Blogging on the road again...

Washington D.C.this week:  I have the privilege of delivering a keynote address to Mercer's clients on the subject entitled "Creating a Strategic Enterprise Sourcing Strategy and Governing Change" (whatever will I think up next...).  I look forward to posting some banter from their conference, where the central theme is "Successfully Managing the Global Journey".  I am particularly interested to hear Jeff Miller and Juila Velixon discuss Mercer's recent study conducted with the Harvard Business School on global service delivery models.  I promise to share the findings here.  Am also looking forward to hearing Jason Averbrook (great blog by the way) attempting to tie together web 2.0, new HR technologies and outsourcing.  Big topics - I love it :)

San Francisco and New York next week: I am more excited than usual at the prospect of attending Oracle OpenWorld this year.  Both Oracle and SAP's signature events have fast taken-over as industry meets to anyone in the hi-tech and services businesses.  If you are there and want to meet up, drop me a mail.  What's exciting this year is the stage they are giving to BPO - come visit the panel discussion entitled the "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", Moscone South, 307 at 5.30pm on Monday.  I'll be joined on the panel with my long-time industry cohorts Stan LePeak (Equaterra) and Mark Stelzner (Inflexion Advisors). I'll be spending the latter half of the week in Manhattan where I have brought together some of the leading minds in the BPO industry for a behind-closed-doors round-table (no vendors allowed...sorry).

London and India:  Am making plans to visit London and India later in November and December, so look forward to meeting up with many of you during my travels.

Comments

[Phil Fersht]

Bill - thanks for your kind works. LPO has gained a lot of ground recently in the US and also within some UK law firms, mainly in areas such as legal research/writing, document review/fact-checking, drafting of briefs and patent services.

We've seen more traction within in-house law departments of major multinational corporations, but I am seeing some of the third-party law firms beginning to use more LPO services. Not too dissimilar from many of the leading consulting firms using their Indian captives to support their engagements, but on an outsourced model as opposed to a captive one.

I see more of a KPO-type model developing as buyers use adjuct augmentation services at present, and it will take a while for long-term outsourcing contracts to transpire.

Overall, I see this space as having a lot of potential, but will evolve in more of a piecemiel fasion, with month-month type contracts for the near-term as firms use offshore support for individual legal projects as opposed to long-term function-based support,

PF

[William Lennon]

Phil,
Always look forward to your articles and discussions on the BPO sector.Keep up the great work!As a business development outsourcer for Quatrro BPO Solutions, what is your take on the future on the LPO arena?
Growing? Laggard?

Thanks,
Bill