Microsoft entered the scene and were able to quickly organize their businesses and their back-office support services in a different manner since they were able to start with a clean sheet of paper, making them appear lean and nimble.

Should you sell your offshore captive to an outsourcing provider - ten questions to ask yourself...

I am constantly surprised by how many times I get pulled into the "captive versus outsource" debate.  I thought this one was settled long ago, but it seems many firms are still trying to go it alone.  If you are a well-resourced firm which has a set of processes that need to be kept inhouse, or are core to your business - and you can save substantial costs by moving these processes offshore - then my advice is to maintain a captive center.  However, make sure you have the local management expertise to hire the staff you need and develop career plans to retain them.  If you are a top tier brand, you stand a good shot at running a successful captive operation, but if you are a lesser-known firm with a small global presence, you will struggle to retain and develop your staff in this intense offshore environment.  There are many firms which still persist in funneling low-value administrative processes into their captive centers, where you have to question the business case of doing so.  Utkarsh Rai, in his guest post here entitled "offshoring secrets" does an excellent job surmising how challenging and expensive it is to run your own captive operation in India.  Utkarsh has spent most of his career managing offshore operations and here are some excerpts (and these are best-practices, not warnings):

Attracting Talent: Providing an excellent work environment, a challenging work and a competitive compensation and benefits package are important in attracting the talent

Cost of operations: For the last three four years the salary raises have been given to India employees in the range of 15-20%. But this does not translate into the payroll cost. The annual payroll cost increase can be around 5% or so, depending upon the type of growth in the headcount.

If your company runs an offshore captive, ask yourself the following questions:

1) Is the work being performed in the captive truly core to our business, or could we move it over to a third party?

2) How much risk are we exposing to our business by transitioning the captive operations over to an outsourcer?  Can we work with the outsourcer to manage the transition process to ensure there is a smooth transition of people and operations?

3) By selling off our captive, how much can we save over a 5 year period?

4) What is our option-value in the future if we want to take some of these operations back in-house?

5) How severe is our attrition rate, and how does  this impact running costs and quality?

6) Is the captive truly a part of our global organization, or is it really a distant support center that doesn't play a core role in our day-to-day business operations?

7) How much management time, and how much cost, is spent flying senior executives over to offshore locations to oversee low-value processes such as accounts payable, help deck support etc.? 

8) How much experience with offshoring do our firm's senior executives currently have, or are they learning it by trial and error and substantial cost to our organization?

9) How complex is it to transfer knowledge from our parent operations over to our offshore operations?  Wouldn't it be cleaner and easier to move the work to a third party outsourcer, who will take on the work they are contracted to do?

10) Is it worth keeping our captive, but re-locating it to a more appropriate location?  And what are the costs / benefits associated with doing that?

Alternatively, look at the Aviva model, and get a third party to build your captive for you with the future option-value of selling it to a third party.  However, with the amount of captives currently operating, my prediction is that the market for selling captives will be pretty much dusted in 2 years... so is this a sensible option? 

The outsourcing providers are primed to grow through two channels:  (1) buying captives and (2) taking on business from firms with no offshore or shared services support. If you already have an established captive you have a compelling option to investigate over the next 18 months:  do you sell it to one of the ambitious outsourcing providers looking to grow their business? If you have a well established captive operation now, you are in a lucky position.  The outsourcing firms prefer to acquire captives to grow their businesses, than acquire each other (as discussed here).  With a limited number of captives currently up for sale, you will find a handful of outsourcing providers interested in your business - and you could make a tidy windfall from the sale. They will take from it what they need to run your business, and utilize some of the resources to support other clients.  They also have the advantage of running your captive virtually by integrating it into their multi-location delivery infrastructure, that can cater for multi-lingual support and a whole variety of IT and business processes that you can't often manage from a single location.  You will also minimize your business risk by having these services run by an experienced provider with a multi-location delivery strategy. 

This discussion between Genpact's European leadership and Michael Jones, editor of Finance Director Europe, raises some compelling arguments in favor of this virtual captive model that Genpact has successfully developed during its recent hyper-growth.  Other leading providers, namely Accenture, IBM, HP, ACS, Cap Gemini, Infosys, TCS and Wipro, are also extremely adept at delivering services from their multi-location infrastructures. The other major advantage of selling your existing captive is that transition is far less painful for both buyer and provider.  Retaining key staff is often less challenging, as working for a services firm, rather than a captive, can often provide a more compelling challenge for the offshore professional. 

 

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'  Have you evaluated whether you should go captive, or just sell out altogether?

Is the financial services sector finally warming to BPO?

My interest has been piqued by the recent announcement of Sunlife of Canada outsourcing its UK customer services operation to TCS's Diligenta subsidiary in a $200m deal.   This comes hot on the heels of some financial services captive buy-outs in India.  The financial services sector has long been the problem child of the BPO industry, with operational executives extremely reluctant to relinquish control over business processes - especially finance and accounting.  As I have said on record several times, it will only take a few big deals to hit and many others will follow in a domino effect.  Bottom-line, the large BPO providers have capacity and are willing to invest in clients to gain an edge in this market.  Most of the near-term deals will more likely be captive acquisitions like the two mentioned above, but this is the clear strategy some of the providers are following to build out a global delivery infrastructure.  (Hey - I managed to avoid saying lift n' shift).

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So why do I think this sector is poised to become a BPO hotbed?

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• Competition is too fierce and the incumbents are looking at all options to contain costs and improve margins;
• Decreased shelf life of products;
• Business impacts and high costs of maintaining non-strategic and closed blocks of business;
• Rising wage costs and attrition within captives is proving too costly and taking up far too much management resources - the outsourcing option is becoming increasingly attractive and less risky from a business perspective;
• The sub-prime fiasco has really changed the game with several FSI firms - they are now prepared to take on more risk to remain profitable;
• BPO models can help firms scale up and down quicker - particularly with a looming economic downturn.  Having that flexibility could prove vital, especially in times when FSI firms need to get product to market quickly;
• Improved service levels from providers and their willingness to take on more customer risk;
• Improved technology add-ons at no incremental cost, for example analytics tools, that can sweeten the BPO opportunity.

More on this issue shortly....

Is India adapting to the Night Shift?

A new report released by the Associated Press is highlighting the issues of outsourcing jobs on Indian workers' health.  While the report lacks any hard evidence and focuses on a handful of individual cases, data released by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations estimated the cost of these increased health issues, namely sleep disorders, heart disease and depression, could amount to $200bn for the Indian economy over the next 10 years "if corrective action is not taken quickly".

As we discussed here on HFS a few weeks' ago, the business case for organizations outsourcing certain services to locations closer to home (or even at home?) is becoming increasingly appealing - especially for those services that require a high degreee of interaction between the organization and its outsourced workers (for example software development).  For those services where the offshore workers need to be operating at the same hours as US companies, for example customer support / help-desk services, the Indian workers must adapt to working swing-shifts and unsocial hours.  My concern here is that Indian culture is very family and social-centric, and these types of jobs are becoming increasingly less desirable for many workers who go into these jobs initially to enjoy the increased compensation on offer, but are quickly realizing the trade-off with their lifestyle, health and family / social issues.  As long as outsourcing providers are servicing US businesses from India that require a large degree of worker overlap, they are going to be faced with increasing issues of attrition and rising wages to keep workers in these jobs.  This is the chief reason why the Latin America region is on the cusp of a major upswing of taking on outsourced jobs that benefit from the time overlap.  At the same time, it increases the appeal of UK and European-centric services being run out of India, where the time differences are far less oppressive on the offshore workers. 

These health and social issues are very symptomatic of a developing economy like India - and my only surprise is the speed at which they are happening.  I believe these issues will only be magnified when work is outsourced from US businesses to China, where the time differentials are even more brutal, and the language issues much tougher.  That is one of the principal reasons why China is (and will continue to be) far more successful at taking on services such as engineering and manufacturing, where these worker interaction issues between offshore staff and Western organizations and their customers are less crucial. 

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Is India growing up too quickly?

Cost reduction is not the only medicine many companies need in these times

The recent post "Will an economic downturn spark a new wave of outsourcing growth" provoked several differing views on how outsourcing will be impacted by a potential economic downturn:

My good friend David Sheinfeld, who wrote a great piece here back in May, has contributed some very forthright views regarding how an economic downturn will impact the BPO industry and the fact that cost reduction is not the only medicine many companies need in these times... take it away David:

So much has been made of the downturn in the economy and the credit crunch that it is hard to believe that any industry stands to gain over the short term let alone the BPO market.  But as they say with every downturn, an opportunity is created.  The traditional story line sounds something like this; the company’s outlook is bleak and its financial model is flawed. 

Upward, Onward, Onsource!

To celebrate the return of Horses for Sources, I wanted to feature an excellent piece submitted by Deborah Kops, who is embedded in sourcing folklore, having led global transformation efforts at Deutsche Bank and Bank of America and was also one of the founding partners at PwC's outsoucing division.  Today, Deborah is Chief Marketing Officer for WNS Global Services, a leading offshore BPO provider.  We will be featuring a lot of debate on the future of shared services / offshore captives and the road to BPO services over the coming months on this site, and Deborah's insight here typifies the approach many world class organizations are taking with regards to their sourcing journey.  Take it away Deborah....

The microscope is on the performance of the estimated +2500 shared services operations worldwide now reaching performance maturity.  What’s next for these centers as the pressures of competition and globalization demand more and more...

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Three to five years in, and step changes in performance has been achieved by consolidating back office operations in shared services centers (SSC). Aggregation of processes has yielded the benefits of scale and scope. Near- shore locations have delivered cost arbitrage and language capability. Best practices have been implemented end-to-end, resulting in standardization across both business lines and geographies.  Business unit customers have adopted new ways of working. And the paraphernalia of good business management—dashboards, service levels, KPIs--have been put in place, supported by reasonably efficient governance routines.  Has nirvana been reached?

Yet the C-suite is demanding more out of the shared services organization. Since outsourcing is no longer a dirty word, all delivery options are now on the table for consideration in order to reach the next level of performance. Corporate strategy could allow a spin off of the one or more of the centers, ‘commercializing’ the captive. Or the time may be right to embrace full-fledged outsourcing as a next logical step? 

There is another, less radical option to evolve shared services---onsourcing could be the right answer for many organizations.

Moving select processes out of existing SSC operations to a more cost effective near- or offshore provider may provide the solution.  In this scenario, the SSC management identify those processes which can be either ‘lifted and dropped’, or further improved, to benefit from the advantages of labor arbitrage and/or consolidation.  SSC leadership retains control of delivery, managing a portfolio of services provided to the business.

Why ‘onsource’ rather than transfer the entire operation to a third party lock, stock and barrel, either through a services contract or a sale?  Onsourcing provides an approach to outsourcing that gives a comfort to those organizations for which full scale outsourcing is difficult from a cultural, process complexity or regulatory standpoint.  Process delivery remains under the control of the company’s trusted services organization; services are then ‘retailed’ to the end user.

With control in the hands of the SSC, onsourcing results in a low risk, gradual approach to outsourcing, adjustable whenever.  It can be structured within a framework contract and ‘gated’ according to the ability to manage the velocity of change.

A challenge of full-scale outsourcing is knowledge retention and customer intimacy. By itself, outsourcing a specific scope is not a difficult proposition; breakpoints come from the point at which the outsourced workflow connects to upstream/downstream client processes. Onsourcing preserves that knowledge because a client layer is still firmly embedded in the SSC, ensuring that corporate knowledge is retained, and delivery remains end-to-end.

Onsourcing alleviates investment in lower cost locations to sustain delivery economics. With a rapidly globalizing services landscape, corporations cannot afford an ongoing investment in program management, property, infrastructure, and local branding to attract qualified staff.

Successful outsourcing implementation requires a change in the capabilities of management.  Good shared services managers have advanced their skills moving the corporation from vertical process delivery to consolidation. Onsourcing represents the next measured, step in evolving the capabilities of the retained team. Onsourcing managers become the ‘switching station,’ managing the expectations of the business by fitting the right ‘made or bought’ delivery solution.

Flexibility to adjust the speed of implementation of outsourcing is a key benefit. If business conditions change, the strategy can adapt.  Alternatively, if the velocity or complexity of transactions increases, onsourcing becomes a flexible delivery mechanism.

Onsourcing also acts as a buffer to the inevitable politics surrounding the decision to outsource. Since the SSC is still the corporate provider of services, onsourcing can be implemented without angst to the business.

Who can argue with the benefits of transitioning quickly and containing implementation costs? Full scale outsourcing requires substantial investment in business case development, sourcing, and transition.  Onsourcing can be implemented under a task order framework, justified by incremental business cases which can be approved quickly.

Onsourcing keeps the SSC competitive, and rate card increases static.  More expensive, high touch, risky or complex processes can continue to be delivered by the SSC while onsourcing can offset increases in costs, reducing the inevitable noise that comes from the annual transfer pricing exercise.

Is onsourcing a new idea?  No--just a simple term for the way in which many organizations would like to outsourcing business processes.  Benefits to the SSC can be easily understood—continuous improvement at a digestible pace, avoidance of investment, lessened impact of change-- with control in the hands of an organization with a strong corporate reputation. Many SSCs are seeing the virtues of incorporating selective or phased outsourcing into their delivery strategies. It’s time to give the trend a name.

• Deborah S. Kops is Chief Marketing Officer of WNS Global Services

Is Bangalore no longer a cost-saving location?

My good friend and former colleague at the Yankee Group, Arijit "Apu" Sengupta (pictured) - who is now CEO of BPO quality improvement software firm BeyondCore - alerted me to a startup that reverse-offshored its development team from Bangalore back to the US: 

“Bangalore wages have just been growing like crazy. To give you an example, there is an employee of ours who took the first 5 years of his career to get from 1% to 10% of his equivalent US counterpart. He then jumped from 10% to 20% of his US counterpart in the next 1 year. During his time with us (less than 2 years) he jumped to 55% of the US wage.  In the next few months we would have had to move him to 75% just to ‘keep him at market. Once the salary rises to 75% of US salaries, the overhead cost differences between India and the US would overwhelm the financial viability. Consider the additional overhead of managing two offices, flying between the two centers, dealing with the cultural differences.  The costs of having two offices, which are twelve time zones apart, is significant. People in both offices frequently had conference calls at 10pm and midnight every night (as a result the office in the US didn’t get started until noon sometimes or people rolled in tired). We were all traveling constantly. Development and communication moved slower due to the distance and teams.”

For more on Apu's story, go to the CIO Magazine website